RunBritain rankings

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HappyG(rrr) Jul 2019 10:41am, 9 Jul 2019 32,019 posts	0 HappyG(rrr) Ah, no Stu, that's only if the event is listed but has no results yet. The event isn't even listed. I'll give it a few days and also see if email is answered. G
Bazoaxe Jul 2019 10:42am, 9 Jul 2019 14,860 posts	0 Bazoaxe It took about two weeks for a recent race I did to appear.
HappyG(rrr) Jul 2019 10:46am, 9 Jul 2019 32,020 posts	0 HappyG(rrr) I need to be patient then Bazo. Thanks for info! I was just interested in its SSS and vSSS scores, whether I could tell myself that 1:34 on that route was "worth" 1:32 on a flatter route or something. But I suspect I'm kidding myself as a it was net downhill, even though it had a bit of up at the start! G
J2R Jul 2019 11:28am, 9 Jul 2019 2,127 posts	0 J2R I agree with westmoors about the skewing of parkruns. I ran a 5K road race PB a couple of months ago, which is undoubtedly one of my best ever runs, but it didn't figure at all in my Run Britain rankings, whereas a couple of parkruns where I got a good placing without actually going flat out earned me worthwhile points. If I wanted to get a much better handicap, I could easily do it by focusing on parkruns, especially ones run the days before big local races, where people are holding back. So it's possible to game the system a little. I still think it's a fun thing, but I'm no longer so sure it's that useful as a measure of how you're doing. With a little re-tweaking of the algorithms it could be better, I think.
Surrey Phil Jul 2019 1:20pm, 9 Jul 2019 3,076 posts	0 Surrey Phil I haven't done many races recently and my ranking has gone up. I usually do marathons as I like the challenge instead of shorter events in which I will finish much higher up the field. As a result, I find myself having to enter an odd 10k just to bring my handicap down. Sadly, if I really want my handicap to plummet, I would have to stick to 5k and 10k events instead of pushing myself which is why I run in the first place.
SPR Jul 2019 7:17pm, 9 Jul 2019 28,357 posts	0 SPR Surrey Phil - The difference between your 5k/10k and marathon WAVAs is huge. No ranking system is going to rank those the same. That said, if you like marathons, do them and forget about rankings. P.S. you can push yourself over other distances too. J2R - Placings don't get you points, it's how your performance compares to your best performance Vs how others performances compare to their best. If the score calculated from that is lower than your handicap, it will improve (you may have meant this). So, yes a load of runners jogging while you run close to your best would skew things but how often does that happen and what's the solution other than ignoring parkrun?
larkim Jul 2019 7:56pm, 9 Jul 2019 8,048 posts	0 larkim I can see the logic that a small field, club level, eyeballs out 5k on the road is perhaps more likely to see participants getting close to their PBs or benchmark times than a parkrun may be.
J2R Jul 2019 12:09pm, 10 Jul 2019 2,131 posts	0 J2R SPR, I'm aware that placings as such don't get you points, but if you get a higher placing than usual, you have de facto done better relative to other runners, which is what gets you the points. My issue is really that it's easy for me to game the system if I want. I could pretty well guarantee a handicap boost by running a good time at one of my local parkruns, without putting in anything like the extra effort compared with my normal performance that I would have to do to get a comparable boost from a road race. The solution for me isn't to ignore parkruns but just to take the whole ranking/handicap thing with a pinch of salt. I'm currently on the best running form of my life, but this is not reflected in my handicap, which is a little down on what it has been a few times in the last 3 years.
SPR Jul 2019 12:27pm, 10 Jul 2019 28,371 posts	0 SPR J2R - "but if you get a higher placing than usual, you have de facto done better relative to other runners" Only if the same runners turn up, if different runners, it's about how the other runners perform relative to 'expectation'. Agree about pinch of salt, it's only supposed to be way of ranking runners across distances. Your performances at distances you do and whether you're happy with that is what counts.
larkim Jul 2019 3:46pm, 10 Jul 2019 8,055 posts	0 larkim You've made me look at the scores in detail now in a different way. By using the &debug=y addition to the rbr URL you can see the raw scores, and sort them accordingly. So according to RHR, my 8 best handicap performances (excluding the time penalty element as that is just to keep things "fresh") are:- 3000 10:43.5 5M 31:21 parkrun 19:14 parkrun 19:01 parkrun 18:58 5K 18:14 HM 86:25 10K 38:44 With the exception of the parkruns, all are PB performances. The parkruns are all actually course PBs, so good hard performances, but in raw times they are not up there with my best, though they were parkruns where I can recall myself "going for it". The net score is effectively the time score that you achieve for the run minus the SSS element. So for example the 19:14 nets a "pace score" of 8.1, but deduct a high SSS for that day of 2.6 and the net score is 5.5. Which I suppose you could say supposedly says "you ran at a pace which, adjusting for what appear to be factors affecting all runners that day, is equivalent to a "pace score" of 5.5. Whereas for my 5k PB, the "pace score" for that event is 6.0, but the SSS adjustment is low at 0.4 so makes it appear to be a less strong performance that day, despite me knowing that is the best 5k I have ever run (and probably ever will). The low SSS that day is presumably because so many people targeted that run as a PB attempt, whereas the 19:14 parkrun was not targetted as a peak effort by many. It's quite rare (in my runs at least) to see parkruns with SSS scores of less than 1.0, most often they are 1.5-3.0. Whereas "proper" races seem to rarely score more than 1.5, and often are much lower (and even negative in some cases). So on that basis, it does look like the impact of parkruns is something of a skew to the overall handicap figure, more than I had assumed I must admit. To drop a whole point in "pace score" at parkrun I need to improve a result by roughly 30s. But I could drop a whole point off my handicap by running at the same or even a slower pace, and picking up a SSS bonus. It is, of course, just a bit of fun as SPR says. But with parkrun being less about an all out race and more about participation, there is an argument for tweaking the algorithm to make something of an adjustment for that perhaps?