Kona 100 drawing near

But will the event be timed, is the racing on bridleways just a problem at Ryhader, or does it effect the non military sections of Bulith too.
Posted: 16/05/2003 14:26

It's always been a timed event - from the start to the end of the last military section when I did it. I'm not entirely sure how they get around the no racing on bridleways bit...
Posted: 16/05/2003 15:44

Official word just recieved from the site is non-competitive for legal reasons. I suppose if there is no prizes on offer, it would allow times to be given out. Trailbreak time the lemmings OK. The prize draw they did at the sequel, as riders came in worked well. The look on the guys face who won the frame was a picture. Sam Gardner the "winner" wasn't amused with nowt though.
Posted: 16/05/2003 16:18

It's non competative so the insurence can remain valid, though how they can then give a prize to the best of 3 escapes me. The Eppynt army range highways and RoW are 'suspended' whilst the red flag is flying.That's how they get round it Cullen, except that the first and third year the insurence was still invalid as they went over a bridleway outside the range. It appears that doing that would provide a get out clause over the whole route for any insurer. Needless to say the WCU were clueless and didn't pick it up. It's not clear if giving any times would be valid. The law doesn't mention racing, it says 'a test of speed' which could cover any timed event, including the Lemming, though one school of thought says that if you give times alphabetically rather than in order of time then you may be ok. There are no test cases yet. Generally events in England have been run with the bridleway glitch in mind, events in Wales have not.
Posted: 17/05/2003 00:19

IMO, the laws against racing (or tests of speed) on PROW weren't really conceived with these kinds of events in mind. Right or wrong, they were implemented to prevent shorter, faster competitions (that wonderful old thing about 'riding furiously'). Events like the Kona and the Lemmings are tests of endurance. No one is going to complete the Iron Lemming at an average 15 mph! The fastest finishers at last years Iron Lemming averaged slightly under 7.5mph, substantially slower than the pace of my average sunday rides on the downs (and I'm nowhere near Iron Lemming standards!) and certainly not fast enough to be a general threat to life and limb. Timing endurance events doesn't encourage furious head to head racing and not awarding prizes or declaring a winner just reinforces the non competitive angle. That may not conform to the letter of the law, but I think it could make a pretty strong defence case. In fact timing is an essential part of these events. The Lemming Trails have always been timed - it is part of an organisers responsibility to record when each rider reaches each checkpoint, so they know where to look if someone goes missing. It is just recently that they decided to make these times public. Most people don't really care, they just want to finish the route, but the small majority of the fastest riders were interested - and these rider were already timing themselves anyway.
Posted: 18/05/2003 11:30

Another get round is to run events to a randonee format, like the Evans rides, where riders aim to finish within a specific 'time band' that has an upper as well as lower limit. This way the event can be argued as a test of pace rather than speed. Of course, the upper limit for the top band might be just a little higher than the best riders could realistically achieve anyway...
Posted: 18/05/2003 11:37