I'm sure that is what was intended was what Barbara said. I remember
talking about this some time back with a rider down here and we decided
to show the rule to a couple of people who knew nothing about the sport
and she what they had to say about it. We picked two friends that
spend their life us looking at verbage and determining exactly what it
means.
We gave a copy to a very good design engineer - one who spends his life
looking and specifications and designing from those specifications. We
gave a copy to a lawyer friend.
The engineer came back and said basically what I said below. The lawyer
said - "what do you want it to mean, I could argue either way."
This may somewhat reminiscent of the issue that came up a few years ago
over rule 6 I think it was rule 6. The way it was written it said a
rider had 30 minutes to meet pause at the end of a ride. However, that
was not how it had always been done and that was not the intent of the
person writing the rule nor the AERC when they passed the rule.
But that was actually what the rule said. It got rewritten to clarify
the issue. The important thing when it goes on paper is what it says
not what it was suppose to say.
That being said I have done a few rides where the actual mileage shown
and listed on the map was less than 50, say 48.9, 49.2, etc. and was
sanctioned as a 50 mile ride. The RM was not intentionally trying to
violate any rules and they could have eaisly added a mile or so here
and there to make it over 50 if they thought it was necessary. They
just used the rounding to 50 to established the distance.
That is an interesting point. The quantization for distance for an
endurance rides is defined in the rules to be 5 miles. Therefore one
could eaisly argue and technically be correct that anything from
47.50000000000001 to 52.499999999999999999 is in fact a 50 mile ride.
I expect that is not what the people that wrote the rule meant but that
is what it means.
No time to go dig through and find the exact verbiage this morning, but am
pretty sure that as Barbara stated, the rules specifically address the
rounding issue and state that a 50 must still be at least 50, and that
rounding only applies to the increments over 50, so that they are
sanctioned to the nearest 5 miles. In any event, taken all together, that
is the gist of it.
Heidi
