Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
If I get dropped, training on that day isn't going to matter. I'd rather get home, rest up, and go after it again tomorrow. Besides, personally, I don't want to train while races are going on on a course I'm likely not super familiar with in a locale far away from where I need to be.
my comments weren't meant to be universal -- just sharing a perspective that a busted race, for many people, is a lost day of training in-season that may not be made up depending on what someone else has going on. "ride hard the next day" isn't an option for everyone.
IOW their schedule might have anticipated a hard race, and instead they got 20' before being dropped/pulled. continuing to ride hard (without being an idiot/interfering) is sometimes a good option to keep going, even if "just finishing" doesn't mean anything.
in RRs the course is usually safe(-ish), swept, marked/marshaled -- sometimes that is better for a person than local roads/traffic.
plus it can have a bonus of seeing the course for future attempts if it was one's first time there.
i've also seen crazy stuff like where an entire field was held up due to a big accident or other issue on the road -- and this meant that people who were 10' behind caught back up. (i was annoyed by this once as some people i'd worked hard to drop and were knocked out of GC contention got back in on the last stage--and the officials let everyone back in. amateur racing!)
no judgment on my part -- only posing some scenarios where merely finishing may make sense.