Chad Palmer's winning time in the Division 4 boys race was 40 seconds slower than last year's winning time for Division 4. Does that indicate an exceptional result in 2009 or was this the rule for 2010? Photo by Mark Weeks.
There are a lot of questions about Liberty Bell that don't admit of easy answers. Tops on that list of questions is the length of the course. Short of having the course professionally measured, we're not going to have an answer to that question. Even then, you still have a margin of error to consternate over.
So, why do people care? People care because of the size of the race, the hype of the race (and I do not mean that pejoratively), and the times the race produces. People run a great time and there's a very natural desire to want that time to be valid. That's human nature. And, on balance, that desire is a wonderful thing--it keeps alive the fire that drives most of us to want to be productive citizens rather than so much dead weight inhibiting the forward march of civilization.
This article isn't meant to answer questions of course length, but those questions do serve as a springboard into some questions we can answer.
This article is intended to take an objective look at how heat impacts a race. A neat little new feature (still in beta) on the MileSplit sites allows us to compare races. I used that feature to compare Liberty Bell 2009 vs. Liberty Bell 2010. Here's what the analysis yields:
There were 224 boys who ran Liberty Bell in both 2009 and 2010. At least there were 224 whose results are in the MileSplit database for both years--note that I did not archive JV race results from last year, so each of these were already varsity runners in 2009. Among these, the average time in 2010 was 18:01.6. The average time in 2009 was 18:16.8. That's an improvement of about 15 seconds.
But wait...
Before you tell me, "Coach Versaw, that's craziness, the race was not faster in 2010 than 2009," you need to stop and consider that there is one additional year of maturity for each of those competitors. This year's seniors dropped an average of 6.4 seconds over last year. This year's juniors dropped an average of 21.0 seconds over last year. This year's sophomores dropped an average of a whopping 39.9 seconds over last year.
But the overall results were not at all faster. The male top 100 times in 2010 averaged out at 16:31.1. In 2009, that average was 16:16.1.
We learn quite a bit more when we analyze female race times between 2010 and 2009. For the 220 girls who ran in both 2009 and 2010, the average time in 2010 was 21:41.1, while the average time in 2009 was 21:33.0. That would be an average of 8.1 seconds slower for these girls this year versus last.
This year's senior girls averaged 7.1 seconds slower than in 2009. This year's junior girls averaged 15.6 seconds slower. This year's sophomore girls averaged 12.6 seconds slower.
The average for the top 100 girls times this year jumped to 19:36.3 this year from 19:19.4 last year.
This final number is the one measure where boys and girls see comparable results between last year and this. The top 100 boys experienced an average increase of 15.0 seconds, while the top 100 girls experienced an average increase of 16.9 seconds from last year to this. While girls' times suffered more, presumably from the heat, than boys' times did, the difference is still very comparable. And, if you look at these time deltas as a proportion of the total time, the differences for boys and girls are nearly identical.
Since Liberty Bell is a maxed-out race (fields are essentially as large as they can get), we don't have to worry much about how a better quality field of teams last year or this impacts the analysis. It's reasonable to assume roughly equal field quality for both years. Also, unlike many races, the start and finish lines at Liberty Bell are well-known and relatively constant so we have only trivial variations in course length from one year to the next.