Why: A timed window that starts under load average above 16 is not a usable baseline, and creating the instance first only to pause wastes a startup. Evidence: The rerun at load 24.03 exited 3 before any timed window and removed the instance. Impact: The pause now happens before initdb. No change to the benchmark itself. Refs: docs/release-multi-instance.md B6 Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>