TUOHY ANY COMPETITION THIS XC SEASON

180 is around 15:10 at Mt. Sac. Trotter ran 16:16 there.

180 at Woodward Park is around 15:35. Trotter ran 16:55 at Clovis Invite then 17:01 at CA State Meet, both of which are on that Woodward Park course.

Keep in mind that the girls were given 5 points higher speed ratings versus the boys for the same time on that day in 2001 in Orlando. So you've got the typical 5-7 point inflation that the guy gives runners at Footlocker versus regular season than you have another 5 point inflation for the girls versus the boys that day. That's 10-12 points higher than the exact same performance during the regular season. Trotter was around 155-158 during the season. Could she have been at 180 minute 10-12 for a 168-170 at Nationals? Maaaaaaaybe. That is still a massive improvement after being so steady all year. The jump to 180 is absolute nonsense. Even going on EPO hardcore wouldn't give someone that big of a jump.

Billy Nelson 2001

Clovis Invite at Woodward Park 15:10 equivalent to 188 speed rating

State Meet at Woodward Park 15:22 equivalent to 184 speed rating

Footlocker Nationals he's given a 201, which remember if scored on the same scale as the girls race would be a 206!

So you've got all these kids from California, Yong Sung-Leal, Billy Nelson, Julie Allen, Amber Trotter, that are running consistent speed ratings give or take a couple points all year and then they get to nationals and bam their speed rating jumps 15-20 points. Get real. Nobody suddenly gets 15-20 seconds faster per mile. And certainly not 4 kids that are all running at different schools.

The speed rating Ritzenhein was given on that course would be equivalent to ~ 12:48 at Woodbridge. That's also equivalent to about 8:10 for 3200. Not buying that for a second.

A 180 speed rating is equivalent to a 3200 around 9:15. 6 months earlier Trotter ran 10:50 for 3200 at the CA State Meet.

loenegneds wrote:

Tuohy would destroy Trotter as a Junior... 15:37 vs. Trotter is another level. Poor Trotter never panned out.

Neither would stand a chance against...DITKA. Now, give me another beer and bratwurst...I'm having a heart attack...never mind, I gave myself CPR.

number manz wrote:

180 is around 15:10 at Mt. Sac. Trotter ran 16:16 there.

180 at Woodward Park is around 15:35. Trotter ran 16:55 at Clovis Invite then 17:01 at CA State Meet, both of which are on that Woodward Park course.

number manz wrote:

A 180 speed rating is equivalent to a 3200 around 9:15. 6 months earlier Trotter ran 10:50 for 3200 at the CA State Meet.

I definitely think the 180 is too high for Amber Trotter. However, her CA State Meet was run under heavy rain; I am guessing she could have run closer to low 16:40s that day. She was likely in shape to break Julia Stamps' record (going by times she ran on the same courses IIRC) but slower than what Sarah Baxter would eventually run.

As an aside, her 10:50 3200 the previous season is very misleading; she was injured that season. She finished 7th at Footlocker a few months prior to that; she was running much faster than 10:50 en route in her XC races.

ComparisonStuffies wrote:

A 180 speed rating at Woodbridge this year was 14:28 3mile.....

Could you imagine Trotter or Tuohy running that fast?

No. Neither of them were/are capable of that. At best, 15:30 for Tuohy, 15:50 for Trotter.

Let's say she could have run 16:35 at the CA State Meet. That's around 160 give or take a point here or there. Her 10:50 was clearly not indicative of her fitness because likewise nobody goes from 10:50 to winning Footlocker 6 months later unless that track season was their first time ever running and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Still, to go from around 160 to 180 is exceptionally rare if the understanding is those 20 points equals a minute faster on the same XC course.

The problem with the speed ratings is they are pretty consistent all year and then championship season comes and really weird sh.t starts happening with them. Going from 160 to 180, at least during the regular season, is like going from 10:00 in the 3200 consistently through the track season and then dropping a 9:20 at Nationals. Those times are not chosen arbitrarily either, they are legitimate equivalents to those speed ratings. When's the last time you saw a girl do that?

What's more likely is Trotter was in 160 or 10:00 3200 equivalent shape and then her Nationals performance given a 180 was 10-12 points high if we are looking at it from a performance standpoint. 168-170 is like 9:44-9:40. If someone dropped that much it would be believable to me. 40 seconds though? Never.

all of this is why I think the FL champ speed rating was the result of the bulk of the field simply not able to run well under those conditions, but Trotter especially was. 1/2 the field was coming from their normal cold December climate to a hot humid environment for this race - that must have been tough. But, this all clearly shows 2 other things at least to me. 1) the uncertainty in the speed rating for any one race is fairly high and thus you need to have 4-5 data points to really get the uncertainty down and 2) as Meylan says the speed ratings are meant to compare runner to runner and not course to course. While the odds of a number coming up twice in a row on a roulette wheel are 1 in 38 (or 39 now in some places), I have personally seen the same number come up 3 times in a row, and supposedly once one came up 5 or 6 straight times. So outliers do happen.

For those interested, a few more numbers concerning Amber Trotter...

The girl who finished 2nd to Amber Trotter at Foot Locker (Erika Odlaug) was thought to have the fastest full 2.5-mile XC time until until Katelyn Tuohy ran 13:21.8 at Van Cortlandt ... Odlaug ran her time at Detweiller Park when the Illinois girls were still running that distance ... at Foot Locker, Trotter passed 2.5 miles in 13:05.

The redwoodempirerunning running site in California listed the fastest 3-mile XC race time as 15:45 by Julia Stamps ... they approximated Trotter's split as 15:51 at Foot Locker, but the official split was 15:45 ... Julia Stamps has my 3rd best speed rating ever at Foot Locker, a 173.0 in 1994 when she won Foot Locker at Balboa with a time of 16:41.9 ... To the best my knowledge, Amber Trotter has the fastest 2.5 and 3.0 mile times on XC courses of any high school female.

Many people think the Orlando Foot Locker course was much faster than Balboa .. for the five years overall, I think the Orlando course was faster than Balboa .. But the only year that counts for this discussion is 2001. One possible insight is to compare common runners from Foot Locker 2001 to Foot Locker 2002 (held at Balboa) .. here are 5 common boy runners:

Foot Locker

Balboa .... Orlando

2002 ....... 2001

14:40.5 .. 14:52.91 .. Chris Solinsky

15:06.1 .. 15:40.97 .. Bobby Curtis

15:06.4 .. 15:27.26 .. Neftalem Araia

15:16.4 .. 15:13.29 .. Lauren Jespersen

15:30.7 .. 15:36.79 .. Tim Nelson

4 of the 5 boys ran faster at Balboa .. Curtis did not run well in 2001 which explains his faster time at Balboa .. only 3 seconds slower for Jespersen at Balboa .. and the other 3 running faster .. better since they were older?, perhaps but that's not always the case at Foot Locker. Two girls ran much faster at Balboa and two girls ran slower at Balboa. The Orlando course was not fast as many believe.

Concerning Trotter's speed ratings entering Foot Locker ... her speed rating at Mt. SAC was approaching 170 ... which some CA coaches scream at because Sarah Baxter was only about 165. At Mt. SAC in 2001, only 1 girl was under 17:00 and only 8 were under 18:00, and 5 boys were under 15:00 and only 23 were under 15:25 ... in 2012, 4 girls were under 17:00 and 34 were under 18:00, and 14 boys were under 15:00 and 64 under 15:25 (the course ran much faster in 2012 compared to 2001).

This is a very good explanation. I agree with every word in it. Sometimes a runner is just physiologically suited for a particular kind of course on a particular kind of day. And that would absolutely not necessarily transfer to a completely different style course.

Speed ratings measure time differences between runners relative to final times of known inherent speed.

The horse racing equivalent is lengths between horses (on which my XC ratings are adapted) ... Perhaps a horse racing equivalent to Amber Trotter's performance at Foot Locker 2001 would be Secretariat's 1973 win in the Belmont Stakes where he won by 31 lengths beating a field of top competition in a championship race.

In my above post, the correct 3 mile time for Julia Stamps was 15:54 (not 15:45) ... Amber Trotter's 3-mile split was 15:45 which is the fastest 3 mile XC girls time ever.

At Foot Locker 2001, Amber Trotter separated herself from a field of top competition in a national championship race ... For the only time in Foot Locker history, the officials had to get a second lead vehicle for the pack behind Trotter because she got so far in front ... In the process, Amber Trotter passed the 2.5 and 3.0 mile marks in the fastest times ever recorded for those XC distances by any high school female (and she did it "enroute") ... she won by 40 to 55 seconds over the next 3 finishers who would be possible winners in many years ... Trotter ran fast and separated herself from the competition which is the description of a high speed rating!

Molly Huddle (4th, beaten by nearly 55 seconds) had a speed rating of 162 which was consistent with her seasonal speed ratings ... the other two NY runners (both from central NY (FM, and Homer)) ran speed ratings consistent with what they had been running during the season (151 and 147) ... I have NO doubts about Amber Trotter's performance.

Thanks Bill. People will either get this or they won't. It's not for everybody. Thanks again for all you do.

Bill, if you see this, just out of curiosity, at this year's mcquaid, did you score all the times basically as a merged race, or did you look at the individual races and find differences from one race to another.

Just asking, because being there, there was stark contrast in the weather from the fully sunny morning to the fully overcast afternoon. Maybe this would or would not make much of a difference. There is a decent amount of shade there.

didn't see the later groups of races, so not sure what the weather looked like for the largest schools.

BMeylan wrote:

Amber Trotter passed the 2.5 and 3.0 mile marks in the fastest times ever recorded for those XC distances by any high school female...

I have NO doubts about Amber Trotter's performance.

Does Tuohys performance at Ocean where she went 16:06 for 5000 not count?

What’s ours wrote:

BMeylan wrote:

Amber Trotter passed the 2.5 and 3.0 mile marks in the fastest times ever recorded for those XC distances by any high school female...

I have NO doubts about Amber Trotter's performance.

Does Tuohys performance at Ocean where she went 16:06 for 5000 not count?

Although there was no enroute timing in the race, a simple scaling shows Tuohy passed 3 miles at probably around 15:33, significantly faster than Trotter. Or, to put it differently, it's inconceivable that Tuohy passed the 3 mile mark slower than 15:45 and was able to close the last 172m in under 21 seconds.

I don't think this changes Bill's justification for Trotter's 180, but it is pretty clear that Tuohy has run a faster 3.0 mile mark.

high school xc coach wrote:

Bill, if you see this, just out of curiosity, at this year's mcquaid, did you score all the times basically as a merged race, or did you look at the individual races and find differences from one race to another.

Just asking, because being there, there was stark contrast in the weather from the fully sunny morning to the fully overcast afternoon. Maybe this would or would not make much of a difference. There is a decent amount of shade there.

didn't see the later groups of races, so not sure what the weather looked like for the largest schools.

All races at McQuaid were speed rated with the same adjustment (meaning merged) ... I do that whenever possible, which is nearly always .. on rare occasions it is necessary. Several coaches emailed me from the McQuaid course telling me of a difference in conditions (including the Tully girl's coach) ... So I looked for a significant difference in speed throughout the day, and there wasn't any! ... all races rated out pretty much as expected.

When a meet has multiple varsity races, some races can go a bit faster or slower than others based simply on the pacing of the race and it can show at the top end (which is where most people look) ... this is where I focus on the mid-level runners to see how fast they ran relative to everybody else ... it's done by looking at time differences between individual runners on the current day and other days where I have acceptable speed rated data ... and sometimes you discover that the mid-level runners closed the gap on the top runners.

When I speed rate many out-of-State races, I'm focusing solely on specific races with the top teams and individuals ... the rating adjustment is based on those races only.

Concerning split times in 5K races ... First you need to know if it was really a 5K race measured at a minimum with a calibrated wheel and the course was measured by measuring the shortest possible running distance. I don't include distance in any speed calculations because "5K" and "3-Mile" posted distances vary a lot. The Belmont Plateau XC course in PA (used for the Briarwood Invite) was officially measured and certified by the USATF in 2013 (and the certified course was found to be 150 meters longer than the previous 5K course) ... The NFHS changed the measuring rule for high school courses to be cutting the tangents (aka USATF style) I believe in 2012 ... courses that were previous measured as "5K" by prior guideline (mid course or mid-position of a group of runners) suddenly became shorter than 5K, but how many were adjusted??

Foot Locker told me their courses have always been measured via cutting the tangents, after they yelled at me for spelling Foot Locker as Footlocker.

that's a good point wrote:

What’s ours wrote:

Does Tuohys performance at Ocean where she went 16:06 for 5000 not count?

Although there was no enroute timing in the race, a simple scaling shows Tuohy passed 3 miles at probably around 15:33, significantly faster than Trotter. Or, to put it differently, it's inconceivable that Tuohy passed the 3 mile mark slower than 15:45 and was able to close the last 172m in under 21 seconds.

I don't think this changes Bill's justification for Trotter's 180, but it is pretty clear that Tuohy has run a faster 3.0 mile mark.

Nothing will ever change Bill's justification for the 180 he gave Trotter. Everyone that disagrees with him is simply not as smart as he is and doesn't understand horse racing in all of it's drug-fueled absurdity.

Have you compared the mile and two mile time of these faster kids ... I feel two mile times have gotten faster since 2001 - as in more kids run faster 2 mile times - that would lead to more kids running faster mount sac times... so speed ratings will not differ because the average is faster but more kids are faster ...

Brynn Brown (16:12) is out with a stress fracture in her right foot.

Ocean State is short.

Great American is spot on.