I suspect what happened was that the group got broken in two by a marshall for the Terry Fox run. From my perspective, I was in the middle of the pack as we were passing runners. Then, a couple km up the road, I realized I was at the back of the pack. Those of us now at the back started talking about how we thought we’d lost some people and called “steady”. It was a big group, we’d had a little sprint and were strung out, so I wasn’t 100% sure we’d lost people, but a couple of us looped around to look. We called steady again and said we were going back, but that message obviously didn’t travel up the group because it kept going strong. We went back to a straightaway, didn’t see anyone off the back, and started to doubt whether we’d dropped people. Since the group was rapidly getting away, we turned back, a few others dropped back to help us, and we eventually caught back up to the group near Red Barn.
What went wrong? I think a combination of things:
1) People weren’t paying enough attention to what was going on behind them. As soon as we passed a race marshal (who was looking like he was going to hold up a stop sign any minute) we should have been checking back to make sure the whole group got through. The same applies to stop lights, of course.
2) I suspect the “steady up” calls never got passed all the way up the line. It’s important that when you hear a call from behind you, you don’t assume everyone in front of you heard it. Always call it forward, whether it’s a “steady up”, “car back”, “mechanical” or whatever. And if you don’t hear others calling it forward repeat it until you hear others in front of you passing it up the chain. If necessary, yell the name of someone in front of you and ask them to pass the message forward.
3) We sent people back (admittedly not far enough) but we didn’t send someone forward. If we’re sending people off the back of the group, we probably shouldn’t rely on just calling “steady up”. We should send a strong rider to the very front of the group to explain what’s going on. If people at the front had been told we might be missing riders, they probably would have soft-pedaled orstopped. The problem with people just going back (without sending someone forward), is that suddenly those people with the most information are separated from the group and as a result the group could be completely in the dark about what’s going on.
4) Those of us trying to figure out whether we’d dropped riders didn’t think carefully about what might have caused the group to split. The usual rider off the back situation is someone who’s dropped a chain or something like that and is 30 seconds or less back, so you see them easily. In this case, a marshall could have held people for 2 minutes or more. If one of us had remembered the marshall, this hopefully would have prompted us to stop the group, search further back, etc. Instead, we looked 30 seconds down the road, saw the rest of the group rapidly pulling away, and thought, “OK, maybe we didn’t lose people…we’d better get moving or we’ll be the ones dropped.”
5) We didn’t then wait at the bottom of Observatory Hill, deciding instead to wait at the top. We probably would have reconnected the group if we’d waited at the bottom. Instead, we may well have pissed them off to the point that they decided to skip Observatory, which is no good for anyone. We did wait awhile at the top, and then held out hope for reuniting at Fol Epi, but neither of those things happened.
So next time, keep aware of what’s going on behind you, shout warnings forward, send a messenger forward if people go off the back, and when in doubt, wait up.
Anyway, just my interpretation/thoughts. I could have it completely wrong, so feel free to chime in. Sorry to the folks left back today.
Martin
The courteous thing to do is let others know you're leaving, and then drop off the back, or take a different turn. I have no idea if this is what happened on Sunday, but don't leave by blasting off the front and splintering the group on your way out!
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