50 year old mystery

[Mick Mudd]

Hi, When I was a club cyclist 50 years ago (Wreake Valley CC, Leicester) I occasionally used to enter cyclo-cross events hosted by my and other local clubs, but was always mystified because the length of the races were advertised as something like "One hour plus one lap".
Naturally I asked people what it meant exactly but could never understand their replies, but I entered anyway and muddled through, finishing well down the field.
For interest's sake, would anybody care to have a shot at explaining to me now what it meant?
Why weren't the race lengths billed simply as "30 laps" or whatever, as i'd have understood that quite easily..

 

[DCLane]

It's still used today to manage how hard/long a race should be; some of the races can be much slower/faster than predicted. So the organiser sets it within a time-frame, then the commissaires can run that time and have an identified final finishing lap.

 

[oldwheels]

Had the same system when I was timekeeper at our December cyclo cross events. I was eventually made redundant by electronics so no recent experience. Seemed sensible at the time but it was 10 or 12 years ago and memory is unreliable.

 

[scragend]

In a non-cycling context, the same thing still happens in Formula E. The race distance is given as "X minutes plus one lap". The first time the leader crosses the start/finish line after the X minutes have elapsed, they will do one more lap from there and then see the chequered flag.

 

[Mick Mudd]

I still don't get it (sniffle).
I mean, as all 'cross events are on a circuit with riders getting lapped multiple times, how on earth do the marshalls keep tabs on who's who's and in what position overall as everybody are all mixed together?
We had numbers pinned to our bums, but surely the marshalls would still have need the eyes of hawks to get all the placings exactly right?
PS- As I recall, somebody rings a bell after an hour to signal the last lap for everybody, but what if some riders have completed fewer laps than others, how is it all sorted out?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Here’s a recent example. All fairly straight forward.

https://results.sporthive.com/events/7139443626979786240/races/487893

 

[figbat]

The race format is effectively ’how far can you go in an hour?’. They count every time each rider passes the finish line. After an hour the bell rings and you do one more lap, then they count up how many laps each person did and the highest number wins. In the case of equal lap numbers it’s down to finishing order.

 

[HLaB]

I still don't get it (sniffle).
I mean, as all 'cross events are on a circuit with riders getting lapped multiple times, how on earth do the marshalls keep tabs on who's who's and in what position overall as everybody are all mixed together?
We had numbers pinned to our bums, but surely the marshalls would still have need the eyes of hawks to get all the placings exactly right?
PS- As I recall, somebody rings a bell after an hour to signal the last lap for everybody, but what if some riders have completed fewer laps than others, how is it all sorted out?

Its quite simple, say the organisers only have 3 hours for whatever reason. On a good day the leaders might do 50 x 1 mile laps, but on a bad day they might only do 30laps in the 3hours (a slow pace). If the race ran for 50 laps at the slow pace it wouldn't finish in time. Results are first graded on the number of laps you do and then down to finishing time on the last lap. For instance if the winners all done 40 laps, folk with 40 laps would be in the winning group and that group is ranked by finishing time. So if you only done 38laps, you'd be in the 38 lap group and not the 40 lap group so you couldn't win and you'll be ranked in that group by your finishing time.