Blogs : NCAA Division III Blog

Banked Conversion Comparisons

Extra Forces?

11:30 PM, February 25, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

The NCAA must be allowing for the fact that the Earth is a non-inertial reference frame, and therefore, 'fictitious' forces such as the centrifugal and coriolis must be considered.

Untitled Comment

12:22 AM, February 26, 2008 .. Posted by Molly

It would make sense for DIII runners to be subject to a larger time penalization since they are running slower, if it were proportional to the time differential between qualifying standards. However, the time differentials are not proportional, interesting.

Indoor

5:38 AM, February 26, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

I actually hate this about indoor. How many times do we have to see inflated times from the Armory/Reggie Lewis/BU get kids into Nationals, only to get their asses handed to them by the Midwest kids who run on the flat tracks?

Molly nailed it

2:38 PM, February 26, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Exactly correct. Thank you for pointing that out Molly.

Untitled Comment

3:41 PM, February 26, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

The times are not inflated from those tracks. They are inflated because the coaches get their athletes ready for fast competition then, and they pay for it 4-5 weeks down the road. Periodization my friends, not a conspiracy against the midwest.

Untitled Comment

4:50 PM, February 26, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Thats BS
<br>Look at last years 5k results
<br>1,2,6 and 8 all came from the northeast area.
<br>Stop being bitter just because you dont have access to those tracks.

Untitled Comment

12:40 AM, February 27, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

I don't think Molly nailed it at all. The only conversion where it would make sense for DIII to have a larger differential than DI and/or DII because they're going slower is the 60-55m conversions, as it would take them longer to cover that extra 5m.

The fact DIII runners are running slower than DI/DII (sometimes) runners in the events in this post support a smaller conversion, as the faster you go on an indoor track, the more the turns negatively affect your time (and therefore, the more a banked track would aid the faster runner = larger conversion).

Untitled Comment

12:41 AM, February 28, 2008 .. Posted by Molly

Thank you; it is true that the greater the velocity, the greater the benefit that is reaped from running on a banked track. However, even when velocity is taken into account, DIII runners still face greater time conversions for banked track marks than DI athletes. To ascertain this, I plotted seconds multiplied by 10,000 (for convenience) per meter added for banked track conversions as a function of velocities in meters per second needed to run auto qualifying times on 200m unbanked tracks .

For example: The auto qualifying mark for a DI woman in the mile is 4:40.6, which converts to 5.734m/s. To auto qualify on a banked track, a woman must run 4:40, .6 seconds faster. (.6/1609)(10,000)=3.73

After converting the data into this format I did several different linear regressions, generating equations for DI Men, DI Women, DIII Men, DIII Women, DI Combined, DIII Combined, Men Combined and Women Combined. In doing this a noticed several oddities within the data, one of the most notable was that DI Women 5k runners are penalized less in s/m than DI Women 3k runners, even though the 5k auto qualifying mark requires a lower velocity. Though the data is in no way perfectly linear, two obvious trends emerge: apparently, women and DIII runners benefit the most from running on banked tracks and thus, are penalized more.
If the linear regression generated from the DI men’s and women’s is used to predict the banked track conversions for DIII runners, DIII men are penalized 1.8 seconds in the 5k as opposed to the actual 3.6 seconds and .8 seconds in the mile versus the actual 1 second. Since the curves I generated are linear and not terribly accurate, their predictive powers fail at the extreme velocities, with this in mind, the predicted penalty for the DIII women’s 5k is .9 seconds, as opposed to the actual 3.3 seconds and the 1.6 seconds for DI women. The DIII women’s mile predicted penalty is a much more sensible .5 seconds versus the actual .9 seconds

Thank you, Molly

12:46 AM, February 28, 2008 .. Posted by D3 Blog Webmaster

Wow, Molly! That must have taken quite some time. If you would like to pass your hard work, we would be happy to post it as a blog entry so people can see what you're doing. If you're interested, email us at: jossfim "at" gmail "dot" com.

-D3 Blog Webmaster

banked track

5:03 PM, February 28, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Thanks for your thorough research into the relationship between those penalties, Molly. I'm not sure that just showing a relationship between the penalties over the different divisions and distances, though, can provide us the equation to what is going on in the real world. If it's true that a individual who is running slower will be aided more by a banked track, in terms of absolute time, than an individual that is runnining faster, then I have two concerns that lead me to believe that we still haven't found the right equation. First, the qualifying time standards that we are comparing between D2 and D3, for any event, are not that different. The velocities of these runners, and total time spent running, are very close while the penalties are not. Secondly, if we compare the time spent running between women in D3 and men in D3, at any particular distance, the women will be running for a longer duration and yet thier penalties are less than the men. THAT doesn't make sense and makes me think that the people that decide this stuff may have a nifty little equation to compute thier penalties, within a gender, but still haven't discovered the mechanism for what is really going on. It's also possible that each division just decides their own standards and that we shouldn't get too concerned in trying to compare them when its likely that nobody really knows what's going on yet. We need data.

Untitled Comment

9:59 PM, February 28, 2008 .. Posted by Molly

Thank you, I know that I have definitely not found the answer to this conundrum and you are most likely right in saying that the division come up with their own time penalties; the qualifying standard charts have different formats for different divisions. One thing that I found interesting was that the equations my TI-83 generated had much higher R-squared values in DI than in DIII; the men's DI curve had an R-squared value of .9843 while the women's DIII curve had a R-squared value of a measly .6571. It would seem that the DI penalties have a a bit more logic behind them. Unfortunately, the DI men's curve cannot be used to extrapolate, so any velocity slower than the 5k auto time cannot be used. Another bothersome issue is that, though the DI penalties seem mathematically sound, they may not reflect the real advantage of a banked track. You are correct, data is needed. If I have time tonight, I'll see if I can find any journal articles on the issue.

For those who are interested:
DI Men: f(x)=2.517x-11.488 R-squared: .9843
DI Women: f(x)=1.9414x-7.3292 R-squared: .9653
DIII Men: f(x)=2.2508x-7.1121 R-squared: .7466
DIII Women: f(x)=1.717x-2.9064 R-squared=.6571

Molly nailed it

1:22 PM, February 29, 2008 .. Posted by P-Dong

That's a WashU education for ya! Good luck at UAA's Molly!

Untitled Comment

1:41 PM, February 29, 2008 .. Posted by Molly

Different Molly, so I guess that's a UW-Eau Claire education (or a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel) for ya. :)

Untitled Comment

2:30 PM, February 29, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

DIII runners are smarter so they know how to use the banks more effectively, and therefore are penalized more.

Intelligence has it's downsides

Touche!

3:01 PM, February 29, 2008 .. Posted by P-Dong

Well then, good luck at WIAC's! Tell Schwam I said hello.

Untitled Comment

6:41 PM, March 2, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

If I remember correctly, last year the banked standards were adjusted after they were initially released. Several coaches were contacted, including myself and I provided some data, although not as detailed as Molly, that showed how much more penalized D3 is over D1 and D2.

For example, the 3.3 seconds and and 3.6 seconds for the women's and men's 5k, repectively, was 5.0 seconds. They lowered the penalty, but it was still not equal across divisions.

We were also reminded that each division determines their own standards, not a single group working together, nor multiple groups who collaberate before publishing the official standards.


--MK

Untitled Comment

11:28 PM, March 2, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

I don't know about D2, but the D1 national meet is usually held on a banked track while the D3 meet is usually not. So it's more important for D3 runners to have run fast on a flat track to get into nationals than it is for D1 runners.

Maybe this has something to do with it?

NCAA feedback

2:12 PM, March 4, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

I spoke with a rep with the NCAA. They claim to compare banked track times used to qualify with the flat track times run at nationals. The rep said the DMR should be much greater then it already is now. The comparison led them to believe the DMR conversion should be closer to 7 or 8 seconds. When I asked if they ever took into consideration that kids ran the banked track times fresh and the flat track times at NCAA's tired, they had not... Most of the kids on the DMR where also running other events at the NCAA meet making unfair to compair.

Untitled Comment

7:10 PM, March 4, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

It seems ridiculous to compare DMR times when you don't even have to run the qualifying times at Nationals. There are also serious problems with comparing distance events at a championship meet with a qualifying time as there's a good probability that the Mile and 5k are going to be strategic races. By the NCAA's rationale, there would be conversions for flat tracks as well. This seems ****ed up for a lot of reasons.