Nope. It accounts for ALL factors. Course length, altitude, weather, etc.
It accounts for them by normalizing all races to the same scale. Those factors affect all the runners in the race so they get washed out in the normalization process which processes individual results across all races.
A simplified example of this would be for a race at altitude where the average runner is 30 seconds slower than average then their rating for the race is adjusted by those 30 seconds. It does not matter whether that 30 seconds was due to altitude, course length, weather, etc.
The guy that created it told us he has zero way to adjust for altitude so he acknowledged that it isn't perfect
That is not what he said. He said it does not consider altitude. He said it uses relative times. Using relative times accounts for all factors including altitude.
You are incorrect. Have you looked at the projections for nationals? Lacctic was much better through the year at ranking the regions as opposed to the rangers.
That is not what he said. He said it does not consider altitude. He said it uses relative times. Using relative times accounts for all factors including altitude.
An example of this was the South regional run on a short course where Valby ran 17:59.
Lacctic calculated that this was her slowest race of the year. It did not consider course length in its calculation. It was based on relative times.
One thing I’m curious about—it seems like the simulations are based on the individual TiC confidence intervals, which are roughly the same width (~16 seconds for the top runners).
1. Does the simulation account for some runners being more volatile than others? For example, a team might rather have a reliable 13:55-14:05 equivalent runner than a 13:45-14:15 runner if the race is thinner near the front, since the second runner will cost more points on a bad day than he will contribute on a good day. That being said, I can imagine it would be difficult to automatically distinguish a runner’s off-days from races treated as workouts.
2. Does the simulation assume a uniform distribution in the TiC interval, or one that puts a greater likelihood on performances closer to the average?
The scores are based on two TiCs, the runner’s “PR” and their best run of a subset of races considered to be “more important.”
For a lot of runners those are pretty similar, so I default to a standard deviation of 8ish seconds, which seems to be the usual race-to-race variance (it’s a percentage so that number changes based on speed). The range I show on the website is +- 1 standard deviation. The standard deviation is allowed to be larger if the two runs that I use are wildly different.
The difficulty is exactly what you said - how do I tell the difference between tempoing vs actually running poorly? I try to get at it with the importance scores of races, but it’s not great— so most people just get 16 seconds.
I sample from Gaussians, so the probability is more concentrated at the average.
Also, thanks to everyone for explaining the relative times thing. I’ve grown tired of explaining that point…
I like the TiC rating as a 5k equivalent—much easier to interpret than a speed rating. The problem lies with people interpreting them at date track 5k fitness, not considering that some runners are better at XC relative to track and vice-versa. I doubt Parker Valby could run 14:49 right now, but looking at who she beat and by how much at SECs, it is not unreasonable to claim she could challenge a 14:49 runner with average XC strength.
Her LACCTIC 2023 Season Fitness Estimate is 14:56, not 14:49 (big difference).
fwiw taking out at least most of the individual runners below is what I get from LAACTic and what I independently am estimating. I may have missed it but BC and Texas A&M are not showing in LAACTic simulation. I definitely put much more effort into the top ~10 team on my list so I am likely further off on lower ranked teams.
School Laactic Me Northern Arizona 88 88 NC State 107 98 Florida 154 226 I think Mazza-Downie not quite at top level BYU 197 149 I have become more of a BYU believer! Oklahoma State 227 203 Stanford 254 367 I am not as sold as I think their pack too far back Notre Dame 286 437 Not as impressed by recent results Arkansas 296 428 Tennessee 337 308 Georgetown 339 243 Virginia 355 339 Furman 389 521 Colorado 417 384 CBU 429 389 Alabama 432 438 Oregon 447 370 Washington 461 322 Utah 483 407 Ole Miss 485 540 Michigan State 518 531 Lipscomb 528 533 Wisconsin 549 623 Iowa State 578 382 Colorado St. 623 541 Providence 631 640 Utah Valley 635 410 Syracuse 662 687 Harvard 665 532 Penn State 706 505
I like it a lot. It is directional... the 5k times may be a bit off but the relative performance abd rankings do a good job overall. For some top runners (like Tuohy) it is probably under estimating due to effort (this happened last year too) but overall it is pretty good.
Tuohy's fitness estimate for last season still includes her 2022 track PR (15:14) which helped her rating, whereas her fitness estimate for 2023 doesn't (15:03).
If I had to guess she is in better fitness than 15:17 rating right now (or will be by end of season) but we will see. She beat Whittni Orton's course record at Tallahassee and Orton ran 15:08 at BU two weeks later...
Appears NAU is the fav to win the trophy, and since NC State is well ahead of Florida, reasoning for Tuohy assuring placement, rather than risk going for the win, really isn’t there.
If I had to guess she is in better fitness than 15:17 rating right now (or will be by end of season) but we will see. She beat Whittni Orton's course record at Tallahassee and Orton ran 15:08 at BU two weeks later...
this website is genuinely useful for comparing results to others and where ur team would stack. The actual 5k bit is pretty far off because even the top end guys in ncaa are going 1310s and very rarely are their ratings faster than 1330. It’s kinda garbage at 5k predicting for the most part. It can be right sometimes but most time not
What do the guys run in a championship 5K? You are trying to compare a XC time when they pack run for the first 75% of the race. The only guys breaking 13:20 do it in a paced race where they all are working to run fast. If a cross country race was set up to do that, the guys would run a time that rates in that range.
What do the guys run in a championship 5K? You are trying to compare a XC time when they pack run for the first 75% of the race. The only guys breaking 13:20 do it in a paced race where they all are working to run fast. If a cross country race was set up to do that, the guys would run a time that rates in that range.
Exactly. Which is why the old system without the 1.3% adjustment “looked” more right until Valby came along and time trialed everything.
What do the guys run in a championship 5K? You are trying to compare a XC time when they pack run for the first 75% of the race. The only guys breaking 13:20 do it in a paced race where they all are working to run fast. If a cross country race was set up to do that, the guys would run a time that rates in that range.
Exactly. Which is why the old system without the 1.3% adjustment “looked” more right until Valby came along and time trialed everything.
How do you adjust for that now? Do you treat Valby's times differently since she runs that way?
If I had to guess she is in better fitness than 15:17 rating right now (or will be by end of season) but we will see. She beat Whittni Orton's course record at Tallahassee and Orton ran 15:08 at BU two weeks later...
Good point.
And she beat Kelati’s best at Nuttycombe by 9 sec (even in worse conditions), and Kelati was running 15:15 at BU those years.
Exactly. Which is why the old system without the 1.3% adjustment “looked” more right until Valby came along and time trialed everything.
How do you adjust for that now? Do you treat Valby's times differently since she runs that way?
Everything is adjusted to be 1.3% slower right now, which was the previous average difference between TiC PRs and 5k PRs (now the difference is 0% with the normalization). I do not treat any individual runner's times differently.
Valby is not elevating the times of others in the race, nor is any one runner. The race is scored based on the median of the differences between abilities and times.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
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