I ran a very windy 5 miler on Sunday, and have been joking about adjusting my time for the wind. Basically 2 miles with a tail wind, two with a headwind and one where it wasn't a factor.
Then I saw our local paper's article on the race, including that the men's winner finished "in 29 minutes, 45 seconds. His winning time was slower than his fifth-place finish in 2012 (28:02) and fourth-place finish last year (28:34)."
I had a goal of sub 50, and finished just under 52. Given the winner was 90 seconds slower than his prior two year average, I think I'm justified in saying goal met, not just joking about it. What think you all?
race obsessed
You can't control the weather on race day, you can only run another race.
Walk-Jogger
How fast was the wind blowing? For me, if it's a steady breeze of 10-15 MPH, 2 miles of headwind would be very nearly cancelled out by 2 miles of the same tailwind. If the headwinds are higher than 15-20 mph then I give up more time than I can make back. You can't be sure what the men's winner's training has gone like this winter, so you can't just assume the wind is the one reason his time was slower.
I ran an 8-mile relay leg a couple years ago with a gusty 35 MPH tailwind the entire ways - it was fastest 8 mile run of my life. What a blast!
Retired & Loving It
This is complicated because a headwind is also created when you run and I think that must be taken into account.
Jack Daniels stated on one of his videos that you usually do not get back in a tailwind what a headwind took away, so it is possible you lost those two minutes or maybe even more. Or they were cancelled out and you lost none at all.
See if you can find the wind speed somewhere, it would be on Garmin's website if you use one.
Maybe I'm hardcore about this but you can't say you "met" a particular goal if you didn't run that fast regardless of the reason. I went to Wrightsville Beach with a goal of running a 3:03 which is a 6:59 pace. Unfortunately, it was 61 degrees with 100% humidity at the start so I knew from the outset that 3:03 wasn't happening. Instead, I adjusted based on the conditions and ran a 3:08. I still think it's one of the best races I have ever run because I ran it intelligently while people were blowing up all around me because they failed to adjust for the conditions. Still, I did not meet my goal of a sub 7:00 pace even if I did run a great race. By the same token, if you have a race in really harsh winds, that will obviously slow you down but your time is what it is. What you can say is, "The wind may have slowed me but I still left it all out on the course so I'm pleased with the effort."
Short term goal: 17:59 5K
Mid term goal: 2:54:59 marathon
Long term goal: To say I've been a runner half my life. (I started running at age 45).