Team Rankings (Release #3): Men / Women
Team by Team FloRatings (Release #3): Men / Women 

There are things that keep people up at night. Monsters under the bed, student loans, thinking you left the oven on, remembering that you have a paper due in a few hours, or FloRatings.

When compiling last week’s team FloRatings, there were some inconsistencies with the results. Kennedy Kithuka is (mostly) to blame.

While we have data from the last few years on numerous courses, there was no profile for Rim Rock Farms Classic or Chile Pepper Invitational. The decision to rate these courses this year was based on Kithuka.

Kithuka’s rise and national championship potential has raised a few questions which mainly centered around, “How good is he?”

Well, the answer is darn good. Even still, he’s so good that he actually broke the formula for FloRatings. His performance at the Chile Pepper Classic was so impressive compared to the rest of the field that the linear equation did not match the times.


"Math is for losers, running absurdly fast is for winners"

This is because Kithuka ran all-out, Oklahoma State took it easy, and there was not enough data on the other runners to correctly evaluate the course.

Therefore, the Chile Pepper Invitation has been readjusted for the men and women. We've also touched up the FloRatings for Pre-Nationals in order to better understand the course come December. This also changes some runners’ FloRatings and their overall rank from this season.

If you already had your FloRating tattooed somewhere on your body, let me say “sorry,” “why?” and “I’ll pay for the removal.”

It takes a big man to apologize, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

Early season FloRatings are the most difficult to calculate because of the lack of data. Bill Meylan over at tullyrunners.com said it best when he wrote, “The overall process is data-dependent which basically means that the accuracy of speed ratings improve as more and more data becomes available (which can only occur as the season progresses).”

We've scored the performances from Pre-Nationals, Chile Pepper, and Wisconsin as if it was one single meet with FloRatings. The comparisons between the places of the teams in our hypothetical meet and the votes in National Coaches' Poll are listed below in the Team Rankings.

There are a few quick takeaways from the newly adjusted individual and team FloRatings.

• Kennedy Kithuka’s 28:53 at Chile Pepper is only slightly less impressive at Lawi Lalang’s NCAA championship winning time of 28:44 from 2011. So far this season, this is the best run of any other competitor in the NCAA.

• If Oklahoma State ran the same effort as they did at Chile Pepper, they would have beat Michigan at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational.

• Colorado rightfully earns their #2 ranking, but Stanford is not far behind.

• The Florida State women may be ranked #1, but they should watch out for Iowa State. The Cyclones’ race at Wisconsin puts them slightly ahead of FSU in the Team FloRatings.

• Laura Hollander still retains the top performance of the season for the women. Again, scary.

We’ve also cleaned up the FloRatings sidebar. Feel free to geek out. There should not longer be any issues with the course conversions as we used this week off from racing to evaluate the courses for conferences.