Chris Phipps came up with this way to judge how good of a Dipsea runner a person is compared to their road running abilities:
OK, this may be going a bit overboard on the analysis, but here it is. On a run last week a few of us were trying to determine how good a Dipsea runner a person was compared to how well they ran on the road. I came up with a figure I call a Dipsea Quotient or DQ. The DQ is obtained by multiplying a person's best 10K time in a particular Dipsea year by 1.5 then dividing the result by the person's Dipsea time for that year. We figured that the theoretical maximum would be 1.000 with a range for most runners between .900 and .950. I did this for all of the Black Shirt winners for 2002 (only those I could find 10K results for), and did additional research on a few top 10 runners. In only 2 cases did the DQ exceed the theoretical maximum of 1.000. They were Russ Kiernan in 2002 and Cliff Lentz in 2001. This either shows exceptional trail running ability, or sandbagging on the roads. Also of note was a particularly low DQ for Shirley Matson. This just shows that she is such a great road runner.
Here are the DQ's, have fun,
Russ Kiernan 2002 - 1.012 (1st)
Russ Kiernan 2001 - .958
Russ Kiernan 2000 - .981
Shirley Matson 2002 - .891
Shirley Matson 2001 - .887 (1st)
Shirley Matson 2000 - .914 (1st)
Melody Ann Schultz 2001 - .921
Melody Ann Schultz 1999 - .979 (1st)
Chris Phipps 2002 - .954
Chris Phipps 2001 - .984
Chris Phipps 2000 - .967
Diana Fitzpatrick 2002 - .923
Cliff Lentz 2002 - .981
Cliff Lentz 2001 - 1.000
Cliff Lentz 2000 - .972
John Litzenberg 2002 - .940
Michelle Hannaford 2002 - .953
Robert Dickenson 2002 - .972
Liz Fagan 2002 - .944
Horst Meyer 2002 - .900
Jeff Teeters 2002 - .918
April Powers 2002 - .893
Greg Nacco 2002 - .988
Dennis Charlton 2002 - .949
Hank Lawson 2002 - .935
Jerry Edelbrock 2002 - .967
Rosemarie Lagunas 2000 - .918
Mary Fagan 2002 - .946
Chris Craig 2002 - .949
Rebecca Kopchik 2002 - .891
Mitchell Shandley 2002 - .957
Peter Vicencio 2002 - .894
Jerry Lyman 2002 - .931
Robert Gormley 2002 - .886
Butch Alexander 2002 - .926
p.s. Thanks to Pete Zinsli
George Frazier weighs in with his thoughts on the DQ:
My DQ in 2001 (my most recent black shirt) was .960; in 1987 (my best Dipsea time 54:26) my DQ was .9495; back in 1979 when Russ finished second (and I'm completely making up these times) I believe he ran about 53 in the Dipsea and 36 in a 10K, which comes to something like 1.02 ... his Dipsea time might have been faster and his 10K could have been slower ... I'd be interested in Sal's DQ in his glory years (which stretch from the day he started racing until today) ...
I always used a simple predictive formula for myself of adding 20 minutes to my 10K time, which no longer works as the Dipsea has gotten harder as I've gotten older ... I figured 20 minutes was about average for a man; anything higher indicated a less than stellar Dipsea runner, anything less indicated the opposite; Russ of course, was off the charts ... none of the top women (with the exception of course record holder Peggy Smyth) were close to 20 minutes (Pat English ran a 34:30 10K and ran in the higher 55s in the Dipsea) ... some great 10K runners over the years have been mere mortals in the Dipsea, like Carmelo, Jim Bowers and one of the Runners World editors (whose name escapes me) who was an ex-Olympian and finished 34th or 35th in his one Dipsea run.
And Bernie Hollander mulls it over:
Taking my 43.47 10K best in 2001 X 1.5 = 65:405 divided by my 70:21 2001 Dipsea time = .933. Of the 26 top 35 on your example my DQ would put me 16th. That means that even if all of the remaining 14 had higher DQ's I would still have been 30th. Even more grievous, if I use a ratio of 16 to 26 or 65.5% of 35 I would have been 24th. Since I am shown on the result as 48th there is obviously an error and I intend to file a protest. I haven't even started to look at other years but I'll bet that those bums owe me a bunch of black shirts. Thanks for unearthing this travesty...
Calculate your DQ
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