FJRForum Official 2019 Iron Butt Rally Tracking/Analysis Thread

[Colin24]

Absolutely fantastic news for Wendy. That is _SO_ awesome. You go girl!

There are a few things I am noting at the end of this years rally.

1) The aforementioned first victory by a women. Just awesome. We've had women riders around before that have ridden at this level. But to finally have one win it is just awesome.

2) I don't know if its just my impression or the numbers back it up. But there seemed to be very few (if any) accident induced trips to the Hospital in an ambulance. One of the things I am always impressed with the IBA\IBR is the commitment to safety. But in spite of that when your running 100 riders 10,000 miles in two weeks (1,000,000 miles!) then $h#t is going to happen. And there usually is one or two of these incidents. But this year it seems that everyone made it home safe (or at least the incidents were of the self-induced dropsies category).

3) The bikes. Wendy was the only Yamaha in the top 10. As much as we love to pile on the BMW's around here the reality is they still seem to be the goto bike for the rally (5 of top 10). Then theres the Hondas who had a 1-2 punch with both a Goldwing and Silverwing (And I mean the cool Silverwing, not the lame ass scooter version) in the top 10. Would love to see more pictures of Dylans Silverwing.

4) Who took what route. I am open to correction but the rumours I've heard is that Owen went to Alaska (came in 7) and Crocket stayed south in the lower 48. So who were the rest of the Alaska bunch. There are some stories I am anxious to hear! Waiting patiently for the full bonus listing to be published.

Well, now that the rally is over I think I will get back to my regular life instead of banging away on the refresh button on Spotwalla!

- Colin

 

[Stitch]

Colin, I didn’t go through all the rider scorecards, but Jim Owen did take the Alaska option. Seems like Iggy was right about staying in the lower 48 (and southern Canada). That Hilton Tri-Cities bonus (return to Kennewick) was huge and looks like it made the difference.

 

[Stebs]

Would be great to hear the riders stories of their adventures!

Congrats to Wendy. Maybe somebody can get her to post a few word here about her strategy/planning. (But maybe not if she is going to run again in 2021).

Poor BMW folks. You are getting picked on. A thought. The stats don't tell us anything about the age, maintenance, mileage or condition of the malfunctioning bikes.

Long riders radio usually has several riders on the program answering questions about the rally and telling stories about their adventures.

https://www.longridersradio.com

 

[Goodman4]

If I understand the "R" in the starting roster, there were 7 rookies in the top 20 and Steve Gallant placed 3rd.

 

[russperry]

So I do see one interesting little trick in the requirements that were laid out and the bonii that were available.

The ability to skip the 2nd check-in in Kennewick stated that one of two options had to be met - either a bonus above the 60th parallel or hitting the bookends (Cape Disappointment and Gaspe).

Instead of abandoning the big bonus for the Kennewick check-in, Wendy and Steve Gallant stayed around for the Kennewick check in and THEN did the Cape Disappointment/Gaspe combo. That, along with the 2nd 20k+ bonus on the St. Lawrence river appears to have been a great call.

 

[Hudson]

Awesome win by Wendy and her point score was impressive!

 

[PJ4863]

The rest was a big one as well as the Mississippi combo that brought everyone down from the headwaters down. Ken, Jim and homer were 3 of the 5 that went to Alaska. There were quite a few epic rides!

 

[SEBeck]

I was going through the riders scorecards as I always am interested in what bonuses the riders went after. After noticing that the third place finisher Steve Gallant had also gone to the most of the same boni that Wendy went through I copied each of their listings into an Excel spreadsheet to make it easier to see what the differences were. It was here that I picked up a possible error either in the 2nd leg scoring on many of the riders scorecards OR the deletion of one (or more) of a bonus description for the 2nd leg on those scorecards.

After copying the data for the top 11 riders I verified that the first leg scoring was correct for each but when I went to sum up the scoring for the second leg I found that the original score given was always more than what I had calculated with only one exception, the second leg score was correct for Jim Owen.

I invite anybody else to try this for themselves but here is the revised scoring list that I get when adding up the scores for the top 11 riders:

1st column - Original Placing
2nd column - Rider
3rd column - Scored Total
4th column - Recalculated Total
5th column - Difference

1 Wendy Crockett 154086 146509 -7577
2 Mike Heitkamp 143648 142960 -688
3 Steve Gallant 142178 134601 -7577
4 Craig Brooks 137263 136775 -488
5 Eric Bray 134569 133881 -688
6 Billy Connacher 131692 127520 -4172
7 James Owen 126485 126485 0
8 Paul Meyer 124884 123320 -1564
9 Kevin Gardner 122216 120652 -1564
10 Dylan Spink 119729 115557 -4172
11 Daniel Roth 119316 118414 -902
After looking at the results, Wendy stays in first place but it looks like 3 and 4 would swap places as well as 10 and 11.

What is interesting is that the same scoring change appears twice in several places. For instance, both Wendy and Steve's original 2nd Leg score were higher by 7577. I'm thinking that there was a bonus somewhere with that amount of points that simply wasn't shown for both of their listings. If that is the case and this is also what was happening with the other riders, than all of the scores given are correct as well as the riders places.

Before I forget, congrats to Wendy on an awesome ride...

Edit to add: Looks like all the results that I had presented in column form got transformed into text which makes it difficult to read. Sorry about that. I'll see if I can get it reposted in a more readable format...

 

[MCGMB]

Very compelling analysis there @SEBeck

I'm sure the Rally organizers will want to see that after it goes through some peer review.

 

[Ignacio]

Instead of abandoning the big bonus for the Kennewick check-in, Wendy and Steve Gallant stayed around for the Kennewick check in and THEN did the Cape Disappointment/Gaspe combo. That, along with the 2nd 20k+ bonus on the St. Lawrence river appears to have been a great call.

That was part of the magic. She also did a great loop on the Leg 2a that included Mica Dam AND Vancouver Island....timing ferries and commutes through clusterfuk traffic in the middle of the night or early a.m.

There was also some magic happening to NOT stop at some midwest stuff as well as when and how to take rest bonuses in the latter part.

PLUS stuff she hasn't even told us yet. It was a genius run as well as a hard run.

 

[Bill Lance]

If I understand the "R" in the starting roster, there were 7 rookies in the top 20 and Steve Gallant placed 3rd.

And I think hd Steve had no penalties on leg two, he would have finished 2nd overall. Nonetheless, a great effort by all——I could never come close to what any of these riders did.

 

[Jeff Earls]

What is interesting is that the same scoring change appears twice in several places. For instance, both Wendy and Steve's original 2nd Leg score were higher by 7577.

My export program seems to have dropped the last bonus collected for a number of riders.

Both Wendy and Steve visited the top of Mt. Washington for 7577 points for their last bonus of the rally.

We'll pick away at getting these fixed.

So ... <I'm looking at you, Internet> ... don't get your shorts in a bunch over this.

 

[dcarver]

How's my bud EeekSnake doing?

 

[RFlagg42]

Huge props to Paul Slaton for taking his FJR to the bonus on the Keweenaw Peninsula (KROCK). That was the toughest technical riding I've ever done in a rally (having fully loaded panniers and street tires aired up to 44 psi did not help matters). Some of the "mud puddles" were knee deep and all the mud was very slick. I was on a GS and destroyed one of my panniers, and two riders that finished in the Top 10 turned around when within 3 miles of that bonus after deciding it wasn't worth it.

Thank you very much Ignacio for providing logistics support at the checkpoint.

 

[RideToEat]

Can't wait to see the points and the leg2 bonii. In the meantime, I entered the top 5 scored routes for leg1:

This is just the Basecamp interpretation of the best route to join the bonuses claimed - not a record of the path traveled.

A GPX file representing the data behind this snapshot is available at https://hondaproblem.spjones.net/2019_IBR_Leg1_Top5.gpx/

Not sure which is more impressive, that the rally designer came up with a model so adaptable to good solutions, or that 4 of the top 5 found such wildly disparate solutions, or that only 2 (including the rally winner) found virtually the exact same solution.

This is the ultimate brain candy.

 

[Ignacio]

Not sure which is more impressive, that the rally designer came up with a model so adaptable to good solutions, or that 4 of the top 5 found such wildly disparate solutions, or that only 2 (including the rally winner) found virtually the exact same solution.
This is the ultimate brain candy.

I think both are true. I had feeds to a couple of riders and couldn't tell who might be leading, BUT I really go the sense that Jeff assembled the possible scenarios (i.e. the Alaska thing, the Gaspe thing, other things, etc.) that were in the same ballpark as each other. And I got the sense that Wendy particularly spent the time to figure which one worked either the best for her and/or the best...period. Riders were at a meeting at 4 a.m. and I heard that Wendy left the CP at 11:30. That's SITTING in your room for 7.5 hours and not riding.....every....fiber....of....your...being....is telling you to go ride....except she worked the puzzle.

Then with sitting 7.5 hours....you have to execute. Both the puzzle and solving the puzzle were ART.

Jeff, can I call this rally your opus? I'm floored and so wish I could have ridden this rally. Stunning...simply stunning.

 

[RFlagg42]

That's SITTING in your room for 7.5 hours and not riding.....every....fiber....of....your...being....is telling you to go ride....except she worked the puzzle.

Then with sitting 7.5 hours....you have to execute. Both the puzzle and solving the puzzle were ART.

Having ridden in four of these, I am quite certain that I am incapable of doing this. Not even close. By hour 3, I would be literally screaming "**** it" and heading off to my bike. Of course, this tendency likely led to me making more mistakes in the two rallies Jeff designed than any other rallies I have participated in.

 

[Bounce]

Good point, RFlagg42. I remember looking at the bonus pack in Gorham, seeing that there was a bonus in NH that was only for that day at a business that had to be open to get the points, so jumped on the bike and took off without looking at anything else. After snagging it, I then stopped at a McD's to plan the rest.

 

[mhb]

Awesome win by Wendy and her point score was impressive!

Her final score was interesting for another reason. At least for the top ten riders, most largely treated anything that wasnt a triple-digit bonus as an unwanted nuisance. Wendy caught four of them (worth 3, 10, 11, and 21 points). Obviously didnt matter in the end, but it suggests that she took absolutely nothing for granted.

 

[08FJR4ME]

Now I have to go back to my regular life.

Dave,