One of the only things you could do in this case is just hang back a legal distance and ride it out. I did Muskoka a few years back and kept trying to blast away from a pack (but this was screwing up my race) and finally just said to hell with it and rode about 40 feet back of them until they got away. I'm a pretty strong runner so I got the satisfaction of reeling everyone one of the cheating jerks in on the run. I've never raced Bala but I would imagine the terrain is the same as Huntsville so the downhills will always allow them to catch back up to you.

The bottom line is that no packs will form unless one or two individuals jump on the wheel of someone who goes by them. If all the riders are of equal ability then they can ride legally 3 bike lengths apart in a big pace line with legal spaces and finish right where they would have anyway.

What is the race directors responsibilaty?At 50 bucks ++++ it would piss me off to see all this cheating.

The Muskoka race was much better last year than in the past. Last summer, in the Subaru series here in Ontario, they had a half dozen or so marshalls that were out on the course with their bikes and dressed as though they were racing. They would stay off at the side of the road as though they were doing a little mechanical fix then start riding on the course. Before you knew it they'd be alongside some cheaters and busting them. Seemed to work well in the races I did since there was not as much drafting evident.

well.. i was at that race, but i was somewhat ahead of the draft pack ;). I think the trick to avoid any problem with drafting is learn how to swim faster. Bala always says they're going to have a drafting motercycle.. but they never do.. but given that course, it would still be pretty hard to enforce. Its one lane wide, and you have ALL those people. That is giving into the problem, but given the course design, and that it doesn't really seperate people, the only other thing I could think off, is space the waves 5 min apart instead of 2 min.
Umm.. start yelling at people.. i remember 2 years ago this one guy was screaming his heart out at all the drafting people as he blew by them.. it was really funny actually. (If i manage to race Bala this year.. I dunno if i can though :(.. Jr. Nats might conflict) I will be doing that myself as I see them all at the turn.
Good Luck!
David Clinkard

Another thing one can do is not patronage promoters who are unwilling to enforce the rules.

I experienced the same debacle at Muskoka in '99 -- attacking the pack only to watch them work together to pull it back together. As I recall not a single drafting penalty was awarded at that race. I simply won't go back.

I will give it to the pro-drafting crowd that at many races such as the one you describe, it is almost harder to avoid. First off, I think this is the fault of the RD. As races get more crowded, this sort of crap is harder to avoid. If it were me, I'd try to drop the pack. Once sanity prevails, I'll realize that that won't happen, so I'll ride legally off the back. It really sucks too because trailing behind, you usually end up going slower than you normally would, but breaking away from the pack is often a lot more effort than you're willing to put into it.

One thing is for certain, I would complain (nicely) to the RD that the situation is ridiculous. I'd also avoid that race in the future. The only reason I'm going back to the California 1/2 IM this year is because last years embarassment of a bike course has been drastically changed. It looks like they might be doing something to try to change things. Hopefully they'll have a good group of Marshals out there to help things too. (I'm not bagging on last years Marshals, they had an impossible task.)

Well if no one is gonna do anything about it, and no one seems to care about it.. why not just use the draft?

I'd still complain to the race-director. If the race is billed a no drafting race, then it should be enforced.

As much as I would like to see drafting legalized, as you all know, I will concede to the point of this post. If no drafting can be effectively enforced, I would not have half the problem with the rule. Basically my point, enforce the rule, and there is no problem. This is a bit of a concession, needless to say, of my previous post.

Todd

See my post above. Muskoka was much better last year. I too, did the race in '99 and was royally pissed off with the blatant cheating. Overall it is a good race and well worth doing. I plan on being there again this year and hopefully getting an ironman slot if my friggin calf will heal up.

You can certainly put it in your event evaluation that you send to USAT (assuming it's a usat race).

http://www.usatriathlon.org/Events/event_evaluation.htm

I am not sure on the exact genesis of the no-drafting rules, but my suspicion is that they were put in place and adopted for the sport of triathlon many years ago for two main reasons:

1. To ensure that the sport is truely an individual effort

2. For safety reasons

The no drafting rule worked very well back in the early days because: Race fields were small and there was a huge range in talent and ability of the competitors. This allowed for fields to spread out easily over the bike course. I recall highly competitive Olympic distance races from the early/mid eighties where I would be placing well, and it was not uncommon after the first few K's on the bike to see no one or perhaps one or two other people on the bike during the bike section.

Fast-forward to today. Race fields are much larger. Becase many people have been training for triathlon for a number of years, the talent, ability and fitness of people in the sport is much more even. What you have is large masses of people moving through the race together from swim to bike to run. Waves help, but in some races with 300+ men in some of the more competitive waves( 25 -30, 30 - 35), you are still going to have perhaps 100+ men all exiting the swim within a minute or so and heading out onto the bike ride. Where are they suppoesd to go? What are they supposed to do? In some/many situations( the big Ironman races in particular with one mass start) the rules are asking the athletes to do something that is physically impossible to achieve. You can't put that many bikes on the course in that period of time and have every rider line up in a single file line with an 8m gap bewteen them.

The other problem is a philisophical one. Many like to think of the bike leg in a triathlon as an ITT, well it is and it is not that. In reality you are racing head-to-head out on the course not purely against the clock. It is also not a bike road race. So what is it then? The bike leg in a triathlon has always been a weird freak of a thing that is really hard to get your head around. It's a self seeded random start( on the basis of swim ability/fitness) raced under ITT rules, on time trial bikes, but head to head like in a road race with fellow competitors out on the road. Did you get all that? Add to that roving marshalls who are trying to be everywhere all the time, who are somehow supposed to decide, from the back of a bumpy ride on a motocycle, while they juggle pen and clip board while moving along at 30 - 40 kmH, if you are 8m or 10m back of the cyclist in front of you. Are you still all with me?

Note: I am NOT advocating drafting, I am mearly stating the challenges that the sport faces and as more people come into the sport and races get bigger and more competitive the challenge will not go away. In all liklyhood, the problem of drafting in races will only get worse.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

You can't do a lot as individual competitor. Last year a did a olympic tri in my hometown. On the second bike loop after the turnaround I saw a pack behind me.
I increased my speed to avoid them. But after some time they catched me. I let them pass and followed them with some distance to avoid drafting.
Unfortunately soon after the passed me a marshall came. Now the pack spread and slowed down. Now I had a big numbers of riders ahead of me who rode too slow for me. But passing them would have been very difficult without drafting (the marshall still followed them). I rode behind them for the last 2 or 3 kms.

After the race I wrote the race director. But they told me that there are never more than 5 marshall in triathlons (in Switzerland)

Felix

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http://www.weilenmann.ch.vu

Maybe the best way is sitting right under your noses.....get off your asses and become a marshall/referree and try to HELP get rid of the problem instead of bitching about it or whining about how it's the RDs fault (though I agree, some RDs could do a MUCH better job).

If that doesn't work....knee capping of everyone in a paceline.

BTW--Do any of you people have jobs???? Just curious. ;-)

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Snot rockets work very well in the event of an individual drafter. I could not shake one guy off of me in my first ever multisport race. I berated him to the race director and got his result nullified. I never saw him again after that race.

Legalising the draft would not be a good thing as many people entering these races are inexperienced cyclists. One false move and it will look like a criterium. This could, however, get more crowds watching as many will want to see the wrecks.

My solution is two-fold: either volunteer, or risk the consequences of taking the rules into your own hands. I would rather see the former, as I would rather not see a WWE-based (in concept) tri association.

Another option would be for USAT to track drafting penalties during a season. Acculmulating a set number (e.g. 2) would remove them from the rankings. The price for doing this is there's plenty of work involved and I'm not sure how one-day licensees would be handled.

Perhaps a simpler solution would be to post the offenders names on a web page. I'm all for peer pressure solutions.