When you look at the posted results there is a dizzying array of numbers. This article will help you make sense of them.
The results are divided into two main sections.
The first section is a quick look at the results just to see how everyone placed. The title line: first shows the name of the course, next comes “KP” which how many controls there were on the course, and finally the straight line length of the course in kilometers. Then all the competitors are listed in place order with the list of the controls they punched in the order they were punched. After the results for all the courses are listed, the second section begins.
The second section has the “splits” which shows us how each person did getting to each control. If you made an error going to a control, by looking other people’s times to that control, you can get a pretty good idea of how much time you lost.
The title line is the same as the first section. The next line is the titles of the columns. Competitor name is obvious. “Result” is the time on the course. Start is the clock time when the competitor started. Next on the title line is the list of the controls in order and the control code for each. Finally, a repeat of the total time and then the minutes per kilometer calculated using your time and the straight line distance of the course. (The straight line distance is calculated around any uncrossable regions, so it won’t go through a restricted area or across a lake or uncrossable stream.)
Next, each competitor is listed in his or her place order, and the splits consist of three lines:
- The first line is your cumulative time and place. This is your total time from when you punched Start until you punched this control. Your place number is what order you would have punched this control among all competitors on your course if you had all started at the same time. In the example, Alex and Steven both punched the first control 1:04 after Start, and would have tied for 2nd place had the race ended at that control. Robert took 3:50 and would have been in 18th place at the first control (the three example lines are just the top of the White course, which many more people participated in than just these three).
- The second line is the time and place for getting just from the last control to this one. You can use this line to compare your time on this leg to your competitors. In the example, Robert ran the leg from 1 to 2 in 57 seconds, and ran this leg the fastest of anyone on White (but looking at the first line for Robert’s second control, he was still 10th place overall, so he still has a lot of catching up to do to overcome his first slow leg).
- The third line is how much slower you ran this leg than the fastest person on your course to run that leg. (The person who ran this leg the fastest will always have 0 for this line.) You can think of this as how much time you lost on this leg compared to what someone was able to accomplish on the same leg.Using the splits, you can observe how the race would have looked had everyone theoretically started at the same time. In the example, you can see that Steven was in 1st place at control 7, and held onto that lead for a few controls, but dropped back to 3rd place in the last two punches. Also, all legs he ran were
within two minutes of the fastest leg run by anyone. Robert, on
the other hand, had a poor first leg, putting him in 18th place,
but then you can see him steadily catch up to 2nd place in the end, with several legs which were the fastest time. Alex was in 2nd place for most of the course (with a slight stumble on the way to control 4), but put on a burst of speed at the very end to take 1st place.