some interesting facts

[David LeBlanc <dleblanc@mindspring.com>]

I said I didn't want to start a flamewar, but talking about it offline
caused me to crunch some more data.  

Out of the 611 or so rides that I have data for, there were 298 where both
a LD ride and a mid-distance (50-75 mile) endurance ride happened on the
same day. I then took the ratio of average speed for the winning LD rider
and the same for the winning mid-distance rider. In 26.4% of the rides, the
winning LD rider had a faster pace than the winning mid-distance rider -
obviously, nearly 3/4 of the time, the longer distance riders are moving
faster, and in some cases much faster.  On one end of the scale, the
mid-distance winner only managed 60% of the speed of the LD rider.  At the
other end, there were 25 rides where the mid-distance rider was moving at
least twice as fast (this is startling to me) as the winning LD rider.

Considering how fast your typical 50 mile rides are run, I'd say that if
you can't at least top 20 a LD, then maybe the horse isn't ready to move
up. I'll leave the rest of my conclusions off - anyone wanting to discuss
it can take it off-line with me.

People have a lot of different perceptions about how fast people go, etc -
just thought it might be helpful to present some actual data. I know this
certainly wasn't what I expected to see before I looked at the real world
results.


David LeBlanc
dleblanc@mindspring.com