"Conditions were pretty much optimum for the Olympic men's marathon"

The temperatures which Johnson was reporting during the race were several degrees warmer than the CBC commentators were reporting. I know Johnson was in one of the lead vehicles, and I was wondering if it was a vehicle with an on-board thermometer. Aren't the sensors for those located underneath the vehicle, and thus within a foot or so of the pavement? That might make a difference.

I think what Malmo was getting at was a distinction between "optimum" conditions and "ideal" conditions. While 80 degrees is not ideal, it could be seen as a local maximum for desirability in Beijing in August. Don't hear optimum and think "ideal", hear optimum and think "constrained optimization".

If that's the case, it's a silly semantics argument. It reminds me of people who argue about the difference between precision and accuracy. In normal usage (local rag, general audience) such distinctions are meaningless and only appeal to the pedantic.

Lazy L wrote:

While 80 degrees is not ideal, it could be seen as a local maximum for desirability in Beijing in August. Don't hear optimum and think "ideal", hear optimum and think "constrained optimization".

If the race had started at 5:20 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., the temperature at the finish would have been ten degrees cooler than it actually was. Wouldn't that be "more optimum"? Or is your "constrained optimization" constrained to 7:30 a.m. on August 24 in Beijing in the Year of the Rat?

(I am, of course, kidding around. I hope you are, too.)

Avocados Number. You wouldn't be a lawyer by chance? Becasue only a lawyer could possibly continue to persist with such dishonest and disingenuous discourse. It was clear what I said the first time. Get over it.

So, does anyone know where Johnson was getting his temperature data from? It seems interesting to me to consider what the "actual" temperature might have been for the runners on the pavement, especially in the 2nd half of the race. The difference between 25 and 30 C. (77 to 86 F.) is very substantial, and I wonder which is closer to the truth.

What are you still doing on this thread?

Look, you said a couple of things that were incorrect. It's no big deal. It happens to all of us. But if you want to continue to believe that the temperature during the marathon never went over 80, and that the conditions were "pretty much optimum," that's fine with me, too. I'm not trying to convert you or anything.

Agreed. Malmo, you are usually spot on but your argument here is idiotic. "Optimal" was not qualified by anyone but you. Certainly not by the person who wrote the article. Conditions were not optimal. Period. End of discussion.

It was very clear what I was referring to by "optimal": "As far as optimal goes, it would be way too much to expect that the conditions could be any better if you go back and look at the historical weather for Beijing."

Dozens of times on these message boards I've said that even 60 can be "hot" for a marathon. I've never said that 80 degrees was "optimal" in that context.

This thread is typical. Like a bunch of monkeys throwing feces at each other.

Beijing Capital International Airport is ~17 miles away from Tiananmen Square. It's not uncommon within a city to notice a temperature variance of a few degrees at locations that far apart. So why be so nitpicky?

It was in the low to mid 70s at the start, low to mid 80s at the finish. That's all the info you need to realize that it wasn't good in absolute terms for a marathon, but it was about as good as could reasonably be expected for that location and time of year.

And there you go. Now have some bananas.

:)

I returned home from Beijing last evening. I watched the whole marathon live on Chinese TV. Here are my thoughts. The weather was probably about as good as it can be in Beijing. In fact, on some days the smog was about like it was the week before here in West LA. We got to Beijing in the evening of the 13th and there was smog and humidity. On the 13th, the day before track and field started, it rained and the air was cleared and cooled off some. I do not think that the low still ever got below 70. It was never good marathon weather. The smog began to pick up slightly towards the end of each week and each time they had it rain which cleared the air a great deal. The day of the men's marathon the weather was probably as good as it could be in Beijing but it was not marathon weather. It was too hot and runners began showing signs of having run in heat/smog and began dropping out at about 30K. It was my feeling after the race that Wansiru had run an amazing race. He said that it was hot. I was surprised at the first two runners times. Kebede was fading in the last kilometer and would not have lasted much longer. I noticed that the smog had returned to moderate as we headed to the airport Monday morning.

Could be. I just remember- a long time ago reading that 59 was optimum. Maybe that was for shorter races (10K, etc). 40's is definitely better for a marathon. But, we both made the same point- 75 is too hot.

malmo wrote:

could possibly continue to persist with such dishonest and disingenuous discourse.

Interesting comment from a guy that has been picking and choosing what comments he would like to delete from this thread.

Malmo is technically right - I don't think one could expect much better in Beijing in August. But that is like saying I was imprisoned at San Quentin and I only got sodomized twice a week instead of every day.

Do a marathon in North Dakota in January and when it is 10 degrees at the start, I'll tell you that that is about the best you can expect in January in Bismarck since it is usually around 0, so it wasn't really cold.

So how much faster would Wanjiru have run in optimally optimal conditions of maximal optimumality?

Two minutes faster? two and a half? Three minutes faster?

2.03.30 maybe?

A much slower might have run 15 minutes slower in those conditions, everyone responds differently.

I thought conditions for the women were more optimum. Temp was lower, but humidity was higher. They looked to be struggling less with the conditions, then again they were going much slower.

A local optimum of a combinatorial optimization problem is a solution optimal within a neighboring set of solutions. This is in contrast to a global optimum, which is the optimal solution among all possible solutions.

The locality of the optimum is dependent on the neighborhood structure as defined by the metaheuristic that is used for optimizing the solution.

Many so-called solutions to such optimization problems will find a local optimum, and thus are guaranteed to work only if the problem has one global optimum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_optimum

MALMO EDITED:

"As far as a local optimal in beijing in the summer at 10:00 AM goes, it would be way too much to expect that the conditions could be any better if you go back and look at the historical weather for Beijing."

You sentence was poorly worded and if you would just admit it then we can let this thread die.

I agree with you, and have we already forgotten the carnage left in Chicago last year with temps just a little warmer?