Home Current News News Archive Shop/Advertise Ridecamp Classified Events Learn/AERC
Endurance.Net Home Ridecamp Archives
ridecamp@endurance.net
[Archives Index]   [Date Index]   [Thread Index]   [Author Index]   [Subject Index]

RE: [RC] [RC] [RC] Are the LD's feeding 50's? - David LeBlanc


Truman Prevatt said:

heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

In fact, I'm quite sure that it isn't perilous to publish 
ride times. 

With very few exceptions, the endurance speeds were FASTER 
than the LD speeds.  (And in fact, the three LD wins that were faster in
the NW 
than the wins on the 50 the same day were posted by Sue Nance, on 
experienced 50-mile and 100-mile horses...)

This is not just true for last year but as you well know for 
most rides all years. 

Actually, I did exactly this. Back when you could pull ride results directly
from the URL, I pulled down results for over 400 rides, all over the
country. I then compared rides where an LD and a 50+ were held on the same
day, and calculated the average speed of the winning riders in both
distances.

As with Heidi's results, there were some outliers where the LD winning time
was actually faster, but the average ratio was that the 50's were run 1.15
times faster (15% faster) than the LD winners. If those "irresponsible
racing LDer's" were to have doubled their times and be placed in the 50,
they would have in general come in about 15th in the 50. Obviously, that's
an unrealistic extrapolation - they're not going to run the 2nd 25 at the
same pace as the 1st 25 (excepting maybe Sue Nance).

I've always thought it ridiculous that I can take the same horse, go out and
top-10 a 50, and  somehow I'm a smart rider, but if I only want to go 25
miles that day, and top-10 the LD, then I'm an irresponsible lunatic.

Of course, one can't compare rides where the LD times are not posted, 
but in the W region, for the rides where times WERE posted, 
the same pattern emerged.

I'm sure it would.

It does - the pattern holds across the whole country.

With few exceptions, our LD riders are traveling more 
slowly than our 
50 milers, no matter how ride times are posted or awards 
are divvied out.

Yep - absolutely correct.

The records bear this out. I did my research based on data from a few years
ago, so it would be interesting to pull the information again and see if
there have been any changes - I expect not.

The really interesting thing to me is that here in the NW, PNER gives (gasp,
shudder) ***points*** to people placing top-10 in an LD ride, _requires_
times to be posted for all distances, lumps all the points for any distance
together, we almost always have LD BC placings (except in BC, where they do
it, but differently), and what do you know? The sky hasn't fallen, the world
hasn't ended (though dogs and cats do live together at our house), we have
lots of growth in our region, and even have a nice selection of 75's and
100's to choose from. So the NW region's support of LD, and treating LD the
same as everything else, hasn't led to the downfall of civilization - quite
the opposite.




=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Replies
Re: [RC] [RC] [RC] Are the LD's feeding 50's?, Truman Prevatt