Originally Posted by billh
I remember one race that had this mound of dirt with some bumps. basically one rider at a time could ride on it. complete pile up the first lap. I remember guys in the back just running around it really fast and taking the lead. I didn't think it was fair, because they didn't have to navigate the tricky bumps and they didn't sprint to the mound first. Other guys waited for the pile to clear. Probably didn't affect the results because the fast guys made up time anyway after a few laps.
As long as they didn't go out of bounds, then the other riders were right to dismount and run around the other cyclists that weren't thinking ahead and ended up stuck in the bottleneck. Cyclocross is all about getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. The means by which that is accomplished is up to the rider. Some riders try to ride stuff that's more quickly traversed on foot, and vice versa.