Southern California Association

Cross Country Grand Prix

Race Results

Vicky's Run, Santa Barbara, October 19

Cal Poly Invitational (Women's Race), San Luis Obispo, October 19

Cal Poly Invitational (Men's Race), San Luis Obispo, October 19

Long Beach Invitational, Long Beach, October 19

Long Beach Invitational Men's 8K, Long Beach, October 19

Long Beach Invitational Women's Race, Long Beach, October 19

Twilight's Last Gleaming, Ventura, October 26

PAC-10 Adult Race 6K/8K, November 2

Irvine Cougar Invitational, November 3

USATF Team Challenge, November 10

California Cup Women, Mt. SAC, November 16

California Cup Masters, Mt. SAC, November 16

California Cup Mens, Mt. SAC, November 16

California Cup Men's with Masters combined, Mt. SAC, November 16

Check out some pictures of our events.

Standings:

These are (I continue to hope) the final results. I have checked these things up, down and sideways, but then I continue to discover errors, or at least, problems. The most recent is discovering yet another one of our competitors (I thought had not run) and while he didn't get into the top 12, his presence caused many other's totals to change and that put a new person into the money. Now that I have seen every name on the Men's race, I doubt I'll find any more reasons for adjustments (until someone else changes their age).

Announcing these late is so anti-climatic, I must appologize. My analytical side will spend the next few paragraphs explaining the problems and the results. First these were held up and screwed up by the computer processing the results at the Mt. SAC finish line. What I received from them omitted several names (mostly unattached runners) from the results (including my own, so I knew there were problems). The results we announced and prepared checks (for the few who stayed) included those omissions. The newly found competitors did affect the results, both with new names on the list and changing the position of a few others.

If you already received one of the checks for the wrong amount or if you should receive a check, please get in contact with me at info@trackinfo.org. Likewise if you find an error.

I also have been trying to defend the scoring system which potentially put the Open runners at a disadvantage due to sheer lack of numbers. I have spent weeks trying to recruit competitors (who ran in earlier races) to fill out that division and thus mathematically all those older divisions. I finally reached a few at the registration table, or shall I say I reached coaches who unenthusiastically said "yes" to putting their athletes in the scoring. Well those additional people did artificially prop up the open scores, but that act at the last minute was improper of me, so I have deleted those (late add) athletes from the results. Jason Kolb and Ryan Wilson were the people affected by all that and both their positions in the final results do not change (well now with the latest update, Wilson loses a place) even though the point totals do for almost everyone (and the next place in the Open division would lose points).

The women's division was the easiest to explain. Going in to Mt. SAC, Carmen Martinez had a solid lead and the only way she could lose the series was to get beaten by another F35 competitor. Tania Fischer provided the service, which allowed Carmen's teammate Melissa Sutton to get the 40 points at stake, Fischer also got 40 points by finishing second but winning her age group. Since those two were tied going in, they remained tied until the tiebreaker. Fischer got an age-grade factor (we have just corrected her age so it is 0.9835) on her 17:29 which comes out to 17:12 and wins the overall Grand Prix by 8 seconds, while Sutton is just young enough to not get the factor and keeps her 17:20. Martinez was second in her age group and dropped to 3rd overall with Genevieve Graff-Ermeling in 4th. The next error that was pointed out to me was miscounting the number of open competitors at Mt.SAC and Jessica Gibbs loses two points in the error, putting here in a tie with Annie Seawright-Newton. The tiebreaker was obvious with Seawright-Newton winning by 30 seconds and a decade. The women's team score was just as tight with the results being Track West 1,3,6=10 beating See Jane Run 2,4,5=11. Had that one point victory been reversed, See Jane Run would have been our team champion 39 to 35. We followed the model of other areas doing Cross Country series and they have used teams of three women because it is so hard to fill teams of five. Our area is honored to have two large, competitive women's teams. With the members of these two teams beating up each other for points, a few others were able to get enough points to get on the board. Jessica Gibbs gained her advantage by running in one of the small races, while age groupers Helen Moreno and Debbie Barraza got points from their age group victories.

The men's division was much more complicated. First went to superior Masters competitor Nolan Shaheed M52, who beat numerous younger runners while always winning his age group. Wes Ashford had a perfect score of 40 going into the final. But in the final he finished third in his age group and could only get 26 points. We did put the masters runners in the slow race at a potential disadvantage by counting the score from both races. But David Olds rectified that discrepancy by winning both races for our purposes overall, so even by counting his score from the Masters race, he achieves the same point total and has directly faced his competition. And he solved our tiebreaker by beating Jonathan Stiles in the same race but even his age-graded slower time beats Stiles. Stiles name was one that did not appear on my results sheets, thus some of our confusion at the presentations. The next tiebreaker occurred between Ryan Wilson, and Rich Burns. Burns is M47 so he got an age-graded factor (0.9141) on his 17:33 time which took it to 16:03, but Wilson still wins by doing a 15:51. I have got to hand it to the people who devised the Age Grading tables, it seems pretty close in almost all cases I've used it. I even brok the ties fruther down the list, with Beckum/Neve/Schmirer, Sanchez/Berger, Hecker/Viramontes (Viramontes didn't run Mt. SAC) and Cunningham/et al. We ended up with 6 age group winners (of the age groups represented in the final) in our top 12 and the highly competitive M40 getting four spots.

Of course, this system is so flawed and tenuous that even my decisions to run in the pouring rain of La Crescenta and arriving at the last second in Irvine gave Angelo DeCollibus two points, while my failure to run (in order to deal with registration/finish problems) at the PAC-10 meet cost Rich Burns, Nolan Shaheed and Dan Kelly a point there. Those kind of instances are scattered through the results. We now have nine months to figure out a better way. I want your input. I handed out a questionaire to some at the registration table, if you didn't receive one, please pass along your opinions of the series, the races and USATF in general. I have already gotten lots of divergent input, we need to create a real committee to make some decisions: Do we include small, quirky races to make the travel easier, or only run big races every few weeks? How do we get road racers and other participants? Which road races are so big we shouldn't conflict with them? How do we deal with all the people who participate in races but not the Grand Prix--and why are they avoiding the Grand Prix? Is money that important to the prize structurefor this crowd? I created this series in a vacuum with almost no advance advise except for the administrators in other areas and the few people who responded to early e-mails. I do not want to be a dictator, nor do I have the time to do this alone next year. We can make this better in the future with your help or at least your input. More participants means more eyes to view advertisements which means a better possibility to get sponsorship. Better publicity might get more participants. Otherwise, we have now used our one time grant from USATF to get the program started--we might have to support the future through entry fees.

Explaining the results: Points are given to people who showed up, so if you could beat a slower runner who got points at a particular race, you should have been there to do it. Below is the chart that shows where people achieved their results. Check the results to make sure I haven't made any mistakes (I have discovered a few myself, though some of them are typos in HTML, not calculation errors). Take the place you finished in your age division, then add the number of people (your age our younger) that you beat. So if you finished third in your age group and there were three other people behind you, you look for 3rd place on the 6 person chart and get 8 points--which will be equal to 3rd place out of 3 (5), plus 3. A mark with () around it means that mark has been surpassed by other performances (only one person did not use Mt. SAC as their third score because he didn't run Mt. SAC but did 4 other races).

Andrew Hecker
P.O. BOX 7793
Ventura, CA 93006
(805) 642-3879
FAX (805) 484-1004
info@trackinfo.org

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