Other top runners categories

[James Winzenz]

I would love to see other top runners categories besides just top marathons - 1/2 marathon, 10K and 5K as well.  Maybe even an "Elite" section and a "Non-Elite" section so that we can see times from others besides the fastest runners on the blog, whom we know are all speed freaks.

[Paul Petersen]

What would be nice would be using the race report data fields (distance, time) to create sortable race result lists. Right now the performance list is completely subjective (based on Sasha Science), and is limited to only men's marathon. I would like to see it be completely objective (based only on database fields). It would look sort of like the Mileage Board. If people enter their date of birth and gender when they register for the blog, those variables can be used as query/sort fields as well. So then you could query and sort Top Ten 5K times by a female, age 29-34, for the month of September-October in the year 2006, if you wanted to. There could also be an option to "remove duplicates" and take an individual blogger's top time and toss out all their other times from the results, which would give you Top Ten Bloggers for a given distance, age, gender, and year. For example, if you listed out the Top Ten marathon times, Sasha would probably show up 5 times! But the "remove duplicate" option would limit him to showing up on a list once. But it would be nice to query both.

It seems that this would be doable with just a few tweaks to the race reporting, most notably a "standardization" of race distances via drop-down box, rather than the user manually typing the race distance. So perhaps have a drop-down box for "Official Race Distance" with 1600m, 3200m, 5K, 10K, 15K, Half Marathon, Marathon, and Other as options. If "Other" is selected, the user can manually type in whatever obscure distance they just ran, but in reality 99.5% of all races are one of the above-mentioned distances.

[Ted Leblow]

I agree with Paul if this is possible as not everyone that is on the blog is looking to run in a marathon. Then one could see how people rank across different distances. It would also allow for women to have a ranking system as well. I do not know enough about computers to know how hard this would be but it sounds like a great idea.

[Sasha Pachev]

There are a few issues with an automated ranking system. First, we rely on people to enter their times manually. If somebody makes a mistake, the rankings are off. Second, matching the races, different people will call the same race by different names, this could possibly be solved by hosting a nation-wide race calendar allowing race directors or trusted runners to maintain it, something to think of for the future. Then you have to deal with short courses, especially in 5 Ks. I really do not want to have somebody run a 14:00 2.8 miles and rank ahead of a legit 14:10 5 K runner. Also, different courses produce different results, and extreme downhill makes a huge difference in short races - two reasons, you can find extreme downhill for a short race (e.g Alta), and downhill does not help nearly as much in a marathon as it does in a 5 K. There are relatively few marathons out there and the course profiles are fairly easy to obtain, there are usually enough top runners in the race to be able to establish the quality of the course and the conditions for the purposes of rankings. With a 5 K, it is all up in the air, a meaningful ranking system is much more difficult to set up.

Regarding a non-elite division - I am religiously opposed to that. I refuse to draw the line between elite and non-elite because I do not think such a line should exist. Drawing such a line essentially condemns whoever is unfortunate to find himself on the non-elite side of it to eternal mediocrity. The very purpose of the Fast Running Blog is to teach runners to break mental barriers and not establish artificial limits for their ability to achieve, or in other words, to eliminate that very line.

[Tom]

Sasha I can see your point and agree on the Elite/Non-Elite issue. But what about maybe a separate list for Master's Men and Master's Women? You gotta cut us old guys & gals a little slack don't ya think? I don't know if we have that many 40+ runners on the blog but it would be kind of interesting to me to see where I stand among the 'slightly' older crowd.

[Jon Allen]

I agree with Sasha on not having an elite/non-elite division.  Masters- I could see adding that.

[Sasha Pachev]

I'll put up men masters when we have 3 sub-2:40 runners in that category. So far only one - Bill Cobler, who, incidentally, ran his all-time marathon PR as a master . Not sure what to do for women. The sub-3:40 standard for open is already exceptionally generous. My overall approach is not to give masters too much slack. I am trying to combat the mentality that exaggerates the effects of aging on performance by shifting the blame from chronic poor body maintenance and decreased training zeal to just age for the slow down. Age alone does not slow you down nearly as bad as the other two combined with age.

[Lybi]

I think people just like to see their name on a list, and see progress as time goes on--kind of like the mileage board.  Maybe at some point we could have a PR board, and we could sort it by 5K, 10K etc.  But then there would have to be a way for people to input their times.  Can't really see that.  But some kind of PR tracker would be cool.  Actually, we would all be able to see people's progress a lot easier--might even be able to wrestle out some statistically significant data that could be useful for advertising the blog.  I.e.  "...the average FRB marathoner drops his time by 10% after being on the blog for a year."  (I think that is actually conservative!)

[Chad]

Maybe the way to think about the lists you guys are talking about is not to imagine it as a "top runners" list, but rather as just a sortable database that tracks all race times for all runners.  One function would be the ability to sort by top performances (as on the mileage board), but you could also sort by other queries as well, i.e., alphabetical by blogger name, by distance, by runners location, etc.  I think the point is to allow people to put their own performances in context against other bloggers, not necessarily just to be a "top" runner (which can mean a lot of different things).

Also, I think this sort of feature would appeal more to a wider audience geographically.  And I think this point is an important one. We all know Sasha and know that Sasha science has value when it comes to making race equivalencies for Utah races. But Sasha science may not apply, for example, to the 5k scene in New Hampshire or Virginia.  Runners from other states that come to this site likely perceive it as a heavily Utah-centric site and may be reluctant to join because their performances may simply have no context here.  If the site is going to succeed (and the stated aspirations are extremely high), it must provide an extremely accessible platform that allows runners to put their performances in context based on the two factors everyone understands: Time and Distance.  Of course there will be discrepancies between races, etc., but all of that is just fodder for the discussion board. 

As far as sticking to one name for a race, this is solved easily by having a drop-down menu of races to select from when entering a race report.  Start with all of the known Utah races (should be done in connection with a race calendar, which the site also needs) and allow runners to add the names of new races as needed.  Corrections can be made as needed.  It's no big deal. 

[Lybi]

I agree with you, Chad.  The "top runners" chart is valuable to the blog because visitors can see the elite people on this site, and get more excited about joining.  This other kind of chart that you are talking about--a PR board with everyone on it (like the mileage board) would serve a different purpose--to motivate the already existing members on the blog. 

And as for the "adjusting" of the times, I think it is just unnecessary.  We all know when we see the mileage board, that the numbers don't tell the whole story.  For example, someone may have lower miles on a certain week because they were focusing on speed workouts or hill repeats etc...not to mention people who are cross training or tapering or whatever.  But is still a useful tool for motivation.  I don't even think it would need to be sorted by gender.  Just times and distances--1 mile, 5K, 10K, Half, and Marathon to start?