Is LACCTiC Dead?

I think I got the Alabama firstyears into their roster now. I'm trying to do another run of the roster-scraper.

Will the runner's results from outdoor track be added? More data access issues?

Hot off the LACCTIC press as I type.

Which ones are missing? I had a lot of trouble with this because it requires visiting every single runner's tfrrs profile. I thought I had a successful (8 hour) run but theres a chance it failed in the middle while I was sleeping.

I get the variance in individual performances early season can make those rankings suspect, but the idea that the nationals runner up from last year whose been cranking 150 mile weeks is now projected ~9th, and nationals 3rd place whose ‘only’ doing 90 miles and tempoed a race after @4:37 ‘warm-up’ is out of the top ten is kind of entertaining.

*I understand it’s just looking at race performances and can’t understand context and it’s a limited sample that will naturally correct with time, but I still wish I could gamble off the current rankings.

Not criticizing, love the site.

I selected a number of runners from a few schools and only some had even a single had a result listed in between 2024 XC and 2025 XC - from Indoors. Maybe one had two results. Nothing for the others Indoors or Outdoors. So most runners who progressed since 2024 XC are not reflected in the ratings. A lot of results are missing.

I looked at Hartman, Michalak, Putman of NC St - nothing

Kennedy of Stanford - 1 result

Lemngole of Alabama - 1 result I think

Noe of Arkansas - 1 result

Thompson and Aayildiz of Oregon - 1 result I think each

Kosgei of New Mexico - 1 result

Any idea why a team would be missing from result on LACCTiC while the equivalent tfrrs is correct? Wesleyan is missing from their own home meet, Cardinal Invitational, this past weekend

Lacctic relies on teams being linked to their home pages. Otherwise it would confuse the 8+ wesleyans in the NCAA

In the cardinal invite, the person who uploaded the results failed to correctly enter Wesleyans information. As such, none of the runners link to their profiles and Wesleyan does not link to their team profile. Lacctic ignores those results.

I dont have time to fix it by hand. If you contact the timer or meet director and tell them the upload has an issue, then I’m happy to re-scrape the data. Sorry 😔

Why does lacctic pull from track races? doesn't that defeat the whole point of the algo? It makes no sense that a track 5k/10k should factor into someone's rating when it's a site that ranks xc performance... this causes a lot of variability in the rankings IMO especially in D3

I don’t think you can subjectively logic your way through b this. The model can include a ton of data from many sources and then provide the right weighting to different data based on how well it adds to the predictions.

If track results aren’t helpful the model won’t give them much if any weight.

There are two ways track times are used: (1) to make the ratings better and (2) to adjust rankings.

Track races are the great equalizer for adjusting performances. In D3 you have tons of runners who never race each-other. While you might get within-region rankings that are very accurate, the entire ordering of regions will depend on a few inter-regional races. Adding track as one big “race” helps stabilize the results. Track does correlate with cross country in an unbiased way (the same amount of people do better/worse than track).

I think criticizing the inclusion of track times in an individual’s ability estimate is fair. The reality is that early-season rankings benefit from having track factored in. When top runners tempo races all-season, their track PR is the only thing we can really rely on. This is less relevant for middle-of-the-pack runners but most people are primarily concerned with accurate rankings up top.

I am still curious why so many athletes have no track results to speak of and thus ratings only reflect results from a year ago, if that. TFFRS access issue?

Just a question about why Lacctic always seems to indicate a slower 5k time than the athlete can produce? For example, there are four men rated at 13:30 or faster in division I, but we know from past years that there should be closer to 30 men capable of that time.

Thanks for all your work!

This is just straight cap. Almost every person on the sites' lacctic rating is considerably worse than their actual 5k pr. The lacctic 5k is not meant to be an actual representation of track 5k performance, but rather a ranking system normalized to 15:00. The introduction of track times is few and far between, occuring only for a few runners in the country. Tell me why my namesake team is ranked so high in simulations- is it because of actual xc performances, or is it because golden knight from clash royale has his FIRE meet 5000 posted on lacctic, causing him to be ranked (by the algorithm you claim has some learning ability) considerably higher than the matthai twins for example. It has brotato chip 6th in the country when hes never even put up an xc performance worth 6th in the nescac. This causes a cascading effect, boosting teammates and competitors in the little three and beyond. But i guess wesleyan is podiuming at nats this year according to lacctic. Someone let the USTFCCCA committee know.

that would be delightful for your argument as to the efficacy of the brainchild of Williams supergenius Bijan. For the sake of intellectual debate, I would be elated for golden knight if he has the wherewithal to to activate his ability and dash at the princess tower we call the Spartanburg finish line.

Hartman has two results.

Mr. Washed Up,

I just want to say you’ve provided a great service to the community. It’s an impressive effort, and the commitment to keeping it going despite the hurdles is appreciated. Even if it ended today, it would still stand out as one of the more thoughtful / interesting projects in the sport.

That said, I'm still up on you in terms of head to head wins on the track. GGs, bro.

Bijan is doing yeoman’s work by providing a tool like LACCTiC. He’s not getting paid, and it’s not an easy task.

We should be appreciative of his work! He has a Donate button at the top.. if any of us want to thank him tangibly.