Giant Snail Race Tech Question

If this is the wrong forum for this, please let me know and I will post it elsewhere.

I just ran in the Relay For Life Giant Snail Race this past weekend, and I was in pole position one, many meters ahead of the other snails, because of the donations I had collected.

Out of a field of eleven snails, I finished tenth!!!

My question is: What determines the speed of the avatars in the race? All things being equal, there should have been no way for the other snails to overtake me, especially with the lead I had. However, almost immediately I was overtaken by several snails, and couldn't keep up.

I have a fiber optic connection, and a very speedy iMAC.

If anyone has any ideas, could they please post them here?

RacerX and I did some experiments running flat out on his sim, and we tied. When we tried running on the roads where the race took place, I sunk during a sim transition, and lost my way!!! Don't know if that contributed to it, but I am not sure.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. A mystery to me.

Like most things in SL, it can only be attributed to SL.... same happens in RL, we say, 'oh well thats life'.

Thanks for the reality check, AWM