How does Tully determine where speed ratings start?

Like a normed test, they are standardized relative to a single course at a single point in time. They assume that average runners are fairly similar in most big races and include corrections for raceday conditions. They are understood to be imperfect measures by most people, including their creator, but they can be interesting.

Personally, I'd love it if there were a simple calculator or spreadsheet available so that I coach could get a better sense, for instance, of whether certain runners are having a good day or others on the team are having a bad day. Even just a historical list of races with correction factors would do the trick, I think.

Man that was a huge word salad that didn't come close to answering the question. What do you mean by average runner? Average time on the course throughout all races? Average time just in the elite varsity race?

For instance in this made up race, a runner runs 14:00 and gets a 200 speed rating. If 200 points is worth 600 seconds, that is 10 minutes flat. If you add the 10 minutes to the 14:00, you get a starting time of 24:00 which is 0 points. What is the significance of 24:00? Is 0 meant to represent a runner with literally no speed?

Ruppert wrote:

Man that was a huge word salad that didn't come close to answering the question. What do you mean by average runner? Average time on the course throughout all races? Average time just in the elite varsity race?

For instance in this made up race, a runner runs 14:00 and gets a 200 speed rating. If 200 points is worth 600 seconds, that is 10 minutes flat. If you add the 10 minutes to the 14:00, you get a starting time of 24:00 which is 0 points. What is the significance of 24:00? Is 0 meant to represent a runner with literally no speed?

He told me, and this is close to the direct quote:

In order to understand it you would have to have no life, I have no life. LOL Seriously!

I live about an hour from him and we've talked often.

the first rule of Speed Ratings is- DO NOT COMPLAIN OR QUESTION THEM!!!

That's the only rule.

OK- he USED to have a link on his website that explained them. I tried reading it and got dizzy!!

I don't if it's still there. If you have an engineer's skill in math you can try emailing him and asking.

His email is at the bottom of the webpage.

He has several articles in which he explains them. Here is one: http://www.tullyrunners.com/SpeedRate.htm

Ruppert wrote:

Man that was a huge word salad that didn't come close to answering the question. What do you mean by average runner? Average time on the course throughout all races? Average time just in the elite varsity race?

For instance in this made up race, a runner runs 14:00 and gets a 200 speed rating. If 200 points is worth 600 seconds, that is 10 minutes flat. If you add the 10 minutes to the 14:00, you get a starting time of 24:00 which is 0 points. What is the significance of 24:00? Is 0 meant to represent a runner with literally no speed?

It wasn't word salad, you just aren't thinking very hard. I actually thought it was pretty good. None of us appear to be statisticians, which might be why it seems like word salad, but thinking of it like a standardized test is smart. Every ACT or GRE or LSAT is a different test insofar as having different questions (different race conditions, different teams), and the testers simply make a "standard" curve from all of the different test scores that come in (race times). So you're not so much looking at outliers, like Nico Young's 13:39, but rather looking at the pack as a whole, then plotting a "standard" curve from there (after which you can score the outliers).

If you're an NBA fan, it's also similar to how John Hollinger formulates PER. PER is not a score taken directly from raw stats (e.g. a "0" PER being an athlete with "literally no" skills). Rather, he finds the group of "average" NBA players based on a formula involving raw stats and then based on that formula, plots upward and downward. So Michael Jordan posting a 30 PER in 1993 vs. LeBron posting the same PER in 2013 or whatever would mean that Michael Jordan was the same amount better than the average NBA player in 1993 than LeBron was in 2013.

Agree with creeky. A basic understanding of intro level college stats and you should be able understand speed ratings at a high level (like comparing to NBA PER ratings).

Ruppert wrote:

I get that every point is worth 3 seconds, but how does he determine where the fixed point is for 0 points? I never understood this. How does he adjust for weather and different courses, etc? People put so much stock in speed ratings but how much do we really know about them?

I think the other people didn't quite get the subtlety of the question. There were explanations about the spread and distributions of the times, but the number is still arbitrary. You can pick any number scaling system to represent the data. He chose 3 points/second with a 0 being 26:00 at a local 5k course. It was an arbitrary choice; now he has a set standard and can continue it.