(Yawn) Brojos continue to rip UW track

Brojazzle · 2011-01-15T18:07:04-05:00

Who cares if the track is 1000m long? It's f***ing indoors.

I agree. I think it comes down to a few things...

1] Some people don't like paced races. I don't get it. There is a time and place for everything. People run in paced races to run fast times. People run fast times to qualify for championships. People run jog-n-sprints at championships (and inconsequential dual meets). Run your time trials and run your jog-n-sprints. They're all part of the competitive running equation. Personally I think a competitive paced race is more fun to watch than 20 dudes jogging for 80% of a race just to find out who has a better 400m PR, but I appear to be in the minority. Anyone who complains about pacing might want to take a few moments to think about how much of the race they led when they ran their PB.

2] Some people think a 300m flat track is light years faster than a 200m banked track. Not sure how to try to quantify this, but I really don't see a difference when you look at individual athletes (as opposed to comparing track-to-track results). You're obviously going to find faster times overall coming from the meets that set up faster conditions (athletes and pacers, if any). I kinda find it odd that none of these people make wild proclamations about how much faster these 300m performances *should* be on a 400m track since they'd be running fewer curves, only the converse to 200m tracks.

Really, what it boils down to is that there are a ton of fast times coming from these tracks because they are capable of holding large fields and the race directors (or fellow coaches) have rabbits set up to ensure honest paces rather than following the standard jog-until-400m-out routine. Athletes (and coaches) that don't have the opportunity to run in one of these facilities (likely due to budget) look to find any way to justify lesser performances.

Think about it, how much easier is it on one's ego to think: "that dude only ran faster than me because of X. Without X, I would have beaten him by .2 seconds!" And it really does seem to be people complaining about tenths of seconds. I see posts from poster's "friends" that missed out by one tenth because someone else ran fast on a different track on a different day with different competition under different circumstances.

Here's the thing: if ND or UW have such incredible powers to catapult you beyond your wildest running dreams, pay 200 effing dollars for a plane ticket and run a race there. If you're on the bubble and it's really THAT important, go run one race on a large[er] track and fill that hole in your life so you can move on. Or have someone you know rabbit a race for you. But I don't think that's the resolution. See, when you don't run your .2 faster you'll have to find something else that is holding you back (other than your ability as a runner). And when you find out you're just not as fast as you want to be, your fragile little ego just won't be able to take it.

Stop whining.

Often issues are discussed without proper data to either refute or accept what one says. What follows is research that was initially used to investigate flat indoor tracks and the negative effect in NCAA qualifying. Banked track and oversized tracks came into the research equation. As one reviews the data the men's 5000 and 3000 is more used for qualifying on an oversized track. BUT, I would suggest that if the same athletes that went to Washington went to lets say, Arkansas (banked 200), we would see similar results. The main difference on the oversized tracks is the ability to put more athletes on the line. But look at the 200. It would appear that the banked 200 tracks would have a significant advantage in qualifying. But again, I would suggest that if Texas A&M took all their great sprinters up to Washington, instead of staying home all the time you would see those sprinters running similar times. So I think the end results for me was at this point in time the data does not state with certainty that Washington is far superior. It is where the great athletes go that will show the results.

THE ISSUE

The qualifying process for NCAA Division I indoor track & field faces many obstacles, mostly in structural variances. We find indoor track & field facilities ranging in size from 145 meters all the way to 320 meters, which has caused difficulty in setting fair and equitable qualifying standards for the NCAA championship.

HISTORY

Historically, NCAA indoor qualifying standards were developed to produce a certain number of athletes that would be in a pool for possible selection. Each year the standards were adjusted based on the total number of “automatic” qualifiers from the previous year(s). If too many athletes attained the automatic qualifying standard, the standard was adjusted to be more challenging, while if too few athletes attained the automatic standard, the standard was relaxed. The provisional qualifying standard was simply developed to ensure a deep enough pool of athletes in each event, so the committee could fill the field after declarations and scratches. At no point in the process was track size a consideration.

Previous the NCAA made decisions under a very different set of dynamics than currently exist. Twenty years ago the standard indoor facility was a flat, 200 meter track. Within the last 10-12 years permanently or hydraulically banked 200 meter tracks, or huge 300 meter oversized facilities have been built. Because of this proliferation of “new” type tracks it has become problematic for the NCAA Division I committee to ensure fair access to collegiate student-athletes. While the Division I Standards sub-committee has attempted each summer to make adjustments to the qualifying standards based on how many athletes hit the auto-qualifier, or provisional qualifier, track size must now become a consideration.

History would tell us that qualifying standards have been established in an isolated manner, without an overarching philosophy. Any time we do research, we look for patterns of consistency, which will guide us through the process. This has not occurred with qualifying standards. I took the Division I, Division II, and Division III indoor 2009 qualifying standards and placed them side by side with adjustments for track size listed. It became apparent there was no consistency between like standards. A case in point to highlight this using 2009 NCAA Division II and NCAA Division III standards is the men’s 1 Mile run. The qualifying standard in both Division II and Division III for the men’s 1 Mile is 4:08.5. That means regardless of division the athlete is running at the same velocity, therefore, any adjustment should be similar. Division II has an adjustment from a larger track to a smaller track of .4, while Division III has an adjustment of 1.2. How one can be three times larger is problematic given the adjustment should be the same.

METHODOLOGY

In May, 2009, Direct Athletics, a meet entry, and data management company which uses web-based technologies for track & field supplied a data set from the 2009 indoor track & field season which comprised almost 50,000 performances that filled 854 pages. The data set from Direct Athletics encompassed the following events: 200, 400, 800, 1 Mile, 3000, 5000, 4x400 Relay, and Distance Medley Relay which are the events affected by track size. This is the first time the track & field committee has had data of this nature. The data provided an opportunity to compare the same athlete running on various sized tracks all throughout the indoor season. The Direct Athletics data covered all three NCAA divisions (DI-DII-DIII) along with athletes from NAIA, and junior colleges. This provided a good cross-section to analyze.

Using the data set from Direct Athletics each event was reviewed to find multiple performances by the same athlete over different sized tracks during the 2009 season. After review, I chose to omit any performance that fell before Christmas, since I felt that would skew the results. Most athletes who compete prior to Christmas are just completing their fall training program that is usually conducted on an outdoor track, and is not consistent with indoor track training.

To attempt to find the most consistent set of performances I settled on the time period of meets being held from January 9th through the end of the regular season, which tended to be the third weekend in February. I chose to exclude any conference championship performance in this analysis since I felt the dynamics of that event itself would add a characteristic not found during the regular season. In research methodology one is looking for the most consistent set of parameters. Most athletes are tapered, rested and have a different motivational perspective for their conference championship, unlike the regular season. So essentially I looked at a 7-week period to compare performances.

I also looked specifically for performances that would come in successive weeks, or perhaps separated by two weeks. If I found an athlete that competed on January 9th on a flat 200 track in the 400 meters, and then competed again on February 14th on an oversized track in the 400 meters, I did not feel that was a good comparative situation. Ideally, what I was looking for were situations where an athlete competed in three or four successive weeks on both sized tracks since it would provide an excellent comparison. An example of this would be a hypothetical female athlete “A” competing in the 400 meters.

January 10 58.10 200 flat track

January 17 58.01 200 flat track

January 24 57.88 200 flat track

January 31 56.22 300 meter track

February 7 57.94 200 flat track

February 14 56.01 300 meter track

This analysis would provide relative information on the time differential between a flat 200 track and an oversized 300 meter track. In this example I would have recorded a time differential of 1.8 (an average time of the two 300 meter performances with an average time of the flat 200 performances) for athlete “A”.

LIMITATION OF STUDY

One limitation in the Direct Athletics data set is athletes from the top ranked programs never compete on flat 200 meter tracks. Not one of the top 10 scoring teams (NCAA Indoor finish) from either gender competed on a flat 200 track during the 2009 season. In fact, the only top 20 programs from either gender that actually competed on a flat 200 facility were ones that have a flat 200 meter track on their campus, and utilized it for one or two home contests. One could surmise from this coaches of top ranked programs know they must compete on facilities that provide the best opportunity for qualifying which does not include flat 200 tracks.

A second limitation is that Direct Athletics is not the exclusive data entry company for colleges. I would estimate Direct Athletics has about 60% of the market and the size of the data set they did have should provide us confidence in the outcomes.

A third limitation is the data set was not comprehensive enough to make a conclusion between 300 meter tracks and banked 200 tracks. That was one of the peripheral issues we were hoping to address from the data set since we had had some preliminary discussions about whether to separate banked 200 tracks and 300 meter tracks when it came to NCAA qualifying standards. While Division II and Division III do currently separate those two facilities, unfortunately, from the data received no conclusions could be drawn between the two. If Direct Athletics is chosen by the NCAA as the only acceptable meet entry company for 2010, this type of analysis will be possible during the post-2011 indoor season (two full seasons of analysis).

DIFFERENCE IN TRACK SIZE

In indoor track & field the actual size of the track affects the ability to run fast, and thus achieve a qualifying performance. Those events most affected by track size include the 200, 400, 800, 1 Mile, 3000, 5000, 4x400 Relay, and Distance Medley Relay. Track size does not have an effect on the 60, 60 Hurdles, Triple Jump, Long Jump, High Jump, Pole Vault, Shot Put, and Weight Throw. The combined events are affected only in the Women’s Pentathlon 800, and the Men’s Heptathlon 1000.

All oval (or circular) tracks cause a runner to slow somewhat when running on the turn as opposed to running on the straight. This is true on indoor tracks (flat or banked) as well as outdoor tracks. This is caused primarily because on each stride a runner loses contact with the track for a brief period of time, depending on the speed of the runner. While in this “flight” phase the runner continues in a straight line that is a tangent to the turn. When the runner lands they must use a small part of their momentum (energy) to redirect themselves such that they are back on line with the circular path they are trying to follow. This happens every step on the turn as a runner compensates and adjusts to the motion. This is momentum (and time) lost which is not lost when running in a straight line. Banking the turns reduces this effect somewhat (again depending on the speed of the runner), but does not cancel the effect entirely.

The radius of the turn also has a small effect in the overall time of a race. An oversize track does not just run faster because the turns are more gentle, it also runs faster because the runner has to negotiate fewer turns during the same race. For example, a miler on a 200 meter track runs 16 turns, while the same race on a 300 meter runs only 11 turns. It is this 5-turn differential which contributes to faster times on oversize tracks.

While there presently is no formula or conversion factor known to synthesize this occurrence into a mathematical process, we do know that there are multiple factors involved and we have a data set which is more than ample to demonstrate the negative effect of a flat track.

FACILITY REVIEW

Currently there are at least 59 Division I institutions which have a flat 200 meter track facility, while 17 utilize a banked 200 meter facility, and 14 have an oversized facility ranging from 236 meters to 320 meters. There are other odd-sized configurations (160 meter, 176yd, etc.) but for the purpose of this examination the only three examined were the flat 200, banked 200, and oversized.

There are also three non-Division I institutions that have an oversized or banked facility, which may host Division I programs (Grand Valley State, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an NCAA Division II institution has a new 300 meter track facility, and they host many Division I programs in the region). For this analysis only Division I facilities were examined.

Approximately 63% of all Division I institutions that have an indoor track & field facility have a flat 200 track. It would be both logical and rationale for us to assume that if 63% of Division I institutions have a flat 200 track, and if those institutions hosted 63% of the available meets on those facilities, then somewhere around that same percentage would be qualifying marks for the championships. This is not happening since the trend has been to move away from competing on 200 flat tracks in lieu of banked or oversized tracks.

While bringing back the ability of institutions to host meets on their 200 meter flat facility was not a primary function of this analysis, it is a positive by-product of the recommendations. Track & Field is under scrutiny by administrators all over the country in this time of cost-containment and financial efficiency. Serious questions have been raised by athletic directors as to why their coaching staff can’t/won’t host competitions for their fans, and for financial purposes. These adjustments to the indoor qualifying standards will provide a better opportunity for the 63% of Division I institutions who have 200 meter flat tracks. In the end we should be hopeful that more teams will choose to compete at a institution that has a 200 flat track, and not be worried their athletes have no chance of attaining an NCAA qualifying mark.

200 meter FLAT Division I Track Facilities (59)

Arkansas State Army Ball State Bowling Green Brown

Bucknell Central Michigan Clemson Colgate Colorado

Connecticut Cornell Dartmouth Delaware Eastern Illinois

E. Michigan E. Washington Farl-Dickinson Florida George Mason

Hampton Houston Illinois Illinois State Indiana State

Iowa Kansas Kansas State Lehigh Liberty

LSU Manhattan Maryland (PGC) McNeese St. Michigan

Michigan State Minnesota Missouri North Carolina Northern Iowa

Ohio State Pittsburgh Princeton Purdue Oklahoma

Rhode Island Robert Morris Seton Hall Southern Illinois South Carolina

Syracuse Utah State Washington St. Weber State W. Illinois

W. Michigan Wisconsin Wisconsin(Mil) West Virginia

200 meter BANKED Division I Track Facilities (17)

Armory, NYC Arkansas Boise State Boston Univer. Harvard

Idaho State Indiana IUPUI (NIFS) Montana State Navy

Nebraska New Mexico Penn State Reggie Lewis Texas A&M

Virginia Tech Yale

OVERSIZED Division I Track Facilities (14)

Air Force – 268m Akron – 300m Appalachian St.– 300m BYU – 352 yds. E. Tennessee St – 280y

Idaho – 290 m Iowa State – 300m Kentucky – 291m Kent State – 300m Middle Tenn. St.-280y

N. Arizona -300m Notre Dame – 352yd Texas Tech – 233m Washington – 307m

2009 ANALYSIS OF NCAA QUALIFYING

An analysis of the 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Indoor Qualifying Performances is an indicator of the issue facing coaches and athletes in their attempt to reach lofty NCAA standards. Unlike outdoor track, where all facilities are exactly the same size (400 meters, although radius may be different), which provides more standardization in the qualifying process, indoor tracks seem to be forcing institutions to travel to the banked or oversized facilities in hopes of hitting an NCAA standard.

In 2009 there were 1322 indoor Proof of Performance (POP) forms submitted for the women. Of those 1322 POP forms 583 (44%) would be the ones we should examine as they come from the grouping of events that would be affected by track size.

Here is the breakdown of number of qualifiers in each event with the number in parentheses after the event the total number of qualifiers in that event:

200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED

Women’s 200 (57) 2 47 8

Women’s 400 (72) 6 49 17

Women’s 800 (83) 2 45 36

Women’s 1 Mile (117) 7 54 56

Women’s 3000 (94) 3 43 48

Women’s 5000 (76) 5 40 31

Women’s 4x400 (52) 0 27 25

Women’s DMR (32) 0 19 13

TOTAL 25 (4%) 324 (56%) 234 (40%)

We can contrast that with the breakdown of the 739 NCAA qualifying POP forms submitted from those events that would not be affected by track size although this may not be an exact representation as it would be logical to assume athletes in the following events would have traveled to meets with their teammates looking to run fast on the above events.

200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED

Women’s Long Jump (76) 15 39 22

Womens’ Triple Jump (71) 11 48 12

Women’s High Jump (62) 9 34 19

Women’s Pole Vault (115) 17 50 48

Women’s Shot Put (87) 17 30 40

Womens’ Weight Throw (75) 19 30 26

Women’s 60 sprint (78) 11 42 35

Women’s 60 Hurdles (109) 29 54 26

Women’s Pentathlon (66) * 14 32 22

TOTAL 142 (19%) 359 (48%) 250 (33%)

For the men in 2009 there were 1308 indoor Proof of Performance (POP) forms submitted for the men. Of those 1308 POP forms 581 (44%) would be the ones we should examine as they come from the grouping of events which would be affected by track size. Here is the breakdown of number of qualifiers in each event with the number in parentheses after the event the total number of qualifiers in that event:

200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED

Men’s 200 (67) 4 40 23

Men’s 400 (77) 1 39 37

Men’s 800 (119) 3 47 69

Men’s 1 Mile (77) 2 37 38

Men’s 3000 (65) 3 22 40

Men’s 5000 (73) 1 13 59

Men’s 4x400 (58) 1 17 38

Men’s DMR (45) 0 15 30

TOTAL 15 (2.5%) 230 (39%) 344 (59%)

200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED

Men’s Long Jump (65) 5 44 16

Men’s Triple Jump (88) 9 71 8

Men’s High Jump (75) 17 35 23

Men’s Pole Vault (85) 14 54 17

Men’s Shot Put (72) 12 32 28

Men’s Weight Throw (92) 25 31 36

Men’s 60 sprint (77) 17 37 13

Men’s 60 Hurdles (80) 19 40 21

Men’s Pentathlon (65) 16 33 16

TOTAL 134 (20%) 377 (54%) 178 (25%)

Cleary, track size makes a significant difference between the ability to qualify on flat 200 track in those events most affected by track size. On the women’s side only 4% of the qualifiers in the most affected events (200-400-800-1 Mile-3000-5000-4x400-DMR) qualified on a flat 200 facility while 19% of athletes qualified on a like facility in events where track size is not as important (LJ-TJ-HJ-PV-SP-Wt-60-60H-Hept). On the men’s side only 2.5% of the qualifiers in the most affected events qualified on a flat 200 facility while 20% of athletes qualified on a like facility in events where track size is not as important.

(Yawn) Brojos continue to rip UW track

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