Akon

Is it worth watching? Or should I rather give it a miss?

Those bottles can be distributed to all the kids pleading "Empty bottles" road side.

I read this all the time, even from @ChrisF, This is akin to those BMW drivers gunning an ASOD section at 250+ km/h, then stop just before the end and wait 15mins before continuing...

It is (almost) never the BB, as @Jbr (and my mechanic) said. It (almost) always sounds like it comes from the BB though. In my case (I kid you not) it was the back wheel's spokes rubbing at the lacing contact point. A little oil/lube eliminated the creek. (Also id'able / testable by putting a different wheel in and see if it stops creaking...)

You mean Why should they not speed their pace up? A solution: For "difficult" sections, caught team A captain sits in the front; Simply allows catching team B to roll past; Don't latch onto the last wheel, how tempting it might be; If really necessary, e.g. for a section where D is in the process of rolling past C, and C wants to roll past B/A, the catching teams can speed up ever so slightly. The grown men opinion is the real problem / solution - Teams actively plan their drafting on other teams strategy ...

Saw a guy pushing his companion 5min in already, for extended periods, up all hills little bumps even.

And then he briefly considered chasing down Cat2 on their 2nd lap... 😎. He deserved the win IMHO.

I think you need to distinguish between goals / targets and intentions. The latter is also fine in life, but it is fuzzy - if you can't measure it, and don't have a plan in place to hit the target, it isn't a goal.

Here I thought the debate was to be between 3 & 4 @Mamil 😉 . Did you enter Cat 2 in the end?

Seems like only 4 this year 🙃: bleedtowin, milky, you and me!

Ja... We should call them A-bunch break-away riders Cheetahs - racing snakes are not that fast 😇

This is the shorter reply? I'd be interested to see the original 😜