Notre Dame DMR is questionable to me

To the fellow asking, ND track is 320m. It was reconfigured a few years ago when they put in the new football surface to make it easier to follow splits for all events.

One question for the guy asserting that ND did this intentionally and 'got the result they wanted'; why would they do this intentionally when they didn't even have a team in the race? Teams have been going to that meet for years to get DMR times (probably half the field or more has come from this meet the last few years). Do you really think they'd intentionally break the rules for a race they didn't even have any competitors in?

And before someone says 'it doesn't matter, rules are rules and it still screws the teams that got left out or other events', I'm not saying it did or didn't make a difference in the result. I'm just saying it is entirely inappropriate to accuse them of doing it on purpose.

Mac wrote:

One question for the guy asserting that ND did this intentionally and 'got the result they wanted'; why would they do this intentionally when they didn't even have a team in the race? Teams have been going to that meet for years to get DMR times (probably half the field or more has come from this meet the last few years). Do you really think they'd intentionally break the rules for a race they didn't even have any competitors in?

And before someone says 'it doesn't matter, rules are rules and it still screws the teams that got left out or other events', I'm not saying it did or didn't make a difference in the result. I'm just saying it is entirely inappropriate to accuse them of doing it on purpose.

I agree. I really doubt Notre Dame did this on purpose. Most people don't realize tracks are laid out differently based on the presence of a curb.

I am only familiar with it because we had a bunch of masters records set at my HS a few years ago which does not have a curb (but we coned properly). I must have been asked by 10 different people if the track had been measured for a curb, and I got to hear lectures from all of them about how if it had been measured with a curb and then not run with one it would be illegal.

I bet someone at Notre Dame probably decided not to use the curb this year... maybe people were tripping over it or maybe it was too much work to set up or maybe it got damaged.

The fault lies with the officials, especially if they have the same crew as last year who knew that it was a curbed track. At best the officials were new and didn't know there had been a curb, at worst they made a serious. But either way it's their responsibility to be aware of these things.

It's most unfortunate - especially to the athletes - when meet administration screws up. If the advantaged athletes get dq'd or penalized because of the meet mess up, that's a shame, but it's also a shame when the advantaged athletes displace other athletes whose marks were legitimately made. Either way it stinks.

The oversized tracks (Notre Dame, UWashington, etc.) have clear advantages over the 200 meter tracks, banked or unbanked, and to compound those advantages by the improper placing of cones only makes the situation worse.

If nothing else, I hope the NCAA will in the future insist that all tracks must have a rail for qualification purposes. I say this because cones are not effective demarcations and a rail is a standard piece of equipment for high level meets.

So...what will next years DMR Auto time be next year? 9 30?9 29?

X Runner wrote:

I think if having a rail was so important they would put a rail on each lane for the 200m.

Not so. If a track is laid out for a curb, lane one is narrower than lane one would be on a track not measured for a curb. This brings the other lanes out further so they each are the correct distance.

This is nothing more than another huge bailout - a bunch of people getting something big which they don't deserve at the expense of those who earned their spot.

This is nothing more than another huge bailout - a bunch of people getting something big which they don't deserve at the expense of those who earned their spot.

BT scoreboard wrote:

I might say anybody who was there knows that there wasn't anything fishy about it at all. Although I was thoroughly amazed and was unable to get in myself I am still fully believing that the times are legit. Anybody who thinks otherwise is pessimistic and can't just be happy that we have so many amazing teams this year.

Yes, it's unheard of. But then again, don't "unheard of" things happen now and again? That's the beauty of life, sometimes there can be pleasant surprises that keep people on their toes and surprised.

I think just pointing this out shows some ass hole trying to get it changed cuz his team had provisional in something and now can't go. Pity, shoulda just got the auto.

if you think 15 DMR teams can go auto in one race your a f***ing retard.. and whoever said washington's track is faster than 200m banked needs to probably shut up as well because washington is the worst indoor track i have ever run on.. tyson and nebraska's indoor tracks are far superior

would somebody please explain, then, why it is so important that a track have a rail and what difference it makes? a link to whatever rulebook it's in would suffice as well

If the rail was removed then any race distance race, not just the DMR, should show noticeable improvements in time. It should be fairly easy to look at all the results from years prior, including slow heats, and do some kind of quantitative comparison.

That said, this thread is retarded. Unless the runners were consistently running on the inside of the line, which they weren't because this wasn't a time trial, then it makes no difference.

So lets say an outdoor track is 395 meters...would you count the guy who ran in lane two the entire race as a legal time? People never run right on the line no matter what the size of the track, but it still makes a difference if the track was smaller than years past...the pack runs a shorter distance as a whole.

The thread isn't retarded, although some of the posts may be.

It DOES matter whether there is a railing or not because runners will 90% of the time run about 6"- 12" closer to the line if there isn't a railing. If you doubt it, I'm sorry, but you just don't study the phenomenon. I have.

while I am not saying that it isn't a problem with the measuring interesting to note most teams were 3-4 seconds under the auto time, which means most of these teams would be going anyway even if they track was measured right, so pretty much the track is bumping in a couple teams most likely, which isn't fair but I doubt anything will be done this year about it.

OP's team ran 11:30.55...

I hate Vimax wrote:

X Runner wrote:

I think if having a rail was so important they would put a rail on each lane for the 200m.

Not so. If a track is laid out for a curb, lane one is narrower than lane one would be on a track not measured for a curb. This brings the other lanes out further so they each are the correct distance.

If the track has a curb, it is assumed that the cost of getting close is higher and the typical distance run is further out. Thus, a Lane One with a curb should be wider than one without (in general). A general look at the track does not allow me to see whether Lane One is extra wide or not.

I think that if there is a problem it amounts to a 5cm/2inch issue with the cones, which should be on the line, not inside of it, if they lanes are set for a curb/cones. This amounts to 5cm. With a 100cm-width lane that is 5% and the typical lane is more than that, so that the reduction is less than 5% of the stagger length per lap (typically a 2-turn stagger outdoors is about 6+m or 6/400, 1.5%. This implies about a 0.075% 'error'. 1% of 10min is 6 seconds, so we are talking about all of a 0.40 second difference for the race.

Go look for the explanation for the fast times somewhere else.

blahblahblahblah wrote:

That said, this thread is retarded. Unless the runners were consistently running on the inside of the line, which they weren't because this wasn't a time trial, then it makes no difference.

You guys need to go back and read the post that explains EXACTLY why there is a significant difference.

Think of it this way. Imagine a piece of string that is 400m long. We will use this to "measure" the track. If there is going to be a curb, then it is known that athletes instinctively and inevitably run a little farther off that curb than they do if its just a line. So if we have a curb, then we place that 400m piece of string 30cm outside of the lane line. But if there is not going to be a curb, then they measure 20cm away from the line because runners will stay closer. The end result is that the 400m loop of string has been placed in different places. If measured for a curb and run without one, you are running on a track that is measured 10cm farther outside, therefore your line along the lane line is shorter.

it would only be 10 cm difference IF the cones had been placed on the line. the fact that the cones were not on the line means that teams could have gotten 30 full cm difference. that WILL change the times. Washington is notorious for having their cones off of the line. But even at washington it will only be a 20cm difference. ND this weekend, at least in the DMR, athletes got a 30 cm advantage!

Rman wrote:

If you look at the past 3 years, in the longer runs (mile, 3000, 5000, 4x400, and DMR), there were 16 autos and 24 provisionals (16/24) in 2009, 0/17 in 2008, and 4/29 in 2007. And even though there were 3 autos and 15 provisonals in the DMR in 2007, the average time for the autos and provs was a full 7 seconds slower in 2007 than in 2009. It was also a full 7 seconds slower in 2008.

how many total qualifiers this year? besides the 15 DMR teams?

ND's track doesn't have the 21m radius because it's 320m not 200m. It's probably about 25m.

Based on that, the radius gets dropped by .1 meter, which effectively shortens the curved distances from 2000m to 1994.89 meters. At 9:30.00 for 4000m, the effective average speed is 7 m/s, which means, the ND track, for a DMR is only about .73 seconds fast.

That's right, .73 seconds. THAT'S IT.