MWR first leg stats

Having updated the database of times for the first leg, I thought that Kevin Loundes' fourth fastest time ever on the course was worthy of further analysis.

Chris Quine writes on his blog that, given the detoriation of the tracks over the years, Kevin's time is possibly on a par with Keith Callister's record. Having run most years since 1979 and posting the third best time on the course, Chris is well qualified to comment and I wouldn't necessary disagree.

But because the exercise is so subjective (what about the fastest times on the years runners had to content with snow and headwinds?), I thought I would throw together some more facts to fuel the debate.

The average times on the first leg each year since 1999 (the leg was not run in 2001 and 2004) were as follows:

1999 01:08:14
2000 01:11:28
2002 01:08:29
2003 01:15:47
2005 01:10:01
2006 01:16:07
2007 01:11:51
2008 01:10:21

With relatively small fields each year, the average times can easily be weighted by a few slower runners or even by someone getting lost.

So I looked at another consideration, the average of the fastest six each year. Again, this doesn't prove anything by itself as there were undoubtedly some years when the conditions were conducive to fast times (or perhaps the quality of the entrant was higher).

Anyway, here are the averages of the fastest six:

1999 00:57:57
2000 00:56:16
2002 01:02:26
2003 01:08:00
2005 00:58:36
2006 00:59:00
2007 01:00:26
2008 00:59:59

There are so many interpretations we can put on these stats but here are the most telling ones (as far as 1999 to 2008 are concerned).

I've compared the fastest time to the average of the top 6 and Kevin is just so far ahead of the average compared to the others despite a good time by Tom Cringle.

He is only 87% of the average for top 6:

1999 00:53:59 93.16%
2000 00:54:33 96.95%
2002 00:58:23 93.51%
2003 01:04:41 95.12%
2005 00:54:14 92.55%
2006 00:54:14 91.92%
2007 00:58:44 97.19%
2008 00:52:06 86.86%

But finally, if you look at the fastest time each year as a percentage of the average time, Kevin also has the best statistic (this is a correction from the original poost) . His time was only 74% of the average with the next best being Andy Fox with 75% in 2006.

1999 00:53:59 79.12%
2000 00:54:33 76.33%
2002 00:58:23 85.25%
2003 01:04:41 85.35%
2005 00:54:14 77.46%
2006 00:57:32 75.59%
2007 00:58:44 81.74%
2008 00:52:06 74.06%


There is enough to keep you warm in your anoraks over New Year - and that is without carrying out the same analysis over every single year.