In Reply To:
The large gaps with no bikes are
because reality is not linear like the model. With all those riders in that limited distance, if they can't avoid infractions in a linear model how can you possibly avoid infractions when the fleet is not linear, and there are gaps formed ?
A quick recap:the rules state that a) you have to maintain 7 meters between bikes, so combined bike/zone is 9 meters, and b) you must ride on right side of road unless passing. Putting that many athletes on the road in a short time span will, under those restrictions, at some point on the course, result in packs forming. Experience tells us this - at IMFL, many other races, and during the morning commute in pretty much every major city in North America. And a pack of cyclists is like a big, comfy feather bed. It feels great when you get in to it, and it is really hard to get out!
Let me ask this, just for the heck of it - when IMs had 1200-1500 participants, was there a ever much discussion about how large the packs were? Better yet, ask the top 100 guys out of the water how many large packs they saw....
I agree too many people starting same time but once you get 5 to 10 miles down the road.. NOTE this video was 35 miles into the bike. Things are spread out there is plenty of room.
this group (some in the group not everyone) and others make no attempt to not ride together..
think this year because of the fast tail wind on front beach road first 5 miles it wasn't as bad because didn't take as much to pass folks. I pretty much year after year end up in the left side repeating "on you left" the first 5 miles anyway" once on 79 its very wide and it is easier to pass folks which lends to another poster talking about road width it is a factor.
your assumeing everyone has to be lined up but actually if theres some passing they will be on the left passing moving forward as others are dropping back until things settle down.
you have to consider "Steady State conditions" your assuming bam at time zero all these bikes are on the road and have to be exactly 7 meters apart in a line.
no theres the initial IMPULSE(sorry my old engineering class work is coming back to me) response then its settles down to the steady state on down the road with some outliers along the way.
PLEASE Some statistical Queueing theory Brainiacs CHIME IN because my total knowledge on all of this is minimul...
yes probably most of these riders are all in the same comfort zone riding so they will clump together but its up to the athlete to force the issue. Some break away some fade back
OR do as the pros do they pretty much do a legal pace line and rotate to the front at least most of the time.. These guys are not they are just hanging and the one or two guys up front can't get away. I tried to get away a few times an in the past when I was better shape and younger I actually could break away from some but then they'd come back sooner or later.
the special needs stop before the turn breaks things up pretty well.. Adding some pinch points like that would help I think as well.
What I meant by non-linear is its more statistical over the length of the course. you have athletes with various abilities different speeds so just saying 500 came out within say 5 minutes
now way they can line up 7 meters apart. Well that might be true short term but this isn't a continous stream.. MAN I wish I was like professer epps on "Numbers" tv show.
Would be great if we could get someone like that to explain this or tell me I'm full of crap AND get him to figure out a way to maximize marshal use and other methods to
break up big groups in a finite pipe..
But if I could show you the hour 45 rear video feed I had you can see how open it is at times I really didn't see any big pack(more than 2 or 3 people not riding 7 meters) until 34 miles into the ride. I hear there were more upstream as well and I got passed by another one..
I've done this race 10 times at various speeds and times and almost everyone things started somewhere on highway 20 with a few packs on 79 going north. I do believe now its 4 lane and wide
now almost all the way then theres plenty of room to pass and get moving which is why I didn't see that as much but then we hit the head winds on 20 along with some auto traffic passing and coming the other way groups tend to bunch up..
This is not some new problem I'm sure some basic queueing theory like used in traffic analysis ,network traffic along with some human interaction thrown in
could lay some light to this.. I tried to write a simulation of ironman louisville back in 2007 I downloaded all the splits(the athlete tracker). they had 4 mat splits during the bike as well as 4 or 5 for the run as well as t1,t2. Not ideal because you have to either assume between mat splits they stayed at the average speed for that leg or get more complicated and figure in interaction with other riders,aid stations and so on but I got bored with it and moved on it took so long to download the athlete tracker splits(I wrote a program to fetch it with tcp/ip via the http link automatically). I might have to go do that again just to get the model built then if I can get better info expand that. But I have a day job and 3 more ironman races next year as well as more video to go through so might be a while.. Maybe when I retire.