Kyle Yates is a junior at St. Xavier in Louisville. He is coming off a PR of 18:01 at the Trinity/Valkyrie Invitational. Below he writes about the rain that disrupted the Greater Louisville Classic and how it affected the varsity performances in his own new creation "rain rating."
Hey guys! I can't tell you how awesome it is to be writing for you all this season. Its great to have a place on the internet to share some thoughts and questions I have about running.
On Saturday at the Greater Louisville Classic, some of my teammates and I were slated to run the JV race while the rest of the team was in North Carolina for Great American. When I arrived at around one o'clock, there was a nice little drizzle going. It was definitely something I could handle. When two o'clock rolled around, the torrential downpour had begun. Then, there was a problem with the timing system, followed by numerous lighting strikes, and the race was called off.
All that rain taught me a few things.
1. Socks do not cooperate in rain like that, and you're better off not wearing socks at all.
2. It is possible to rain that hard for more than 30 seconds.
3. At a certain point, a dri-fit sweatshirt gives up and just welcomes water in like grandma at Thanksgiving.
The rain also made me ponder this question: how much does rain affect your time?
Being the stats-lover I am, I wanted to come up with a way to accurately predict how much rain can affect your 5k time. I wondered if there is a complex formula using rainfall, season best time, and time you ran at the meet, but I couldn't find it on the internet therefore it must not exist. So I came up with my own, non complex way. Keep in mind during the boys and girls varsity races, there wasn't a monsoon going on, but the course was still extremely sloppy.
For the top ten runners in each high school race I took the difference of their time at Greater Louisville from their season best time (Season Best - Greater Louisville time). That gives us how many seconds slower or faster the runner was. I took that number and averaged it with rest of the numbers for each gender. This gave me a boys average of 3.9 seconds slower than their season best times (I'll use my grade school math skills and round that on up to 4 seconds slower). I then got a girls average of 16.5 seconds slower than their season best times.(Note: the course was more sloppy and rainy for the girls race) The only top-10ers to run their fastest time of the season was Holden Wells (Eastern), Keith Prive (Greenwood), and Trevor Shearer (Wayne County) in the boys race, and Caroline Grogan (Oldham County) in the girls race. So congrats to them on new season bests.
Even though this "rain rating" is experimental, I think its fair to say that while running in 1.5 inch deep puddles is fun, it can add a significant amount of time to what you plan to run. There is something about rain that makes us feel amazing when we are running a race in it, but that feeling doesn't last very long when you realize its a 3.1 mile race.
It's definitely possible to PR in rain if you run smart but not scared. That's a place all racers are looking for, in between smart and not scared. Thanks for your time and have fun out there!