Stephen Spry (2/66 in AG) escaping the pack up Ice Breaker.

Iceman 2024: Pass counts and alternate podiums

Another Niceman came to Northern Michigan with moderate temperatures and sandy-turned-tacky trails for this year’s race. Stories from the course included everything from a wild rider/deer collision to daredevils registering air time over the pro field.

Noah Ramsay (1/109 pro male) with a substantial lead up Ice Breaker.

Alt podiums

Male

With 36 more leaps than last year’s top passer, a new record was set by Jake Fiddler with 1097 total “on your lefts.”

1. Jake Fiddler — passed 1097 from wave 46, caught wave 8
2. Jerry Haadsma — passed 969 from wave 29, caught wave 7
3. Chris Donnelly — passed 960 from wave 35, caught wave 7
4. Sean Paquet — passed 951 from wave 42, caught wave 8
5. Kyle Joslyn — passed 933 from wave 37, caught wave 8

Female

Female riders scored more passes than normal too, perhaps indicating a faster-than-normal course — allowing the fitter among us to put down maximum wattage.

1. Brittany Marshall — passed 751 from wave 41, caught wave 8
2. Mary Schlimmer-Willoughby — passed 634 from wave 45, caught wave 16
3. Sheila Sherwood — passed 567 from wave 33, caught wave 8
4. Ashley Masnik — passed 545 from wave 45, caught wave 16
5. Brynn Bowman — passed 542 from wave 42, caught wave 16

Junior Male

The juniors had some of the fastest times and put up a good amount of passes, even with many riders already off the course.

1. Charlie Themanson — passed 477 from wave 49, caught wave 23
2. Haylan Engdahl — passed 474 from wave 49, caught wave 23
3. Rylan Zacharek — passed 471 from wave 49, caught wave 23
4. Geert Fischer — passed 467 from wave 50, caught wave 23
5. James Malhame — passed 465 from wave 50, caught wave 23

Junior Female

1. Sarah Black — passed 302 from wave 52, caught wave, caught wave 23
2. Claire Rust — passed 300 from wave 52, caught wave, caught wave 23
3. Anna Olesen — passed 299 from wave 52, caught wave, caught wave 23
4. Reese Drajka — passed 285 from wave 54, caught wave, caught wave 23
5. Molly Feuillerat — passed 275 from wave 54, caught wave, caught wave 23

Slush Cup Male

The Sluch Cup is a smaller race and so it’s even more impressive that these folks made the number of passes that they did. It’s important to point out that it’s all kids in the top pass positions.

1. Jose-Maria Galvez — passed 370 from wave 7, caught wave 1
2. Adrien Wierzba — passed 364 from wave 7, caught wave 1
3. Sam White — passed 356 from wave 7, caught wave 1
4. Tyler Pokowski — passed 353 from wave 7, caught wave 1
5. Alex Malone — passed 349 from wave 7, caught wave 1

Slush Cup Female

1. Sylvie Heist— passed 373 from wave 8, caught wave 1
2. Hadley Ruch — passed 352 from wave 8, caught wave 1
3. Harper Roberts— passed 331 from wave 8, caught wave 1
4. Emma White — passed 327 from wave 8, caught wave 1
5. Julia Babicheva — passed 301 from wave 8, caught wave 1

All passes

Open the following spreadsheet and use the control+F feature to find your name (or just browse it at your leisure, but there are thousands of results!).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1quamS6HsD9Rft6EapBzFlCITTWkWgM82iuhKpsHEGJ0/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Visual chart-y bits

For the fellow nerds in the crowd, we’ve got visualizations of wave data. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture of a chart is worth… a thousand stories? What can you see in the data?

Number of racers per wave. There’s a general trend of more people in earlier waves. Physics suggests that smaller early waves might diminish “bottlenecking,” though the organizers experience a high demand for early wave placements, causing the chart shape you see above.

Fastest, average, slowest times per wave. Again we see a healthy trend corresponding to wave placements indicating healthy wave seeding. As the waves get later, the deviations broaden showing the difficulty of placing new riders.

Fastest, average, slowest times per wave (scatter). The same chart as above showing individual times. The consolidation of race times from about wave 29 and earlier clearly show the wave placement algorithm at work. Look at how fast those juniors are in waves 49+.

Pile fleece was in vogue with standout displays from key riders in the woods.

That’s it.

Every year seems to bring anxiety over course changes or imperfect weather, but those stresses usually seem to disappear into the excitement and fun of the day.

There was limited-to-no overlap between Slush Cup and Iceman with a predictable (but to be expected for Iceman) amount of backups in the single track.

We hope you enjoyed this analysis. You can compare the last 3 years of data in this Facebook post.

Ben & Stephen