The website is here:
basically, you put in an event and time, and it tells you, for the 2022 season, these are the meets you should have entered (you need 5 to get an 800/1500 ranking, and 3 to get a 5K ranking) that would have given you the best placing points in time for Eugene worlds, assuming you ran your target time every race. If you would have placed last, we assume that you wouldn't have been invited to the meet and those get excluded.
By default it filters out the regional / national championships, which is needed because those are the points cash cows (due to the fact that WA treats all regional / national championships the same) though it wouldn't be possible to run in conflicting regions. You can set your country to include them.
There are a lot of variables / assumptions here, so it's meant as just a guide rather than a definitive source. Also I didn't implement some things like the world record bonus, because that's not the intention of the app (if you are a WR caliber athlete, you don't need rankings points).
Anyways, according to the site you could have qualified for Worlds as an American (assuming you get top 3 at trials) with just these "slow" PBs if you chose your meets right:
Men's 800: 1:49.0
Men's 1500: 3:42.4
Men's 5000: 13:33.8 (7:54.30 3K)
Women's 800: 2:05.4
Women's 1500: 4:14.7
Women's 5000: 15:43.8 (9:07.50 3K)
So all of this taught me:
1. Times are much less important -- for most of the field, qualifying is a game of strategy now
If you aren't a "lock" for getting the standard, it makes much more sense to rack up points at cash cow meets. You only need to run 5 of them (or 3 for the 5K) and the standard should be significantly more generous -- see above.
2. Running an indoor season is really rewarding
There are two reasons why indoor track really helps your ranking: 1) not as many people run it while place bonuses are the same, so you'll get more points for place, and 2) the World Athletics rankings tables award more points for indoor performances (i.e. a 3:40 1500 is worth 1107 points outdoors, but 1157 points indoors), even though with the supershoes and BU bouncy track indoor isn't really that much slower than outdoor -- at least not as much as the points differential would indicate.
3. Pete Julian was wrong about Dr Sander
Even though the Dr Sander Armory invite is "only" a C race, it was one of the biggest cash cow meets in the middle distances last year in retrospect. Yes, the Lilac Grand Prix is a B race but that only awards 20 extra points for the win compared to a C. 20 points is about 1.5 seconds in a 1500 -- so the calculation should be, if an athlete suspects that the winning time of Lilac will be more than 1.5 seconds faster than Dr Sander, Dr Sander is mathematically more "worth it" to run. Athletes on the bubble should be making more of these sorts of calculations.
Things I plan on implementing
* Adjust target score based on bumping those above you in rankings
* Add other events
* Add predictions for 2023 events on calendar, based on 2022 result
I can also add features by request, let me know.
