I love that Meylan puts out a lot of data on races outside of my area, but the guy has fallen in love with certain performances and is too stubborn or simply blind to realize how off he is. I've given very clear data before why Amber Trotter's 180.3 is way off. Look at the time gaps between Trotter and the other CA girl at Foot Locker that year and the time gap between that same girl and Trotter at the CA state meet. Same for the gaps with the boys from CA at Foot Locker and the boys gaps to her at the state meet.
As I recall, her speed rating jumped up nearly 30 points between the state meet and Foot Locker. How tf could she possibly run 30 seconds faster per mile all of a sudden? Not buying it for a second. If the ratings are based upon time gaps between runners, that means a national field could let a top runner go and then they all jog just watching each other and whoever went off the front is going to have an insane speed rating that relative to other speed ratings you see doesn't mean jack. Just look at this below
2001 CA state meet time and speed rating followed by Foot Locker time and speed rating
Amber Trotter: 17:01/151 - 16:24/180
Julie Allen: 18:29/122 - 17:50/151
Time gap between Trotter and Allen is 1:28 at the state meet and then 1:26 at Footlocker. So what's more likely here guys, they both improved their fitness enough to warrant a 29 point jump in their speed rating, or maybe, just maybe, the speed rating is hyper-inflated for that race or it simply does not mean what most people think it means.
This is the problem with Meylan's speed ratings; a 170 can actually be a better absolute performance than a 180, for instance someone could run a faster time on the same course but if they don't win by as much it theoretically won't be considered as good of a performance. Our minds don't naturally think of 170 being greater than 180 and this problem is only compounded by the fact the speed ratings are put in numerical order to rank them when that's not what's supposed to be done at all.
It's his system so he can label any race whatever he wants, but it's vastly misunderstood and misapplied, even by himself.