For the first time at the Ultra Race of Champions (UROC) 100k, we’ve tabulated and taken a look at all the votes cast in our prediction contest. For previous races, these “group think” predictions have generally been (much) better at forecasting race outcomes than individual pickers. So, if you’re looking for a solid relative ranking of this year’s UROC 100k competitors, look no further.
How the Group Think Predictions Work
Back to the predictions. Below, we attempt to apply a hive-mentality approach to see how the men’s and women’s fields play out when the collective thoughts of over 900 participants are accumulated. In addition to showing how many picks the top runners received for each place, we ranked the runners by MVP-style voting (i.e., 5 points for first, 4 points for second, and so on). Both the men’s and women’s tables show all UROC runners who accumulated 20 or more points. Read on to see how the masses predicted the outcome for the race this weekend.
While I normally provide some analysis of the group think tallies, I kept this contest open until less than 12 hours before the start (as we weren’t able to launch the contest as early as we would have liked) and have elected to be prudent and get, perhaps, four or five hours of sleep before the race. Therefore, I look forward to hearing great analysis from you, the iRunFar readers! – Bryon
The Just Rewards
Thanks again to all who participated in the contest! We hope that the three winners enjoy their Ultimate Direction vest and Endure running belt. Oh, and best of luck to all the runners the weekend. Remember to follow us on Twitter to receive updates on the leaders throughout the day if you won’t already be following our live coverage on iRunFar.com.
2013 UROC 100k Men’s Field
2013 UROC 10ok Women’s Field
Call for Comments
- So what do you all think about the group prediction?
- What interesting observations have you made about the data?
- How would you change your picks based on what you know now?
- Want to make any of your predictions public? If so, leave a comment!
- Any statisticians want to dive into this?
