Every round, your Pace Grade shows how your own riding pace compared to the fastest pace ridden in your own category that day – as a simple percentage. The fastest rider in your category is always 100%. If you’re riding at 85%, you’re covering ground at 85% of their speed that day. It’s there to give you something to chase that’s separate from where you finished – because your pace can be getting better even in a round where your position doesn’t change.
Why it’s fair, even though everyone does a different number of laps
WMCCL rounds are raced against the clock, not a fixed distance – once the leader finishes, everyone still out gets waved in after their current lap. So two riders in the same race can easily end up with different lap counts. Comparing total time or total laps between them wouldn’t mean much. Comparing pace – how long each lap actually took you – does, because it doesn’t care how many laps you got through, only how fast you were riding them.
| Rider | Laps | Time | Pace / lap | Pace Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fastest in category | 6 | 40:00 | 6:40 | 100% |
| Rider A | 6 | 42:00 | 7:00 | 95% |
| Rider B | 5 | 41:40 | 8:20 | 80% |
Everyone finishes at or after the category winner’s time, never before – since anyone still out on course keeps riding until they’re waved in at the end of their current lap. Rider A rode the same number of laps as the winner but took two minutes longer, because their pace was slower. Rider B was slower still, and hadn’t started their final lap by the time the winner finished, so they’re waved in after 5 laps instead of 6. Neither rider’s grade is affected by their lap count – only by their pace – which is exactly why it’s a fairer comparison than looking at finishing time or laps completed.
Tracking it over a season
Your rider page shows a Pace Grade for every round you finish, plus a season average and – once you’ve got a few rounds under your belt – a note on whether your grade’s trending up, holding steady, or easing off. That’s the number worth watching over time: a rider finishing mid-pack every week whose grade climbs from the high 70s into the mid-80s is genuinely getting faster, even if their finishing position hasn’t moved much yet.
A few quick answers
- Do I need to finish to get a grade?
- You need a recorded finish time, so DNFs and average-points (AP) rounds don’t get a Pace Grade.
- Is this instead of my league points and position?
- No – it sits alongside them. Points and position are about how you did against the field that day; Pace Grade is about how your own riding is progressing, race to race.
- Is it adjusted for my age or category?
- You’re always compared only against riders who lined up at the same start as you. For most categories that’s simply everyone else in your own race category. A few categories share a start with a neighbouring one (e.g. Senior and U23, or the various Masters age bands) – there, you’re compared against everyone who set off at the same time as you, not people who started separately, even if they raced the same course.