EUOC Big Weekend Ranking points....

[Angry Haggis]

Split from here

Preliminary results can be found here.

I really appreciate how quickly you got the results up on the BOF website, by the way - great to know so quickly how well you did by a fair measure, i.e. how many ranking points you got.

Even if the results/ranking points get refined over the next few days, that's not a problem as the points there are unlikely to drift much, in practice. (I'm very much in favour of getting the points straight up and sorting out problems after!)

Orienteering in general is very good at getting up results quickly compared to other sports. e.g. the Aonach Mor uphill race 2012 results (1 January) are still not up!

[SIman]

Thanks AH

Results are now on the BOF site as well, but I haven't done anything about removing runners in the mass starts from the ranking points calculations. I can't see an easy way of doing that (and I am not sure why it matters - discuss.)

[andy]

I can't see an easy way of doing that (and I am not sure why it matters - discuss.)

It doesn't matter, but if BOF say it does then you should adhere to their rules.
Sort the csv by class and remove all the rows for the mass starts?

[andypat]

LIkewise - echo the sentiments about getting the results up so fast! Great job.

Apparently mass start events are excluded from ranking points calculations - I suppose Graeme's theory of following comes into it - some sort of advantage maybe?

I am pretty sure there were a few folk who didnt do the mass start because it meant you wouldnt get ranking/sosol points too.

[greywolf]

it does matter - especially here where some folk had a mass start and others didn't - could be a huge advantage to many of the former.

SIman: I think you have to upload them as two separate races. great job getting the results online so quickly, btw.

[SIman]

I have capitulate and the BOF ranking points no longer credit those in the mass starts. (I removed their BOF numbers)

[graeme]

I have capitulate and the BOF ranking points no longer credit those in the mass starts.

Which broadly made no difference at all. Top runners on brown lose a few points, lower runners gain a few. Opposite way round in blue.
Doesn't look like many of the chasing starters would have got a counting score anyway.

So, no evidential support for people who think mass starts are unrepresentative.

[awk]

Doesn't look like many of the chasing starters would have got a counting score anyway.

I remain pretty convinced that it's getting harder and harder to score points whatever.

[housewife]

the senior women's rankings are totally swayed by how many urban races each participant has run during the year. i lead due to scoring massive points at lossiemouth, and will be out of sight if i get the predicted 1301 on the uploaded results. it is useful for impressing the boss when trying to get time off at work during busy periods but is otherwise utterly useless. weighting for big competitions would make it much more relevant too.

[andypat]

Are you sure you arent underselling yourself a wee bit?

You seem to have well beaten some higher ranked men in your storming run on Saturday. Maybe the reason you are getting higher points in urban is becasue of the crossover effect where you are running against (and beating) men who have a higher ranking, as distinct from for example the Scottish 6 days where its a female only course.

Perhaps you are dragging womens ranking points up to where they should be?

[madmike]

Are you sure you arent underselling yourself a wee bit?

You seem to have well beaten some higher ranked men in your storming run on Saturday. Maybe the reason you are getting higher points in urban is becasue of the crossover effect where you are running against (and beating) men who have a higher ranking, as distinct from for example the Scottish 6 days where its a female only course.

Perhaps you are dragging womens ranking points up to where they should be?

You maybe right Andypat, Housewife beat a well known male poster on this forum whose current top 6 rankings scores are: 1261, 1258, 1258, 1255, 1260, 1293. His latest score being 1293 so 1300ish looks like proper reward for a good performance.

mind you the 1293 was also an Urban race

[housewife]

the senior women's rankings are all fairly consistent for the big events, with the winner getting about 1250 and the rest spread as you might expect, but running a long urban race can score you massive points. without meaning to point the finger, i blame the vet men! they just seem to be disproportionatly bad at road running. creaky joints? find it dull? longing for the good old days when oing meant a 2 hour thrash around a rough forest followed by some nice orange squash? yup me too (but then again i did have to deselect the default 'w35' when entering the jk this year).

[madmike]

i blame the vet men! they just seem to be disproportionatly bad at road running.

Maybe so Housewife, or perhaps, to turn it round, are they disproportionatly good at running through the terrain - is there perhaps a strength v speed thing here with one declining more quickly than the other in us veteran men

[awk]

Without meaning to point the finger, i blame the vet men! they just seem to be disproportionatly bad at road running. creaky joints? find it dull? longing for the good old days when oing meant a 2 hour thrash around a rough forest followed by some nice orange squash? yup me too (but then again i did have to deselect the default 'w35' when entering the jk this year).

Longing for the 'good' old days? No.
However, it might well be the vet men who are the cause, although I would suggest an alternative possibiity to being disproportionally bad at road running is that us oldies are on a fairly steady decline, and thus our past scores are almost inevitably going to be higher than our current ability....but you are being measured against our historical scores. The converse also applies - we are having to run against senior women, many of whom are still improving, thus making it tougher to gain against you lot.

Which might be why it seems to be easier to score highly on shorter courses - they are dominated by oldies, whose historical points are giving a higher ranking than current fitness actually indicates. But once on the longer courses, the competition is more likely to be improving seniors.

Just a thought. Certainly, I don't think it's that we perform less well in the urban stuff as compared to terrain. Personally, and without any stats to back it up, I would have thought rather the opposite, as it's the strength that terrain needs that goes quicker than aerobic endurance. And it always seems that when the terrain gets tougher, so the seniors pull out bigger gaps against the vets (which is why vets courses more often produce longer winning times compared to seniors on tough terrain).

And in terrain events, you don't actually run against most of us oldies (especially those of us at the upper end of the M40-50 range), and we don't run against you....

[Spookster]

You maybe right Andypat, Housewife beat a well known male poster on this forum whose current top 6 rankings scores are: 1261, 1258, 1258, 1255, 1260, 1293. His latest score being 1293 so 1300ish looks like proper reward for a good performance.

mind you the 1293 was also an Urban race

Yes, she did.

Looking at parkrun 5km pb's: Housewife 18:17, Spookster 18:41.

And you're right, most of my ranking scores are urban events, because I'm relatively better at urban races (or to put it another way, I don't train enough to be fast in terrain, I was well down the field on Sunday).

But none of that explains why we're getting relatively high ranking scores for this urban race. There must be some well ranked people taking a long time for the scores to get inflated in that way.