Ballasting Calculation

[Daniel Allford]

This may be a bit off topic but I need some help with a ballasting calculation. I ran the Sugarland Half Marathon in late January. I finished in 1:49:17 (8 1/2 minute miles) which put me 7th out of 61 runners. The problem is my time is right at my personal record, obviously the problem could not possibly be me or my fitness level. I did some investigation and noted some significant equipment parity issues. I’m running in Sauconey shoes but the winner wore Nikes and finished 17 minutes ahead of me. It appears to me that the guys wearing Nikes should have a weight penalty to level the playing field. My question is how do you calculate how much additional ballast Nike guys should carry?
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Dan Allford #82

[Rob Liebbe]

Random shoe swaps every 2.5 miles. Or spec shoe. Or better yet, everyone runs barefoot.

[rleng1]

Why don't run a 4th gen, er uh Nike shoes to run with the big dogs.

[Rsmith350]

Literally laughed out loud, nice Dan!

[RichardP]

Ballast isn't always the answer. Maybe diet restrictions to reduce their power output? Allow performance enhancing drugs to increase the power output of the disadvantaged shoe wearers? I'd suggest requiring them to cut down the width of their shoes but that's been found to not really slow them down. They just wear out shoes much faster...


Richard P.

[Crumpacker]

Literally laughed out loud, nice Dan!

I did too! Then again after Richard's post..

[BryanL]

Dan-I think it is calculated by the average of the last 2 years results after you throw out the top finisher just in case you have Abebe Bikila running. Then you multiply that by political influence (i.e. whoever complains the most for the longest amount of time) and divide it into the number of competitors who have never won a race. Their problem is they don't do inverts based upon the number of beers consumed within the last 24 hours.

[AllZWay]

This thread is funny.

[Rsmith350]

Dan-I think it is calculated by the average of the last 2 years results after you throw out the top finisher just in case you have Abebe Bikila running. Then you multiply that by political influence (i.e. whoever complains the most for the longest amount of time) and divide it into the number of competitors who have never won a race. Their problem is they don't do inverts based upon the number of beers consumed within the last 24 hours.

Nice......

[RichardP]

Realistically, finishing position isn’t sufficient information to determine shoe platform parity. What was your fastest mile compared to the leaders? Did you fully and properly prep? If you ran the fastest mile but had a delay because your shoe laces came untied, the data isn’t too valuable. Maybe your capable of equal mile times to the front runners but just aren’t very good running in a pack.

Before we make all the Nike runners compete with a clothes pin on their nose to limit their oxygen intake, we are going to need to run several races with GPS tracking on all the relevant parties to get comparable performance data.

Realistically, with you being in 7th place and 17 minutes behind, the data points to you being a… mid pack slacker. As such, your data isn’t valid for determining parity…


Richard P.