Croeso 2012

[DJM]

On behalf of the Croeso team, may I apologise for the problems already highlighted regarding the posting of last week's results on the BOF website and the knock-on effect with rankings points.

The main issue is that it seems impossible to register "Croeso" as the organising club for all six days so it has not been possible for one person to upload all the results. We are working on this behind the scenes and hope to complete the task soon.

Please bear with us ...

[Ali Wood]

Interesting - Day 5 Course 8 on BOF Results include people who dnf'd or mp'd

[Ali Wood]

... and on all of the Days so far posted the ranking points seem rather low... not that I'm bothered of course....

[andypat]

Maybe your points will go up once the points for Day 1 and 2 get taken into account

[dorien]

... and on all of the Days so far posted the ranking points seem rather low... not that I'm bothered of course....

Interesting... even my "good" days were 60-80 points down on what I'd have expected for a similar performance a year or two ago. That's far more than can be explained by getting older and slower. I'm guessing that my cohort (M50) were collectively over-ranked when the original seedings were created, and that this is still working its way out of the system two years later. Alternative theories welcome.

It's hard to see a way that the event could generate lower-than-usual scores across the board; I know of other competitors who scored several lifetime bests.

(PS I'm not really bothered either. Honest. )

[babs f]

All of my ranking points were about 100 below what they were for the JK, Scottish 6 days last year and that wet BOKTrot in April. We're talking here about 300 and something as against 400 and something, so quite a big proportion.

I have a theory that it's connected to the grouping of classes on the different courses, since they were quite different to any other event that I've been to in the last couple of years.

(and I'm definitely not bothered, just curious)

[DJM]

The Rankings Appendix states, amongst many other specification clauses, the following

The current scores of all ranked runners are rebased after each event to ensure that the mean current score of all ranked runners is 1000 and the standard deviation of their current scores is 200. This prevents the scores drifting over time.

Unfortunately, this part of the specification appears not to have been implemented in the rankings algorithm, and we are finding that points definitely are drifting (downwards) over time. So, the lower-than-expected points from Croeso are probably more to do with lack of rebasing than anything else.

The powers that be have been aware of this since May, but there appear to be no resources available to update the algorithm accordingly just yet.

[HarryO]

Glad to have an explanation. I have noticed my ranking points noticably 'drifting downwards' over the past 10 months or so. In fact I haven't bettered any of my top six in nine months. I had put it down to an aging body - I am so pleased it's not just me

So if it is not corrected at some point - do we all drift into single figures at sometime in the future

[Scott]

Here's the graph of my ranking points since 1 Jan 2010 (one outlier from when I was injured removed), with a crude linear regression line added.

points.gif (14.6 KiB) Viewed 4629 times

There's definitely a steady upward trend, although sadly I don't think I've actually improved over that period. Anecdotally, my experience is typical of a lot of other, ahem, mediocre M21s - our points are drifting upwards despite our orienteering not getting any better. My personal theory has been that this is a result of our being under-ranking in the initial seeding data.

[EddieH]

Quite right Scot. I regularly run against you young guys and know tht there is no way I'll get useful points. My 2 big big scores this year were when there were veteran ladies in my class, and the other good points this year was a middle race with loads of older people involved.

I have not the slightest doubt that if I chose my classes with points in mind I could increase my ranking at will.

[Ali Wood]

My ranking points (from 5 days completed) were 1135, 1087, 1162, 1160 and 1133. These don't really reflect how each day's run "felt" compared to the others OR, more crucially, to recent runs this year - they seem to be about 30-40 points too low. (Days 1, 3, 4, and 5 runs were relatively trouble free and when that happens I can usually predict the ranking to within 20 or so. )
As someone has pointed out maybe it is affected by junior presence on the course, but that's not an excuse.
No point having a rankings system at all unless the baselines are remedied.

Still not really 'bovvered', honest! If I was I could always run some urban or sprint courses, Eddie...

[Scott]

Don't forget that ranking points are relative to the performance of everybody else on the same course. To me, one of my best ever runs was at the 2011 British Middle Champs, but I got pretty mediocre ranking points for it simply because it was a relatively easy course, and so everybody else had "fantastic runs" as well.

Contrast that with the 2012 JK Long - even though I had a pretty poor run, I got a relatively high score because it was a fairly tough course and lots of other people had (by their own personal standards) even worse runs.

[Jon Brooke]

Ranking points.

In light of comments here - I've just looked at mine and am baffled.

I feel as though I'm running pretty well at the moment and managed to come 11th in the 45L (course 3) - V 21st at the Scottish 6 days last year, but my best day only got me 1157 points whereas at the Scottish 6 days I had 3 scores over 1200.

I'm not really into geeking the results, but is this adjustment happening across the board at other big events?

[andypat]

I feel as though I'm running pretty well at the moment and managed to come 11th in the 45L (course 3) - V 21st at the Scottish 6 days last year, but my best day only got me 1157 points whereas at the Scottish 6 days I had 3 scores over 1200.

I don't think you can directly compare your overall position at Croeso v Oban in terms of performance. Looking at the results of those Scottish competitors who made the trip south almost all seem to have finished significantly higher up the leaderboard than at Oban, suggesting the fields at Croeso were signficantly weaker. My 10th on 45s was my best ever result in a multi day event, but I think that was down to the level of competition as much as my two or three decent runs.

[Ali Wood]

Don't forget that ranking points are relative to the performance of everybody else on the same course.

Well of course. But in terms of 'relative worth', if John Eliteman negotiates a trouble-free run on easy terrain (where everyone's times are less spread out), should he really gain less ranking points than from a trouble-free run on difficult terrain? Interesting question!
I'm pretty sure the standard deviation is taken into account. The results just don't seem to gel with one's intuition on this occasion.....
Would be fascinating to see if anyone in the bottom half of the results has noticed an enhancement to their rankings?