Geoffrey Mutai 2:03:02!!! in Boston Where Does it Rank?

knox harrington wrote:

26mi235 wrote: My guess is that the average tailwind at the runners level was about running speed or slightly lower, not 19mph, which means that the power of the wind was only 40% of your cited amount (since the power is quadratic in speed).

Force of wind resistance is a function of the square of relative wind speed, but the power required to overcome it is cubic.

So how fast could you run into a 40mph head wind?

The science of sport analysis is about as thorough as it gets (and they admit the merely speculative nature of the pursuit), so I wouldn't call it rubbish. And the "gem" you quote is referring to the American record on the Boston course, not the American record for the marathon in general. Again, not exactly rubbish.

MarathonMind wrote:

His analysis is rubbish, and includes this gem: "...in 1994, America's Bob Kempainen produced a "Beamonesque" performance by running 2:08:47, which was an American record at the time, and would remain so until Ryan Hall broke it. "

Guy never heard of Khalid Kannouchi? Rubbish!

I'm not quite sure where this would rank, but I have Wanjiru's marathon in Beijing as best marathon performance ever.

malmo wrote:

It's that tail wind over the last 6 miles that brought them home when atthetes normally breakdown.

And that tailwind also helped them get through half in sub-62, otherwise that would've been suicide pace at Boston. Both of Hall's half splits on Monday were faster than his NYC Half.

Lets put this to rest. Just imagine if the pack had to turn around at 13 and come back against the high winds. What would the time have been? Very much slower of course. Fukuoka is considered the truest course in the world because that describes their course. What you get you give and vice versa.

Wrong. The wind takes back roughly twice what it "gives". That's why track races don't "even out" in windy days. Similar to why downhills on loop courses don't "make up" for uphills.

GW wrote:

Lets put this to rest. Just imagine if the pack had to turn around at 13 and come back against the high winds. What would the time have been? Very much slower of course. Fukuoka is considered the truest course in the world because that describes their course. What you get you give and vice versa.

Oh, and let squish all the hills so they are perfectly float like London. You comment is just plain idiotic.

I would say Mutai's effort is worth a 2:04 and change on a course like Berlin. Add 3-4 min because of the wind and subtract 2 min to account for the difficulty of the Boston course and you get a 2:04 effort. I think if the same field ran a flat, certified course yesterday Mutai and Mosop would both have been low 2:04, Hall high 2:05 low 2:06.

Tell me how many world records have been set at Rieti.

Crimea River wrote:

Wrong. The wind takes back roughly twice what it "gives". That's why track races don't "even out" in windy days. Similar to why downhills on loop courses don't "make up" for uphills.

OK, no matter what they meant by the American record, their analysis is junk because it presumes a constant wind speed of 14 MPH for 100% of the duration of the race. No allowance for breaks by course topography, buildings etc... therefore they get too large an estimate of 3-4 minutes. Their review of the historic data was better. My crude guess is 1 to 2 minutes advantage and the various PR's of the leaders suggest as much. But what I really want to see is mile by mile splits measured against past years. If someone comes up with that analysis then we'll get a much better picture.

The best think to do is to wait and see how the TOP 4 BOSTON Runners perform at there next marathon which may give us an idea if they truly were fit enough to run the times that they did.

It ranks #1 all-time.

MarathonMind wrote:

OK, no matter what they meant by the American record, their analysis is junk because it presumes a constant wind speed of 14 MPH for 100% of the duration of the race. .

Umm, the wind speed was 19.6 mph with gusts of 30-34mph.

former 800 guy wrote:

2010 had a very slight tailwind (3ish mph)

2011 strong tailwind.

I think 2008 and 2010 are fairly good benchmarks for a still day. Note for the Elites there is about a 4 sec/mile improvement, for non-elites about a 3 sec/mile improvement translating to 1.5-2 minute benefit. A 3-4 minute improvement would be 6-8 sec/mile improvement. Even at the 5k pace splits there is rarely this much pace difference - maybe the 2nd 5k and last 5ks only. 3-4 minutes seems a bit too much - looks more like 1.5-2 minutes.

You're mistaken, 2010 wasn't still, there was a 15mph wind coming from the NW,which would be on the runners left shoulder.

Correction man wrote:Umm, the wind speed was 19.6 mph with gusts of 30-34mph.

Really? At street level on the course? Constant? No shielding or breaks from surrounding buildings?

Better check where you got that 19.6 reading. Or more to the point- where exactly the anemometer was that reported it.

I don't know why this is thread is five pages long...

Original question: Where does it rank???

#1 as in Fastest Marathon of All-Time. Easy answer right?

Really, if you look at any performance subjectively, there's no right answer/ its useless to debate what no one will ever agree on. Many say Wanjiru has the best marathon performance of all-time, giving him credit for running in hot conditions in an Olympic race. More credit is given to his ability to be bold and heroic, yet his performance is hard to measure objectively (2:06 is the real answer). We have too many interepations on what makes a great performance to answer this question subjectively, so my answer above is correct. #1 Fastest Marathon of All-Time. Hard to debate that...

Racing strategies are different, different runners are in the race and the statistics are in the 'small sample' arena with almost no reliability for inference.

I have done a calculation on the effects and will post it here and may be a second thread.

Why can I not get people to understand that their notion of the wind speed is flawed? I sent you an e-mail yesterday and have not heard back but did see that you think that Renato’s assessment is flawed. I will briefly repeat the main theme. The ‘official’ wind readings are NOT an indication of the wind speed aiding the runners. The reasons are:

1. They are taken at 10m up away from obstructions ground-level on streets results in a reduction of up to 50%, us this as a strawman

2. Logan has higher listed wind speeds than locations closer to the race so those stations were showing 15 mph

3. The wind is not always blowing in exactly the right direction and gusts make it swirling at times, which is not helpful; the straight-line distance from start to finish is a tad under 25miles so you et 24.726.2 or about a 6% reduction and then another reduction for the lack of the wind vector being exactly right, so take no more than 85% of the ground-level wind speed.

4. 15 mph x 05 x 0.85 = 6 3/8ths or 6.375 mph, or 3 mps.

5. For a sprint time on the track this accords to an adjustment of 10.00 to 9.85 (see the Little Beige Book or JRM’s calculator), but that is for running speeds where wind resistance is the primary obstacle and running speeds are 10+mps, Dropping running speeds to 5.7mps with a quadratic function means that the assistance is dropped by .57^2 or to 0.32. Thus, we now have an effect that is 0.15 x .32 = 0.05 out of 10.00 we get 0.005 or 0.5%.

6. Multiply 0.5% times 123 minutes and we get 36 seconds.

This value is MUCH lower than I expected and is probably too low by as much as a factor of two, but that still only gets us to 72 seconds.

Generally agree with this. The fastest/WRs are now on specially laid-out courses that employ a phalanx of pacers just like track WR attempts. However, it is useless to claim that it is irrelevant that Boston is both downhill and had a pretty good breeze helping things along.

I am not unhappy with the mark being a World Best. I think it is one of the top few races ever in terms of where it ranks. In my mind the Geb/Tergat/KK WR race was one bang-up race; none of this set-up race for a time trial.