British Cycling introduces grading system for sportives

To everyone who is looking for flaws in thus fable.
It is a guideline for difficulty not a rule! This table will generally apply quite well to most sportives. I think for those who are just getting a touch more adventurous in the will find this helpful!

presumably the colours chosen have some sort of significance - yellow is for cowards?

and since the rules don't allow triples a factor should be applied so a grade 5 with a triple would be 5-3 = grade 2 ?

Rapha do their jerseys in metric sizing.

End of argument.

"Check out my new 25.4mm handlebars"

"Wow gotta get some of those, the ones I am using are an inch"

Don't get me wrong I wish we were totally metric or totally imperial, not stuck forever in this halfway house.
How many kms/litre does you car do for instance?

Exactly and most metric parts on bikes are imperial sizes converted anyway.
Cyclists are like runners the use km's as it sounds faster/longer

Fitness dictates whether an event is tough, be it flat or hilly.

Quote:

I think they've tried to do something that's simple for sportive organisers to assess themselves against, but clearly at the extremes it hasn't worked

Statistics never works at the extreme ends - that's the whole point of statistics and why statisticians use things like 95th percentile, bell curves and best fit lines.
Look at Body Mass Index as well - that often shows athletes as being "morbidly obese" because it can't take into account the super-fit/muscled people.

The point is that to a relative novice, new to the sport it gives a consistent formula rather than relying on what the organiser thinks it is. For the majority of events the majority of the time it'll work quite well. Which is basically what statistics does - model most things well most of the time.

Rule 43 is pretty key as well. Though I'd translate it into British English thus:
"Don't be a dick"

anyway.

So that 10km, 3750m ascent, sportive. Given most start where they finish, that's a 133% average climb (45° is 100%, 90° is ∞%).

Somehow mange that, how many stops for new brake pads, rims are you going to need coming down?

Oh great, now we can have grading debates just like climbers.
Dave's point is spot on. Daft grid.

Agreed, the Rules aren't rules, but some of them are right. Why would I measure in miles? Your 1:50,000 map isn't in miles. 0.5km is 500m, what is 0.5miles? The length of the emperor's parade ground? 'We' don't use miles Cavasta, last time I checked bike components, builders plans, and my Topman jumper are in mm/cm.

Having said that, who would wear their sunglasses OVER their helmet straps? So that you have to take your sunglasses off to take your helmet off? And feel the straps pressed into the side of you head all day? The Rules are more of a style guide.

The flaw to this whole chart thing is that a fat bloke like me might see a 200k with 250 metres of climbing very differently to a 50k with 1000 metres of climbing. And yet this table equates these two examples equally.

The degree of difficulty must also surely depend, to a certain extent, on the actual gradient to be climbed.

For instance, I find the hills on the London to Brighton ride a real killer, and it's only 58 miles. And yet I did a gently undulating 150 mile ride this year, with roughly the same amount of total climbing, and it was a breeze.

Obviously, creating some sort of mechanism that leads to "league table" participation can be a good marketing ploy, but this particular algorithm is bonkers.

Not basing any of it on the individuals level of fitness then? It's about as good as the BMI chart, which! It looks surprisingly like even down to the colouring.

I am British and use miles when riding in the UK... I use Km when riding in Europe. The Velo rules...... What a load of absolute f-ing hogwash. I don't know who are/is the biggest idiot, the people that follow them or the idiot who wrote them?
Ride using km or mph YOUR choice.
To find out how hard a ride is, learn to read a 1-50000 map, it will take you 60 secs to find out.
Wear mixed team kit if you want
Use a bike satchel if you want
Put your f-ing glasses arms under your helmet strap if you want.
Wear a world champion jersey if you want.

Do what you want.
Enjoy your bike however you want and just have fun.

The opinions are my own, no cyclists were hurt during the typing of this post.
I accept all of the keyboard warrior comments that will follow on an individual basis and will respond within 24hrs.

To Everyone else who has an independent and logical mind, please accept my apologies.

If I've understood climbing elevation bit correctly, they may need to recalibrate for some of the more bonkers events out there such as the Dave Lloyd mega challenge - http://www.cyclosport.org/06-May-2008/news/dave-lloyd-mega-challenge-upd... - 5400+ meters of climbing last year...;-)

This chart is rubbish, as already stated a 10km ride with 3.75km climbing rates 37 which is the same as 30km with 1.25km climbing, utter nonsense.

I thought the grading system for Sportives was the Nimby (Surrey Hills and New Forest scoring 5)

I don't understand how a 10km ride, of which a third is climbing scores so low, that'd be rather tough as Dave Said

Perhaps we should have another grading system too...

called the "F factor".

On the X axis - no. of residents adversely affected.
On the Y axis - no. of businesses adversely affected.

They'll be awarding points and calling them races next.

Hope they're going to produce an imperial version of the chart as well. We still use miles in the UK. Good idea though.