2016 Liberty Bell - St. Vrain Boys Merge

If you merge the results between St. Vrain and Liberty Bell, with a multiplication factor on Liberty Bell to "equalize" the results, Carter Dillon and his Mountain Vista teammates come out a narrow winner. Photo by Alan Versaw.

The idea here is relatively simple, but demands some explanation even so. You can't just pick a number out of the air and decide to multiply Liberty Bell times by that number to "equalize" times between the two races.

What I did was to compare both Liberty Bell and St. Vrain times to two different large races last weekend--Arapahoe and Centaurus. I observed how Liberty Bell times differed for the same athletes from Arapahoe and Centaurus. I observed how St. Vrain times differed for the same athletes from Arapahoe and Centaurus. I'll spare you the explanation of the calculations involved in getting the number, but it ended up that multiplication by 1.0335 (or about 34 seconds for a 17-minute runner) "equalizes" times for Liberty Bell and St. Vrain runners relative ...