A bit of an analysis. Some time ago I had a look into Finland’s 2009 top 20 marathon results so far. Top 10 was up to 2:37h, top 20 up to 2:45h. It felt quite good to aim for something that gets one name into that list. Even dreamt of perhaps making it into the upper half. Definitely, this would make a good blog entry, story among friends, relatives, colleagues at work. Of course, absolute results tell more about the marathon level in Finland than my own stellar:ness, but who cares, who knows? Should it go onto the CV as well… ?
The strain of thought pretty much was this: The majority of marathons with faster Finnish runners are done: all spring races, World championships in Berlin, senior world championships in Lahti, Helsinki and Stockholm marathons. The Berlin marathon would attract some good but not many (in grey above). So the current top 20 list shouldn’t move around too much anymore. Ha! Far wrong!
The Finnish national championships are coming up tomorrow in Jyväskylä and that shakes the pack. In order to estimate how much this will impact the list one would need to do a brief analysis. How many runners that start tomorrow are already part of the current 2009 top 20 results list (in green above) and how many could still jump the ranks (on orange-red above)? We don’t have the starting list at hand, but with last year’s results we can make an approximation. The error shouldn’t be too large, some of last year’s runners don’t start tomorrow, some new and good ones willdo so, this equals out.
Let’s assume a 2:37h for the yellow guy on the left (micke-midlife). From all your votes on the current question this seems to be best time with some significant percentage. From the diagram you can see, that about 15 (14 in the diagram) runners end up being sub-2:35h, with a 2:37h we might end up around the top 20 mark this year. This would be damn cool! (-> blog entry, friends, relatives, colleagues, … , CV)
Hm, would it make sense to emigrate quickly to some other country to get the better rank figure by the end of the year? Germany doesn’t help, the top 50 of 2008 ends at 2:31h, our target time would be around rank 120 or so. The UK is even more competitive with a time of 2:27 you ended in 2008 around rank 30 (in Germany that would have been around rank 15). Hence we’d be there around rank 150. Didn’t find anything for the US, but a higher population normally means also a higher level of competitiveness. Sweden is perhaps the place to be, 2:37h is currently rank 17!
today’s training: 20 min warm up on the fitness bike, 30 mins strength
Tags: berlin-marathon, ranking, top finishers
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