I would like to point out that the complaints have mostly been about slow riders starting early, not fast riders. If faster riders start ahead of you, you'll never know it.

I would like to share some information I found in the HH100 official newspaper that was distributed up there, though.

In the article titled "And they're off" on page 14 of that newspaper, it says "Hell's Gate Scorchers" is people who expect to finish in under 5 hours. "Hell's Gate Keepers" are 5 hours to under 9 hours. "Hell's Gate Hopefuls" is 9 hours or more. Of course, the problem is that this information wasn't posted on the map or signs that show you where these areas are, so you had to guess which place to be. Also, I'm not sure what time they're talking about. My chip-timer time was just under 9 hours, but from firing of the cannon was about 9:20, so I can interpret that either way. And also, I just barely made it through Hell's Gate at that speed, so there can't be many people that make Hell's Gate and don't finish in 9 hours.

It mentions in the article that your start location was on the bib number, but that number came from asking riders where they wanted to start, if I remember right. Maybe they did ask for a time and adjust accordingly. But I thought they only asked for a time on the chip timer thingy.

That article also mentions that "we try to hold each group up until the previous group has crossed the start line". That may have been the theory, but I'm not aware that it happened like that- in fact, it seemed they had trouble getting the marker poles out of the way due to people going by. But that's why everyone got to taptap down to the start line instead of waiting 5 minutes and then riding.