Discussion: Billygoat Results

Billygoat XL preliminary results are now available at:

https://www.wcocorienteering.org/copy-of-results

Thanks to Susie for getting the results up.

One correction: Bernie Bretton ran the full course, not Pygmy. Time looks correct though.

And thanks to everyone involved. It was a fun course.

Thanks to Joe for a great course! First the southern loop with relative easy flow and a lot of goat running, followed by a nice, but more technical flat loop in the northern part. After #19 the final battle with the split (and the skip to be used before it was over) and suddenly I am out there on my own and doing the work.

Of course also a big thank-you to the whole crew around Geof, who made this event happening so beautifully!

Thanks for a great billygoat, HVO and WCOC! Allison, Inara, and I all had a fantastic time!

Thanks and congrats on a great event! I had a blast on what I believe is only my second Billygoat. Looking forward to the next one!

According to J-J's voluminous statistics, your 3rd: 2003 at Trout Brook Valley and 2006 at Macedonia Brook. Congratulations!

Is there a consensus for the "best" skip?

I've heard 17, 20, and 24 as popular choices. 9 also looks like a pretty good choice, but I wonder how many folks were brave enough to spend their skip that early before getting into the northern loops.

One guy running in my vicinity accidentally skipped 8. As in: "Hey that's an unexpected trail crossing." Me: "no, it's right." Him: "Wait... did you guys already punch 8?"

I can say that several people who were ahead of us at 13 ended up behind us at 22 after they skipped 17 and we skipped 20.

Wild to see Keegan Harkavy, a JDT athlete, beat multiple JNT athletes on such a tough race! Looking forward to seeing him run internationally (hopefully) soon ;)

Multiple?

Izzy is technically correct, the best kind of correct.

Well said, Mr. Wonderful!

Great run by Bridget and Kristin. J-J, does this make the Federer-Hall family the first three generation family of finishers? (I don't mind bragging ;<))

Lyons family several times, and done twice in a single Billygoat, but a fine accomplishment for the Federer-Hall family, too.

Thanks, Charlie.

And Tony, Kristin actually won, but her epunch is slower than Bridget ‘s. At least that’s how they explained it to me ;-).
I ran the first 5 controls with them but they’re just stronger/faster (and younger).

YES, really impressive run by Keegan! There were a lot of great junior results.

Can Billygoat splits be posted on AP, or do the skips preclude that?

Splits on AP would be really nice. Ken has a great skip analyzer that works on billygoat results.

Anyone can upload the map to the routegadget?

Thanks so much everyone! Great course, great terrain, great event.

Before the race I was speculating how many Juniors would be in 'my' chase pack... but during most of the race, it was quite 'the Junior pack' that I was struggling to keep sight of instead! Very well done, by several Juniors, including solid navigation in world class terrain.

Great course by Joe too - *so* many places where constant attention to detail and 50m route differences could gain valuable seconds.

but her epunch is slower than Bridget‘s

Or they punched at different finish boxes, which weren't quite synced.

They did punch at different boxes, which were synced, but Bridget was fractionally faster than Kristen. I think it was deliberate as Kristen did not want the Goat "cluttering up her bedroom", and anyway she got the fruit tart - much the better part of the deal in my opinion.

Splits are up on AP. Also Win Splits at http://obasen.orientering.se/winsplits/online/en/s...

Actually, to be clear, we were trying very hard to tie! We stood with our e-punches poised over the holes, counted down, and "dibbed" ... but clearly a fraction different. Our family definitely views it as a tie.
It is true that I claimed the fruit tart (shared it though) and that I think the goat would look much better in Bridget's bedroom than mine. But currently it is on the mantel in the living room.
It was a great day - thanks to all involved (organizers and fellow runners). I like team orienteering, discussing routes, working together to stay on route and to plan ... My knee won't tolerate a rogaine, so this is the only chance I get!

And I'll second Wyatt's comment on how great it was to have so many juniors. Also great to have so many women! At one point in the middle I think we had Angelica, Alex, Tyra, Marie, Bridge, Bridget, Elina, Deidre and me all together. It was great!

Looks like 7, after all, was among the best skips. Mainly because there are no good skips out there...

https://attackpoint.org/raceskips.jsp/race_28199

Not quite sure how well Attackpoint does with skips and forks combined, though.

I just wanted to brag about skipping control 7.
It made perfect sense though visually it looked dumb.
I trusted my calculations more than my feeling.
The distance between 8-7 - 150 meters, and the same length back.
Altogether 300 meters! At my speed, I gained 4:20. No other control could give me such an advantage.

Actually, to be clear, we were trying very hard to tie!

In that case, you did. That's what the master record will show.

Well, this is weird. I've generally been pretty impressed with the job that Split Analysis does, but I'm baffled by what happened with bhall and khall. Same skip, elapsed time differs by one second, and the furthest apart they were at any control was 12 seconds. But khall has 3:47 in lost time, while bhall has 5:06. Huh? In fact, Bridget shows a 36 second error on #1, while her mother was clean, even though they had the same split time! Likewise on #23, Kristin was clean, Bridget was 5 seconds slower and lost 42 seconds. Did the algorithm cut Kristin some slack because it was Mother's Day? :-)

Note the different median leg scores of 62.6 and 63.6 for the two of them. That appears to be what the algorithm compares to the score for any given leg. So, for bhall, a leg score of 58.6 is low enough to trigger an 'error' flag. Not for khall.

This is a cool border-line anomaly.

Any chance of Routegadget? Or just a jpg file posted somewhere?

Gswede has posted his route...

ROUTEGADGET is in the works.

Only in the US do you get this sort of coolness (terrain + billygoat format + ace courses)

All we are missing are the orienteers...

Rumor is that next year's Billygoat takes place at Burnt Mountain in New Hampshire, site of the NAOC 2016 Long.

After relearning what it takes to get the BG splits sorted, RouteGadget is ready and available here for both events:
http://vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

EDIT - BG map too dark. Deleting and trying again. Standby.

OK, have at it you BillyGoaters. Still a little cluttered, but the overprinting is not as overpowering now, as it was originally.

http://vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

Thanks Kristin for clearing that up! Tying with your daughter on Mother's Day ... that's pretty cool.

Valerie, that map looks much better than the one we actually ran with! Nice job. Thanks.

Hah, Peggy, I heard that, but you know me... :)

Thanks, JJ, for making it official.

Bridget's loss of a bit over 5 minutes is DEFINITELY more accurate than my loss of 3:47. It was pretty definitely more than 5, actually. By far the best error was getting stuck on the stepping stones that ended not close enough to the far side of the pond. Only wish I could have convinced more people to follow me ;-)

I’d rather do a Billygoat with 100 people than the JK with 3000.

But is the average age of competitor getting older so might there be a risk for the future?

I would say that was the trend for a while, but we had a good group of juniors finishing this year, so I think there is some optimism to be had.

I think 7 of the top 10 finishers this year were under 30, if I am counting correctly.

I think I can do an analysis of the average competitor age through the years once I get this year's results entered in the database.

Top 10 isn't a great measure, because it's unlikely those top 10 will be old, right? Good to see so many juniors tackling the Billygoat!

You'd think so, but last year only 3/10 were under 30...

This year we had a small horde of juniors plowing after the top runners!

Being that this was the Bilygoat, it would be more correctly said that a HERD of juniors where plowing after the top runners...

Three of the top 10 finishers live on Henry Street, Cambridge MA, and none of them are related.

^^ What are you feeding them?

Vegetables grown in buckets and urban eggs?

And it should be a herd of "kids" surely. (khall not ahall, just too lazy to log him out)