By the way, Albuquerque is probably one of the weirdest city names to spell repeatedly!
The theme of this year's IBR is national parks and monuments. I am an IBR newb, so don't ask me to explain in too much detail, but the gist is that in order to be considered a "finisher", the rider must visit at least 50 different national parks and monuments in a minimum of 25 different states in the next 11 days. A daunting task to be sure! Top riders will likely visit many more than the minimum - it will be crazy to watch. A guy like me, if I were ever so inclined and fortunate enough to get an invite, would be looking to finish and not worrying too much about my placing within the field. I believe the attrition rate is in the 30-40 percent range, so just finishing puts you in good company.
I'll leave the analysis to other more experienced observers and riders. I will say that a couple of cool outliers exist at the early stages of the rally. Two riders chose to ignore the herd's advance and instead headed south and east. Motivation is going to be locked away inside their heads until the finish.
The following three screen captures shows rider locations just prior to starting at 10am (MDT) and again at 1 and 4pm. The first shot is a bit misleading. All the riders were at one location at the start, but it looks more spread out in the screen capture - it is a trick of how the tracking device behaves when shut down. The second and third shots show the field as riders depart headed generally west or northwest. I am putting a video montage together to see the general progression of the rally each day. I am an amateur, so keep your expectations low, please.
Here is the link to the IBR main page where you can pull up the rider map nearly real-time and read through rally reports form the IBA scribe. Good reading, in my opinion.
Stay tuned - I know I will!
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| Just prior to the 10am (MDT) start. |
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| At 1pm (MDT) |
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| At 4pm (MDT) |
3 comments:
Tim,
Thanks for doing the time lapse of the SPOTWALLA page. It will be interesting.
My theory on the rogue riders is that there were some significant points heading the ways the two riders went. Since there will be a significant concentration of states and parks in the east, those riders can knock off the states and parks in shorter time and distance than trying to snag them in the west where the distances between boni are likely longer. But I don't have access to the bonus pack, so my comments are just speculation.
If you can visit the start or end of the IBR, it's an eye-opening experience. I know a good number of the riders and most of the staff. Because of family commitments I just couldn't attend this year. I'm pulling for Tom Loftus, Kirsten, and Eric J.
Tim
I would love to do that. Might have to make a trip to wherever the locations are in 2017.
This is my Bucket List equivalent of running a marathon (which I have no desire to do). Maybe once I get out of Paradise (or I could drive around Oahu a couple of hundred times :}. Tim, Thanks for taking this tracking project on, I will follow it, courtesy of the Internet. Pete
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