"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Monday, June 26, 2017

Early Panic Numbers Post

Five days until the Afton 50K trail race... Early this year, I felt 5:00 was likely, though I've never done well there (5:28 I think is my best). Now 6:00 seems likely, which is still an improvement over the Chippewa Moraine 50K debacle of 7:00.

I got to wondering what Afton times signify for the Superior Sawtooth 100 Mile, which I'm doing this year. Most people who ran both in the same year finished Afton between 6:30 and 7:00, which surprised me a bit. There's enough data to find that: finishing Afton in 7:00 gives a slightly better than 50% chance of finishing Superior in 38:00 (the cut-off). 6:00 improves the odds to 6 out of 7. 5:30 gives 14/15 and 5:00 gives 38/39.

That's the chances of not timing out, however. The overall finish rate hovers around 66% at Superior (75% in perfect weather), because most people who drop do not drop because they miss cut-offs.

Finishing Afton does not increase the odds of finishing Superior.

2 comments:

wildknits said...

Heck, I dropped at Voyageur in 2012 with at least an hour cushion on the cut-offs (I wasn't enjoying myself and didn't care much for the flood modified course) and then went on to sign up for, and complete, my first 100 at Sawtooth. The lesson I took from this: you can't let one race define any others.

By the way - your idea posted years ago that tripling your Voyageur time is a good predictor of your Sawtooth time was kind of accurate for me (I actually finished about an hour and a half faster then that formula would have predicted). I would add that doubling your Wild Duluth 100K time is also a good predictor of your Sawtooth time (well, at least it held true for me).

Have fun at Afton! After all, isn't that what's most important about these events?

SteveQ said...

This just got 1500 hits! What's the deal - did this get linked somewhere?