What are Speed Ratings?

In Illinois there are many cross country courses with so much history.  Whether it’s Katherine Legge Memorial or Leroy Oaks, to the hills of Edwardsville or Lockport, it has always been said you cannot compare times on different courses.  While that might be the case, you can compare the speed of the race from one course to another.  In the early 2000’s Bill Meylan of Tullyrunners.com created a method to be able to compare the performance of runners on various cross country courses throughout the season.  His methods calculate what are called Speed Ratings.  Over time Speed Ratings they have been used to predict the top teams in the nation and the state of New York, so I figure why not try Illinois.

 So, what are speed ratings? Speed ratings are a number calculated based on a time run at a race adjusted for the speed of the race overall.  The speed of the race overall is calculated by comparing the race graphically or through a reference runner method to a baseline to see how much faster or slower the race was.  For my baseline, I use Katherine Legge Memorial Park since it is a pretty fair course and many races have been run on it historically.  Why not use Detweiller you might ask?  Generally speaking, most race courses and races are a much slower speed than Detweiller which can make other races hard to rate. Below you can see the formula to calculate the ratings but for simplicity sake 1 speed rating point is generally equal to 3 seconds.  With no race adjustment 26:00 would be equal to a speed rating of 0.

Here is an example of how a speed rating can be used to compare runners against each other for races run on completely different courses.  For this example, I am using the 2016 Lions Pride Meet at Lyons Township and the Hornet-Red Devil Meet run at Katherine Legge.  In last years boys race at Hornet Red Devil, Blake Evertsen and Soren Knudsen ran 14:48 and 15:02.  While at Lyons Township, Dylan Jacobs, Vince Zona and Danny Kilrea ran 14:19, 14:21, and 14:25.  On paper it looks like the boys at Lyons Township ran significantly faster based on times with the winning times being almost 30 seconds apart. In terms of speed ratings the performances are a bit closer.  Evertsen and Knudsen’s speed ratings at Hornet Red Devil were 184.8 and 180.33, while at Lyons Township the ratings were 187.66, 187.11, 185.76.  The rating difference converts to about an 8 second difference between the winners of each race.