At 7:45am, this morning, the weather was 22* F but with the wind chill it was 2 degrees! We registered and instead of standing around freezing our nips off we went out for a little warm up. Once, the blood gets flowing you feel better.
I have yet to understand why people stand around white knuckling their hands together against their chest and just stand there and say things like, "look at those people they are waisting their energy heading out for a run." In reality, I really want to tell them how silly they look.
The Nielson's Challenge is geared more for beginner's and slower runners who put in the training time to get better. I want to get faster, so to me this sounded like it would be beneficial to add to my training regiment. This sounds easy right? Well, here is the kicker, after you have established your base time, this is used to generate your handicap time. What! What? A Handicap time, what it that? Is it like your bowling handicap? To answer your questions here is the break down of how the Neilson's Challenge handicaps are computed, by Bob Royse:
To finish calculating the handicap, the program takes the average time for these five (or fewer) fastest times. If a runner has enough recorded times to reach the five limit, this average is her handicap.
If not, a "penalty" is calculated for too few times. So a runner must have ten recorded times in the past 24 months to not have any penalty calculated.
The closer you are to reaching ten races, the smaller the penalty. To figure your penalty, the program takes the average calculated above and subtracts 9 1/2 minutes. A percentage is determined by subtracting the number of races run from 10.
For example if a runner has run six races, her penalty is 4%. Suppose the average of her three fastest races is 14 1/2 minutes, by subtracting 9 1/2 minutes, you get 5 minutes. Four percent of 5 minutes is 12 seconds. These 12 seconds are subtracted from her average to get her handicap.
All calculations are done and times stored to the tenth of a second. Since beginning runners show the most improvement, straight time comparisons heavily favor them. But they have fewer races, so they will have a bigger percentage penalty to offset this somewhat. In addition, since their times are slower, this penalty is applied to a larger number, so they get a bigger penalty even for the same number of races.
So, you got that right? Easy enough, right? Pppssshhhhh! I am no mathematician so it is gibberish to me! I figure, if I study this hard enough I will eventually get it.
Tomorrow I have the Super Half and 5K run before the Super Bowl. See you all other there!
”I run in the snow, rain, wind and heat. I run until I cannot run anymore then I run some more. I run thru the blur of tears, the aches and pains and then I keep going. I have more running clothes than some running stores, I know Fartklet does not mean like it sounds. I go to bed at 9pm; I get up early just to do it all over again. Why do I do this? Because I am a runner and that's who I am"
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