JK, Hodge, Derderian, Malmo et al: What do you guys think of today's Boston performances?

The BAA has $10 million in the bank? In case they lose their sponsor? Excuse me?

How about using that money to start an elite running club for the benefit of New England athletes? You could call it "Boston Athletic Assoc...." Oh, wait a minute....

Talk about trying to persuade the cart to pull the horse.

Giles,

There is a legal difference between the Boston Athletic Association, its board of directors and membership and the Boston Athletic Association running club. The former administers the event and is becoming an events corporation with the addition of more and more events and the latter is a running club ostensibly sponsored by the richer association and by extension its sponsors.

Tom

It is both stupid and bizarre.

I am just amazed that what seems to be a majority of Letsrunners on various threads are discounting the wind. Sometimes the majority on here get it right, but most definitely not this time. I am so baffled by this, but maybe it's just one or two posting under different names?

The wind was the reason for the 2:03:02. Period. The same effort at London and Rotterdam under perfect conditions would have been at least a minute slower. Duh.

Thankfully at least some here (malmo, Brian, Flagpole, wejo) get it.

oinjivcsz wrote:

Derderian wrote:

Yes, it is chickens and eggs: do you get the runners, then the money to pay them or the reverse? But Davila's performance that came from the Hansons club system did serve notice to Kenya.

In the old amateur days the Greater Boston Track Club was better than countries, but that can't be repeated without professional organization.

Where might the next and the next professional clubs come from?

Tom

-OTC elite

-Hansons

-Adidas Boulder Running Co

-McMillanElite

-In the Arena

oh yeah, ZAP fitness and some others as well

ZAP, a very good group but the name does not evoke a place so it is hard for the public to understand. If it were North Carolina Zap and appeared so in results next to Oregon Elite people would get the idea that the competition is national in scope. Of course all the teams have to organize themselves into a professional league and market themselves as a disciplined unit like the other professional sports. It is possible now because of the amount of money collected in all the entry fees. These teams can organize to bring value to races and should get appearance fees just as do individual professional runners. Competition among these professional clubs will add excitement to big city races.

There certainly can be professional teams and amateur teams—the big league and the farm teams.

Tom

Malmo or Tom Derderian or anyone.

Anyone know the strongest headwind encountered at Boston...and the results that day.

Was Monday a tailwind, or a tail/side wind.

Can you have a "true" tailwind at Boston?

Along the lines of the above post, on my run today I was wondering what the winning time would be if the wind was blowing in the exact opposite direction.

2:09-2:10?

Of course, some people will still say 2:03.

silly old fossil wrote:

Malmo or Tom Derderian or anyone.

Anyone know the strongest headwind encountered at Boston...and the results that day.

Was Monday a tailwind, or a tail/side wind.

Can you have a "true" tailwind at Boston?

SOF, you don't get a stronger more direct tailwind than Monday.

2008 had a strong wind from the NW, which is pretty damn good. the result was the previous course record.

Here's a map of Boston's course and the wind conditions and direction.

Letsrunner wrote:

Along the lines of the above post, on my run today I was wondering what the winning time would be if the wind was blowing in the exact opposite direction.

2:09-2:10?

3.

More like 2:11-2:12

malmo wrote:

Letsrunner wrote:

Along the lines of the above post, on my run today I was wondering what the winning time would be if the wind was blowing in the exact opposite direction.

2:09-2:10?

3.

More like 2:11-2:12

In 2007..into a ~25mph NE wind if I'm not mistaken..the winning time was 2:14. I feel this is comparable to this year's time...no disrespect to either effort.

Tom, this would be cool, and might be doable on a regional scale. What about a NY v. Boston distance and mid-d track thing? BAA, GBTC, NBB v. CPTC, NYAC? An 800, Mile, 3000 or Steeple, 5000, and maybe a 4 x Mile? Whole thing would take a little over an hour if you did one section each men and women.

Unfortunately the culture of most clubs doesn't mesh with what you're talking about. Yeah, club nats for XC kind of works this way, but that's preseason for most. Clubs for the most part seem to cater to individual desires of their runners, rather than telling them (for instance) that they are racing the mile against the New York club teams on this date.

The price would have to be right, is all I'm saying.

I guarantee that it was more than a minute.

Why?

Because Kara Goucher PR'd by a minute and Alberto has NEVER had a runner ever pr after their debut with him.

I guarantee that it was less than 4 minutes.

Why?

Because Desiree Davila has PR'd in EVERY marathon she has ever run and she was 4 minutes faster than her pr.

I just don't understand it.The BAA has all the resources to put together one of the top elite teams in the country...Didn't the men finish 3rd at XC Club Natls this year?? 6 of the 7 guys on that team are between 23-24 years old. Most of them are working full time jobs or in school...Imagine if they were actually supported with all the resources like Zap, Indinana Elite, McMillan, In the Arena, Oregon TC or the Hansons? But this will probably never happen because there is too much politics involved. Just imagine... Anybody know if the team is actually doing any changes in the future?

nappy hair wrote:

Imagine if they were actually supported with all the resources like Zap, Indinana Elite, McMillan, In the Arena, Oregon TC or the Hansons?

Do you think that all of these programs are supported equally? If so, you are dead wrong.

No silly! Of course they are not supported equally, but I also know they are all supported a whole lot better than the BAA.

You should repeat class because you're missing the point. Comparing athletes between races, even the SAME athletes is bad because the race conditions are different. Boston and NYC don't have rabbits and also may not have the same quality fields as the other big 3, so different races with different scenarious, so it's still apples and oranges.

I am sure you are not going to understand this so let's use an example. Athlete A runs 2:06 in a fully rabbited race in London. Not much variation in pace. Then runs Boston the next year, may be in the same conditioning but without rabbits, the race goes out in 1:05 and there are surges and the same athlete runs 2:09. To top it off, London had a much more elite field while Boston wasn't as competitive at top. Two reasons why the finish time is slower, on top of the course differences. Unless you control for rabbiting, pacing, and overall field quality, making conclusions off of comparing times in the manner you keep doing is a useless endeavor.

WeJo has a very appropriate observation below:

keep it simple wrote:

I am sure you are not going to understand this so let's use an example. Athlete A runs 2:06 in a fully rabbited race in London. Not much variation in pace. Then runs Boston the next year, may be in the same conditioning but without rabbits, the race goes out in 1:05 and there are surges and the same athlete runs 2:09. To top it off, London had a much more elite field while Boston wasn't as competitive at top. Two reasons why the finish time is slower, on top of the course differences. Unless you control for rabbiting, pacing, and overall field quality, making conclusions off of comparing times in the manner you keep doing is a useless endeavor.

You're right, I do understand what you wrote, mostly becasue it bears little resemblance. Boston doesn't go out slow like you want to imagine, and rabbits really don't have much of an effect on marathon running. Marathon paces, even at WR record pace requires little effort and concentration. It's a fuel problem.

In my research into Boston Marathon history the runners faced a NE storm many times. In 1933 Les Pawson ran into what I could only describe as a monster headwind because I could find no reports of wind velocity. Reporters said his arms turned lobster-red from the raw ocean wind. He ran a course record. But Boston has bigger problem to slow the runners than a head wind.

With a head wind the runners are always cooled in Boston in April. Sometimes a tailwind can be hot. Or a lack of wind can be hot. The worse conditions for Boston are heat contained in a slight wind—moving at running speed from the rear. Combined with sunshine and no shade because trees have no leaves yet can yield very hard running conditions. But a headwind is always cool so not the worst conditions at Boston.

Frequently at Boston you can have a tailwind in the beginning that switches to a headwind when the sea-breeze kicks in. That happened in 1976 when temperatures reached over 100°F on parts of the course in the middle but dropped to nearly half that by the finish.

The likelihood of such a scenario is less now that the race starts earlier so the land has less time to heat and trigger the sea-breeze. So ironically an earlier start will someday make for a hotter race for the leaders than for the third wave!

Tom

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.