Strength of Field

One of the two factors I considered for my snowshoe rankings was Strength of Field (SOF). How competitive was the race up front?  It's kind of a measure of how many fast guys showed up and not how tough the course was.
I've tracked 11 snowshoe races so far. Here's how I ranked them:

Rank	Race	SOF
1	Woodford	98.64
2	Sidehiller	98.61
3	Feel Good Farm	96.68
4	Brave the Blizzard	95.73
5	Turner Trail	95.69
6	Greylock	95.60
7	Pooh Hill	95.33
8	Beaver Brook	94.67
9	Salem Greene	94.36
10	Curlys	93.49
11	Hoot Toot Whistle	90.47

Anyone who was at Sidehiller this past weekend knows this race was stacked! I was surprised Woodford came up #1. A quick look at the results might explain it. Anyways, just another list to talk about :-)
I'm starting to feel like dd with all these numbers!

MA/NH Snowshoe Rankings - (Wolfe Formula) UPDATED

NOTE: rankings have been updated. I think I fixed all the spelling errors in the results.

Rankings are always good for discussion (or arguments). I love checking out the rankings done each week by Chris Dunn (Northeast Snowshoe Rankings) and Dave Dunham (Northeast Masters).
Chris uses a top secret formula to come up with his rankings, with a minimum of 3 races (I think).
Dave uses his intuition based on his familiarity with the racers, with a minimum of 2 races.

Generally, I think Dave does a fair job in ranking. The 'eye' test works well in snowshoe ranking. However, I value what Chris does as well. It would be nice to have a formula to rank folks...fairly and accurately. The fact is, not all racers race head to head very often. With so many choices nowadays, it's hard to really tell how folks would do against each other. This is where the 'eye' test fails (somewhat). The more folks race, the better Chris's rankings become (in my opinion). I wanted to extend the rankings to include a few more folks.

NE Snowshoe Rankings - Great Idea

Always the innovator and always looking to promote snowshoe racing in New England, Chris Dunn of acidotic RACING has just published a rankings system that attempts to compare racers throughout New England.
The top ten list (male and female) can be found at the following link:
2009 New England Snowshoe Rankings

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out the rest of the season.
One thought: maybe a masters ranking for those of us age-challenged (and I'm talking REAL masters, like over 40 masters not that 45 and over made up masters category!)


Wait until JJ finds out DD is ahead of him in the rankings....ouch.