Database Work

I've been busy this past week bringing my triathlon race database up to date. I'm just about finished. Once I am, I'll have a fairly comprehensive data set of all of my 114 triathlons. That combined with the race reports that I've written (all of my races for the last 6 years plus the Ironman races before then) gives me a pretty rich set of data to evaluate my performances, strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Pretty boring stuff I'm sure, but it does give me a very valuable tool to be able to accurately analyze where I'm at relative to my competition and relative to my historical performances.

Here is an example. The numbers below reflect my USAT ratings from 2002-2011 as they were calculated the old-way. In the old way, you measured your time as compared to the top finisher and adjusted that ratio based on the race distance, the size of the filed, and to some extent, the quality of the field. So, Kona or the National Championships would have an adjustment factor of 1.00, while a local sprint with 250 competitors would get a 0.90, etc. You then take your top three scores and average them for your annual rating. Like all systems, this one has several flaws. The adjustment factors are some what arbritary and if the winner is unusually fast, your score is depressed. The new USAT system uses a comparison to the whole field in a race and how people in that race did in other races so its better in that regard. However, the USAT has changed their approach 3 times during my career and will change it again next year so using the old approach does have the advantage of being consistent. It also, agrees pretty well with the new system (comparing year-to-year).

IN any event here are my ratings:

2002: 75.3
2003: 79.2
2004: 81.3
2005: 82.5
2006: 82.1
2007: 84.9
2008: 82.4
2009: 82.5
2010: 82.3
2011: 82.3

What this data says is, with the exception of my break-out year in 2007 (when I worked with Peter Reid), I've been on a consistent plateau for the past seven years--basically in the 82s. I'm very pleased with this and would love to stay at this level for as long as possible....it will be interesting to see when I began to fall off of this performance plateau.

Here are my 10 highest rated races of my career:

1. White Lake Half-Ironman (2007): 87.7
2. Tuckahoe Sprint (2009): 86.1
3. SkipJack "Half-Ironman" (2011): 85.6
4. Pine Barrens Olympic (2010): 84.3
5. Pine Barrens Sprint (2005): 84.0
6. St. Andrew's Sprint (2007): 84.0
7. Parvin Sprint (2008): 83.6
8. St. Andrew's Sprint (2006): 83.5
9. Timberman Half-Ironman (2007): 83.1
10. St. Andrew's Sprint (2005): 82.4

A number of observations:

1. I've had at least one of my top 10 career races in each of the last seven years (2005-2011)
2. 2007, again was the strongest.
3. Of the top ten, 6 are sprints, 1 Oly, and 3 H-IM. Two of the top three are H-IMs and given the lessor number of H-IMs I do, this reenforces my belief that the H-IM is my best distance.

Finally, here are the number of 80+ races (versus the total number of races in each year) that I've had:

2001: 0/1 (00%)
2002: 0/7 (00%)
2003: 0/7 (00%)
2004: 4/11 (36%)
2005: 4/14 (29%)
2006: 4/13 (31%)
2007: 5/10 (50%)
2008: 5/9 (56%)
2009: 2/14 (14%)
2010: 3/14 (21%)
2011: 2/14 (14%)

Overall: 32/114 (28%)

The above numbers suggest that while I can still deliver strong races on occassion (Tuckahoe-2009, SkipJack-2011, Pine Barrens-2010), I'm becoming less consistent in my ability to deliver 80+ rated races. This jibes with my subjective perception of my performances over the last three years...

More to come....