I don't understand the talk about "conflicts" in the finish cylinder.
Everybody is inbound on a radial, heading for the center of the
cylinder, when you reach 1 mile, your clock stops. Where is the
conflict? Lots of sky out there, 5280 X 3.1416 X 2 = 33,175 feet around
it, each radial = 91 feet at 1 mile. There is no "head-on" conflict,
because the guy coming at you is on the other side of the cylinder
which is 2 miles away. And we don't have my favorite little jewel,
"hooking the gate".
Let me take a crack at the numbers; The finish line is 1000 meters
(3281 feet), but we don't use all of it because we aim for the closest
corner, when straight on, we center punch it at the GPS coordinates. So
lets divide the finish line by 8 to get 410 feet which I will call the
target area (area where a conflict might happen).
The finish cylinder circumference is 33,175, but lets take the worst
case where everybody is coming from the same turn point and divide it
by the same factor of 8 to give us the distance in the 45 degree hunk
of pie we're all headed for. That's 4147feet and almost exactly 10
times more distance in the cylinder target area as in the finish line
target area. I'm going to say there is 10 times more chance of a
conflict at the finish line than there is at the finish cylinder
JJ