I am planning to run some training events for my club. They are going to take the form of a series of pursuit "races" around several small loops (4 minutes or so a lap – about 50/50 singletrack and fire road).

While there is always the chance someone may be caught, the way I plan to run it is that unlike the track, riders don't get eliminated and should carry on until they have finished their laps. My main interest is to get their times etc.

To maintain interest I have lots of courses of varying lengths but, of major concern to me is that we have a huge range of abilities and I don't want people losing interest because they are so far off the pace (compared to the quicker riders) and feel humiliated if they are too slow.

I propose to set up a sort of league table but to make the whole thing work I need to have a handicapping system. Are there any formulae out there? I have googled it but all I get back are gold handicaps.

Can anyone help?

bumping this to the top again….. I hope!

Way I would do it is have everyone ride the course by themselves flat out ala time trial , but with big gaps between riders setting off so no one gets caught.

With these times, work out estimated time for x number of laps, then set the handicap accordingly. Not very tech, but it is early monday morning.