Flat Hills Road

Due to my role for this year’s ING NYC Marathon (about which more later) I decided I needed to be able to extract more information from marathon splits as the marathon is actually happening. I remembered that for previous Boston Marathons, David Monti of Race Results Weekly, doing a similar job to what I’m doing, had a fancy-dan Excel spreadsheet to take splits and project times.

While it’s possible that David added some kind of course factor to his spreadsheet, it seems more likely that he did what I did recently: he made projections based on simple math. For example, they’ve reached ten miles in time X, they have sixteen and two-tenths to run. If they run 16.2 at the pace they ran the last mile, they’ll finish in time Y; if they run it at their average pace for the last ten, they’ll finish in time Z.

I did this for mile splits and for 5km splits, which are the numbers I expect to get in New York. I added some conditional formatting to show me if the leaders were speeding up or slowing down, and if they’re ahead or behind course record pace, using colors. (I suppose if I was really a spreadsheet champion I could use varying shades to indicate how far they were from course record pace.) Adding sheets for the wheelchair athletes will also happen before race day.

I had 5km splits for Robert K. Cheruiyot’s Boston Marathon course-record run handy, so I plugged those in and it worked like a champ.

A sheet which would take a finish time and place and calculate prize money with time bonuses would be pretty cool too, I guess, but it’s not quite as algorithmic–it’s more ahead-of-time data entry. New York does have a deep time bonus structure, and the total prize money package will vary widely depending on how fast the pack runs.

If you have any other ideas of useful and/or interesting on-the-fly calculations, take a look at the sheets and let me know what to add. I did the original work in OpenOffice.org Calc, and exported to Excel, so I haven’t tested the Excel version. (Here’s the original .ods version.) You are, of course, welcome to use these yourself during whatever marathon you’re watching; you can see the appropriate cell to change to set the course records.

Could we get our numbers straight, please?

The Eugene Register-Guard says Jenny Barringer was the third American woman under 4:00 for 1500m. The USTFCCCA says she was the fourth.

USATF (and several others, including the IAAF) say Dwight Phillips had the longest long jump since 1991. The Register-Guard says since 1994.

I’m guessing the confusion in the jump is because Phillips actually tied a mark from 1994, so some writers are counting it and others aren’t. Understandable, but still confusing.

I’m at a bit of a loss to explain the Barringer discrepancy, though, at least without my annuals in front of me. The IAAF all-time list shows Mary Slaney and Suzy Favor Hamilton ahead of Barringer, as has been noted elsewhere; who is this mystery third person?

Again, without more documentation, I can only guess. One possibility involves the difference between performances and performers: Mary Slaney actually has two marks faster than Barringer’s, so Barringer may be the third performer with the fourth performance. Another possibility is that the IAAF has removed marks from their list due to doping suspensions, but there actually is a “drugs disqualification” section on that list, and there are no Americans on it (there’s only one name, in fact).

Later: Peter Gambaccini points out that the discrepancy is probably due to the third sub-4 ahead of Barringer’s being run indoors. (And, as I suspected, by an athlete who was later DQ’ed for doping, though the mark still stands as the indoor AR. Mr. Logan, tear down this record!) So some writers are counting it and others aren’t. I wish there was an agreed-upon convention for this, but I don’t see how we’d get everyone to agree upon it.

Steve Hooker’s meteoric rise up the all-time indoor pole vault list (he was tied for #4 after Millrose, and stands alone at #2 behind seven Sergei Bubka marks after the Boston Indoor Games) begs a question: what’s the difference between outdoors and indoors when we’re talking about the pole vault?

Track athletes obviously see a difference in the physics of 200m banked tracks indoors as compared to 400m flat tracks outdoors. Adam Nelson pointed out that the composition of the indoor shot, which is generally padded to avoid damaging arena floors, changes the grip putters can get on their implement, and that the feeling of the ring under their feet is also different, but the marks between indoors and outdoors are not generally very large. (22.66m indoors, 23.12m outdoors.)

There are two significant differences between the indoor and outdoor pole vaults: wind and runway. Wind is the obvious change: sometimes there’s wind (and other weather) outdoors. There is never wind indoors, at least not of any significant magnitude. This means vaulters don’t have to adjust for conditions, a small but appreciable advantage. Runways are a little more subtle; indoor facilities sometimes (not always) have springy, elevated runways like the one the Boston Indoor Games organizers trucked up from Madison Square Garden for vaulting at the Boston Indoor Games last night. This can also be an advantage if the vaulter is used to the runway. Combined, then, it’s not too surprising that unlike nearly every other event, the pole vault WR is marginally superior indoors to its outdoor counterpart: 6.15m indoors compared to 6.14m outdoors. (Both, of course, held by Bubka.)

Hooker highlighted this Saturday night when he selected 6.06m as an intermediate height before approaching the World Record. It’s an arbitrary height indoors, smack in the middle of the block of Bubka which tops the all-time list. Outdoors, however, it’s a watershed: three men, Maksim Tarasov, Dmitry Markov, and Brad Walker, all at 6.05m marks outdoors. On a combined all-time list, then, Hooker is #2, with a lot of Bubka ahead of him, and that 6.16m height he keeps trying is the highest anyone has ever vaulted, period. There isn’t a distinction in his mind between indoors and outdoors.

Will the statisticians continue making a distinction? Hooker should have the Australian Record now, for example. Will the Australian track statisticians give it to him, or call him the indoor record holder? Considering there are no indoor facilities in Australia, and their domestic outdoor season usually happens during the European and North American indoor season, those lists can’t be terribly deep.

Are there other events where the distinction between World Record and World Indoor Record is meaningless? The men’s high jump records differ by only 2cm. The men’s long jump is off by .14m; the men’s triple jump is off by even more. The shot put is the only comparable throwing event. Women’s PV is about 10cm, both held by Yelena Isinbayeva; women’s high jump is only 1cm lower indoors than out, and the long jump and triple jump show about the same spread between indoors and outdoors as the men’s events do. The women’s shot put records are even closer than the men’s. But only in the men’s pole vault is the indoor mark superior.

I’m guessing that the reason behind this is not the conditions but the depth of competition. More top athletes have faced more and more challenging competition outdoors, over a longer history. I think indoor and outdoor field events are heading for convergence, and Steve Hooker may be at the front of the wave.