...Kevin P. is the WINNER of
"The URG From the Hill Contest". Kevin's calculated guess of
9380 miles was indeed URG from the Hill's yearly mileage!! Kevin is now the owner of an advanced personalized autographed copy of Bryon Powell's new book
"RELENTLESS FORWARD PROGRESS" .
Congratulations Kevin, you were the only one to guess correctly so the Bonus Questions did not come into play. Many others were close, very close and a few unfortunately appeared to have misread the distance markers. After you see my calculations I know some of you will be kicking yourself however I hope you had fun with it and I really appreciated the time it took for everyone, even the guessers to enter so thank you all so much. (
Note: I have entered my calculations at the bottom of this post if you want to compare yours to mine.)
Kevin's Bonus answers were-
a - Mom & Dad - 840 miles
b - December
c - 72 days
d - How many days does URG have to substitute a Big City Run for a run to Town to make it an even 10,000 miles for the year?
Ans: 31 additional runs to the Big City vice running just to Town.
A few people seemed to have fun with Bonus Question d- where they were asked to make up a question and answer it themselves. See a few of those inventive and amusing self made questions and answers below.
Alissa L
d) How old is URG from the Hill? Under 30 because he never needs a rest day. :)
Roger H
d. Bonus Question: What do Granma n Grampa give him for Christmas Dinner
Bonus Answer: 1 teaspoon of cement.
Bonus bonus question: Why only 1?
Bonus Bonus Answer: 100 mi in 23 hours? He's hard enough already!
: )
Tom B
d) When does URG rest? He rests every 4 years on February 29th.
OK so there was also the drawing for the 2 Power Balance wrist bands from all of the entries plus my Followers. Just a reminder to please Follow URG so you don't want to miss out on future contests and comics.
The winners are:
Tatianna and
Derrick.
Congratulations!
My calculations and explanations-
The best place to start was at the "meat and potatoes" of the question which was to figure out how many times URG ran to Town and then figure out the distance using that number.
He ran to Town everyday of the year(365) except when he ran further so you needed to count up the number of times he ran further.
52 days to the Big City, 14 to Mom and Dad's, 4(Oct, Dec, Feb, Apr) to Brother's and 1 day to run to Gramma and Grampa's plus 1 day to run home from Gramma and Grampa's. 52 + 14 + 4 + 2 = 72
Then subtract that number from 365 to get the number of days of running to town times the distance to get the total number of miles to town. (365 -72) x 20 miles = 5860 miles to and from town per year.
Now all you have to do is calculate the distance to and from URG's other destinations-
Big City 52 x 40 = 2080
Mom & Dad's 14 x 60 = 840
Brother's 4 x 100 = 400
Grandparents 1 x 200= 200
So the total number of miles URG from the Hill ran is 5860(Town) + 2080(Big City) + 840(M&D) + 400(Brother) + 200(G&G) = 9380 miles
Note: there was one entrant who pointed out that all of my calculations were based on a house of cards that could come toppling down if for some reason URG decided to leave late for his long runs. If URG did not leave just after the crack of midnight then some of his 1 day runs could in theory have lasted 2 days and his 2 day run to the Grandparents could have lasted 3 days. I call this theory the "Human Factor Monkey Wrench" and it made my head spin. However I did determine that this was a guessing game where URG's mileage was a predetermined "X" and the hints were there to help you guess that predetermined number. Just to be safe though next time I will probably run my contests past the above
unnamed entrant just to be sure; )
