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Interesting race results from 1978. (Read 926 times)

    Rather than simply comparing two points in time, I would like to see graphs indicating yearly trends from 1978 to 2012 including: pace, weight, gender, age, mpw, distance traveled by runner to the race, size of field, and race t-shirt size.

    L Train


       Twenty pounds is estimated to add ~40s per mile to your 5k time

       

      I need to stop eating right now. 

       

      I know this is all general, but to think I could go from high nineteen to mid to high seventeen by losing 20 pounds makes it seem ridiculous that I haven't tried harder to do it.  I spend all this time running and very little concerted effort on the one simple thing it would take to make me demonstrably faster. 

       

      npaden


        Hey, Nathan, where did you find those old results?

         

        I finished first in the 3 mile in 1988 (actually a little farther than 3 miles because the first two or three of us at the front had to double back after turning down the wrong road).  I have written down that my time was 17:16, but it would be nice to see the full results if they are available somewhere.

         

         

        MTA:  Ah, after further review, it looks like you probably got the results from the West Texas Running Club site, but the results seem to be missing from 1979-2003.

         

        Yeah, just happened to see them on the site. 

         

        I think you have to run in the same race as a guy that ends up President to keep the results posted for more than 7 or 8 years! Smile

        Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)

        Current PR's:  Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)


        Feeling the growl again

          I need to stop eating drinking right now. 

           

           

          FTFY.

          "If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does.  There's your pep talk for today.  Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

           

          I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills

           

          xor


            West Texas Running.

             

            Kick ass.

             

              I need to stop eating right now. 

               

              I know this is all general, but to think I could go from high nineteen to mid to high seventeen by losing 20 pounds makes it seem ridiculous that I haven't tried harder to do it.  I spend all this time running and very little concerted effort on the one simple thing it would take to make me demonstrably faster. 

               

              Yeah. I'm starting to realize that on this side of 40, despite the furnace being plenty hot, not everything burns. Alas.

              Runners run

                West Texas Running.

                 

                Kick ass.

                 

                Hell yeah! Well, I'm in West Texas, and running....I don't kick ass, though.
                DoppleBock


                  If it were 1978, I would have a smoke as soon as I was done running instead of eating so much or better yet a smoke at the dinner table.  It was not 1978, but 1988 I love to smoke.

                   

                   

                  A filter for obesity would also be enlightening, methinks.

                   

                  Long dead ... But my stench lingers !

                   

                   

                  lagwagon


                    Nathan,

                     

                    Thanks for the anecdote, very cool find.  

                     

                    As far as field competitiveness goes, I've noticed for a couple of races I ran again this year, while the fields were similar in size, the age group results  are far less competitive now they were 10+ years ago.  (Which is good, because I'm a lot slower now.)  But I've been wondering if it was a real phenomenon or not.  

                     

                    I've seen suggestions that faster times are behind the increased BQ requirements.  Of course it could just be the race is much more popular than it used to be (the bucketlist cofactor).

                     

                    It would be cool to have access to a large race results database and run some analytics. But I think my SAS days are further behind me than the sub 5 miles.

                      Pretty large conclusions to draw from a pretty small sample size.

                       

                      I know what you're saying,but when I think back to my HS days, we'd enter a lot of summer road races. These were mainly 5 and 10ks.  We'd consistently be running in the mid 16s, or mid 35s and never be close to winning over-all or even our age group. Now days, around here you'd be hard pressed to not be the top 3 in any 5/10K with those times. I think part of this is there are just so many races that the talent is distributed across more races. I also think many of the HS/college runners are under a tighter control all year long, especially the summer, and are told not to race as much during the summer. 


                      Why is it sideways?

                        This was a hot topic on our local message board, and on threads like this a couple of things ended up being frustrating.

                         

                        1) What was really the case in the 80s depended upon people remembering what happened 30 years ago. Everyone remembers the big, fast races where they ran a PR. Nobody remembers the podunk races where they ran like crap.

                         

                        2) A lot of the races back in the 80s were short. There wasn't nearly as much emphasis put on course accuracy. Not all of them, but feed this info back into the memory problem above and you start getting a weird feedback loop between memory and course accuracy and common times.

                         

                        3) As has already been mentioned, the number of races has dramatically increased: we had four races in our municipality on the 4th. Two of which were named "Firecracker 5k."

                         

                        4) The back of the field has definitely changed dramatically, and along with that, most of the races now cater to the back of the field. This means that if you are a fast runner looking to run a fast time, let's just say the "culture" of most races are not really set up for that.

                         

                        5) There is a lot of regional differences in the quality of road racing. An organized club scene or running community that values faster runners and competition can make a huge difference. We have gotten a wee bit more organized here in Nashville, and all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork. For a while, there was just not much here racing-wise that would interest a really top collegiate runner in continuing to run. New England has always been a leader in this, but Lubbock, TX probably less so.

                         

                        6) Related to 4), I think people in the 80s seemed to really value racing as racing. Nowadays people run for all sorts of reasons, and running faster is just one of many reasons for most people. I think if people really cared about running faster and thought about getting faster every time they ran instead of, say, thinking about how to train correctly or what their heart rate is or what pace their Garmin displays or their lactate threshold or their miles per week, then they would run faster. It's so easy to get distracted these days, in case you haven't noticed.

                           

                          5) There is a lot of regional differences in the quality of road racing. An organized club scene or running community that values faster runners and competition can make a huge difference. We have gotten a wee bit more organized here in Nashville, and all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork. For a while, there was just not much here racing-wise that would interest a really top collegiate runner in continuing to run. New England has always been a leader in this, but Lubbock, TX probably less so.

                           

                          +1

                           

                          In my experience, "club races" are faster than "event runs."  I did a New Year's 5K, took 10th with a 20:20-something.  Showed up on a Wednesday to this race, and took 42nd with a faster time and a smaller field. 

                          "When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." 
                          Emil Zatopek

                          npaden


                            Talk about some pretty large conclusions!  Smile

                             

                            Not sure what regional differences have to do with the difference between a 1978 race and a 2012 race on the same course and location, but you are more than welcome to make whatever conclusions you want. 

                             

                            I was just providing some anecdotal evidence that there were more dudes that ran fast in 1978 than there was in 2012 on the same course.

                             

                            I will agree that there are a lot of folks running in these races now that aren't really "racing" though.  I'm one of them.  There is no chance that I'm going to be running with a chance to win, I'm back there actually enjoying myself with my fancy GPS and HRM.  Horror of all horrors, some folks that I know actually run some races as training runs!  Surprised

                            Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)

                            Current PR's:  Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)


                            Why is it sideways?

                              Talk about some pretty large conclusions!  Smile

                               

                              Not sure what regional differences have to do with the difference between a 1978 race and a 2012 race on the same course and location, but you are more than welcome to make whatever conclusions you want. 

                               

                              I was just providing some anecdotal evidence that there were more dudes that ran fast in 1978 than there was in 2012 on the same course.

                               

                              I will agree that there are a lot of folks running in these races now that aren't really "racing" though.  There is no chance that I'm going to be running with a chance to win, I'm back there actually enjoying myself with my fancy GPS and HRM.  Horror of all horrors, some folks that I know actually run some races as training runs!  Surprised

                               

                              Sorry, didn't mean to insult you. I guess I've just thought about this issue a lot because like I say it bounced around our local message board a lot, so I had something to say. (I am not drawing these conclusions from your race comparison.)


                              Best Present Ever

                                 

                                5) There is a lot of regional differences in the quality of road racing. An organized club scene or running community that values faster runners and competition can make a huge difference. We have gotten a wee bit more organized here in Nashville, and all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork. For a while, there was just not much here racing-wise that would interest a really top collegiate runner in continuing to run. New England has always been a leader in this, but Lubbock, TX probably less so.

                                 

                                 

                                 I've seen this happen locally.  There is an organized post-collegiate team training here. Not that many runners in all, but enough that a number of local races have gotten faster.  

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