A good letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe by Tom Ratcliffe. He replies to the Globe editorial calling for world record recognition for the Boston winning time.
Tom
A good letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe by Tom Ratcliffe. He replies to the Globe editorial calling for world record recognition for the Boston winning time.
Tom
Great point, was,about 10 years ago...
Regardless of the effect of the wind on times, huge props to Hall, DD, et al for being prepared to take advantage of the wind and for not wussing out when things got tough. For a long time, people have said we needed to train harder and not cave-in to our perceived inferiority if we were to climb out of the hole we'd dug for ourselves. Monday was a start towards that.
4 years ago is less 10.
Yes, The editorial was dumb. I agree with Tommy Rat:
I wrote in my New England Runner column in the April issue in 1990—when the idea of world records instead of world bests came up. I blew the dust off my archives and will type out a few sentences discussing things like running the tangents and where and how the course is measured.
"In their noble search for precision they [TAC RR Technical committee]forgot that road racing is a reprieve from the confines of the track."
"We will never know who ran the better race, only who ran the fastest time."
"Live with uncertainty in your life. No road race world records...just world best or noteworthy performances. It is healthy to wonder."
Tom
Thank you for the links. The most incorrect part of the editorial was stating
"Runners almost universally consider Boston the toughest of the world’s five major marathons. New York, London, Berlin, and pancake-flat Chicago have nothing to compete with the steep inclines of Newton, culminating in the most humbling ascent of all the majors, Heartbreak Hill."
I mean, that's just making stuff up.
No.1: everyone knows NYC is significantly harder than Boston, so whoever wrote that didn't bother to take any sort of representative opinion sample. And of course hometown hero Bill Rodgers would be the most authoritative person to reveal that falsehood.
No.2 The most cursory research of NYC's winning times and/or a look at the two course profiles would reveal NYC's several significant hills and meager net elevation drop.
This was bad, lazy, really bad journalism. Can someone here who is a someone fire off another letter? Ratcliffe was way too was on them.
kudzurunner wrote:
Great discussion! Real wisdom from the elders. Thanks Hodgie-san and Tom D. Thanks, too, Malmo, for the deep drill-down in your statistical analysis. A little more patience with the idiots, as you're (immensely) fond of calling them, might be a good thing. But you're good with the numbers, and this is a great thread.
Meta-analysis?
1) The tailwind played a large and undeniable role in the results. As someone once said to the whore in an old locker-room joke, "We've already established that. We're just arguing over the price." (A man asked a woman if he'd sleep with her for a million dollars. She smiled and said "Sure, baby." He then asked if she'd sleep with him for $25. She sneered and said, "What do you think I am, a whore?")
1a) But the precise advantage conferred by the tailwind--3:40? 2:30? "somewhere between three and four minutes"--is and will always be a matter of debate. (The idiots will always be wrong, of course.) And Mutai and Hall, among others, are clearly invested--as brilliant creative artists often are--in minimizing the effects of the environment (in this case, the tailwind-help) and focusing on individual initiative and achievement. Forgive them. There's a method in their madness. God help you if you just don't get this point. Somebody in the next town who gets it is having a good damned time--and running faster times than you, too.
2) Boston has proved itself, over many decades, to be a slower-than-average course, despite the net altitude drop. This is why very few WRs have been set there. The hills are part of this--or have traditionally been assumed to be a part of this.
3) This year's results on the "slower-than-average course," which include a world-best (but not WR) and American-best (but not AR) create a huge interpretive mess: the perfect storm for professional marathon kibbitzers. This one will be argued for the next hundred years.
4) 90%+ of those making arguments for one interpretation or another tend to work from either/or rather than both/and logics. Nobody, for example, has suggested that the tailwind--the knowledge on the part of Hall and the other front-runners that the tailwind would be with them the whole time--might have contributed to a throw-caution-to-the-wind strategy that enabled better-than-average results. (Malmo's statistical regressions, for example, fail to allow for such an effect.) In other words, it might be a good idea to remember that the word "inspire" derives from the Latin root "to breathe." Great runners aren't just aided physically by the presence of a tailwind; they're inspired by that wind. They're goaded--as Hall was--into taking risks; into trying for more than they've ever tried for.
Both/and. Allow it. It feels good.
And of course the full moon occured at 4:44 AM on Boston Marathon Monday. A perfect storm, indeed.
Well said!
Hodgie-san wrote:
Yes, The editorial was dumb. I agree with Tommy Rat:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/04/20/mutais_win_is_a_world_record_and_should_be_in_the_books/http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2011/04/22/debate_over_times_detracts_from_a_timeless_effort/
and Tommy Ratcliffe has represented 100;s of top Kenyan runners. Finally someone with a horse in the race with common sense. But we already knew Tommy has common sense.
I think I will send a mug to the editorial writer:
1. modern jackass buy modern jackass mugs, tshirts and magnetsa person that talks expertly about something he/she actually knows nothing about
http://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=modern%20jackass&defid=1405012
(Defined by the NPR show This American Life)
Usually occurs in a conversation when you know a little about a subject and when asked to expand upon it, you extrapolate completely unrelated nonsense.
"What are trans fatty acids?"
"Fats that have an extra hydrogen atom on it"
"What is that bad for you?"
insert modern jackass line
Hodgiesan, I sent an email to John Powers of the Globe telling him that his claim that Mutai's run was "decidedly more of an accomplishment than Gebs WR" was pure hogwash.
He wrote me back telling me that I've never seen Boston's course!
Imagine that?
Have you ever raced on it?
Also, just emailed a major writer and saying hogwash without anything to back it up isn't going to make him take your position seriously. He probably laughed at your email. Surprised he even took the time to reply. Kind of funny if you think about it.
malmo wrote:
Hodgiesan, I sent an email to John Powers of the Globe telling him that his claim that Mutai's run was "decidedly more of an accomplishment than Gebs WR" was pure hogwash.
He wrote me back telling me that I've never seen Boston's course!
Imagine that?
OK, let's get him the shirt & hat too.
fieldsss wrote:
Have you ever raced on it?
Also, just emailed a major writer and saying hogwash without anything to back it up isn't going to make him take your position seriously. He probably laughed at your email. Surprised he even took the time to reply. Kind of funny if you think about it.
malmo has not raced on it but he has run thousands of miles on many parts of the course. In addition to being an uber-fan He spent time in Boston.
John Powers is generally a proficient writer on Olympic Sports and covers them reguarly for the Globe.
He entirely missed the boat on this one and I am sure many others besides malmo have let him know it. He can laugh at malmo email but anyone in the know be laughing at him.
fieldsss wrote:
Have you ever raced on it?
Also, just emailed a major writer and saying hogwash without anything to back it up isn't going to make him take your position seriously. He probably laughed at your email. Surprised he even took the time to reply. Kind of funny if you think about it.
I know every nook and cranny of the course from Natick to Cleveland Circle - frontwards and backwards.
"A Major writer" eh? Oh my goodness, do you realize how stupid that is? I can guarantee you John Powers is no Joe Concannon - unless that is, he gets a 60 mile an hour tailwind at his back.
But did you race it?
So what if you don't think he is a big writer. You didn't give him cause to take your remarks seriously if you think about it. Think about how many emails any writer gets like that a day.
He took my comments seriously enough to write back three times in lame attempts to justify his.
You're a greenhorn kid. So is John Powers.
So I am guessing you didn't race Boston, which is sort of makes a difference. I can see where he is coming from. Care to post the email exchange?
I didn't run the race? Duh? Wow you really are wet behind the ears.
malmo wrote:
I didn't run the race? Duh? Wow you really are wet behind the ears.
Well I asked you twice and you didn't say anything, how am I supposed to know if you ran or not? Sort of silly to get defensive and sling insults at me just because I can't read your mind.