It took three runs through the lab roaster, but I think I've decided what I want to do with the competition coffee. I still need to do a production test batch to verify that it's what I want when brewed the way a real person might enjoy the coffee and get my final product spec details documented. If all goes well, I'll probably have 3 or 4 small batches total before I run out of coffee. I'd rather do that than roast all of it at once because this will have to be expensive and may not sell fast.
The roasting plan I came up with also fits nicely in the narrative of what I found somewhat disturbing that time I judged USRC. While all profile options were on the table for this, the overall approach and final profile decision was very different from what competitors in that described, especially with their compulsory coffee which everybody roasted too light.
What I ended up doing was pushing through yellow quickly to modulate sweetness into a caramel apple expression (so completely different from the supplier's tasting notes), stretch the range after that but prior to 1C to get more of the reactants I'd want available later in the roast, then accelerate into and through first crack right to the edge of 2C to boost the body and get a really interesting cup complexity going on with chocolate, caramel, and apple notes richly textured and changing.
Supplier tasting notes are citric fruits, and I can bring that out in the roast and get something that smells amazing, but the flavor intensity wasn't following from those aromatics, making the whole experience there somewhat disappointing.
At the time I joked that the experience made me want to enter the competition to be the one person who wasn't afraid of 2nd crack.