Predicted Time 4 Miler

Winchester, VA, February 24, 2007

Race Report

One of the most valuable tools available to a runner is a stopwatch. It tells you how much time has elapsed since you started running. It gives you an idea of how much longer you have to run. And if you know how far you've gone, a stopwatch tells you just how fast you are running. But what if you are deprived of this tool? What if you're not permitted to wear a watch during a race? What if a footrace becomes complete guesswork, from what pace to run right down to what you think your eventual finish time is going to be? That is the premise of the Predicted Time 4 Miler, the seventh race in the Shenandoah Valley Runners' Winter Series, held this year on Saturday 24 February.

Before the start, each runner writes down a prediction of how fast they think they will finish. Factor in the rolling nature of the wheel-measured four mile course, and prognostication becomes that much more difficult. Experience helps, but even the speedier folk have trouble pegging down their predictions. In the end it's a combination of educated guesswork and blind luck which leads to Predicted Time bragging rights and the usual selection of inexpensive prizes.

Clear skies and a light but chilly breeze greeted the fifty-three runners at this year's race, with temperatures rising to near the freezing mark by the 9:30 AM start. After the traditional pre-race "raising of the arms"-- a token inspection to make sure nobody was wearing a watch-- race director Terry Leckie said "Go!" and the runners strode up the first of what seemed like an endless series of hills through the Stonebrook Farms neigborhood west of Winchester, Virginia. Mile markers on the out-and-back route told runners how far they had run, but nobody had any idea of their time-- not even as they sped downhill to the finish line, where the race clock faced away from the course.

In the past decade, only four runners at this race have managed to match their predicted time exactly. Nobody pulled off the feat this year, but two 58-year-olds finished within two seconds of their pre-race guesses. Winchester's Stephen Armstrong, participating in this event for the first time, originally wrote down 32:00 as his predicted finish time, but after further consideration he returned to the registration table before the start and asked to add a minute to his guess. This was a fortuitous decision, as he wound up completing the course in 32:58, just a few steps ahead of his revised prediction. The other top guesser was Winter Series veteran Bill Senseney of Charles Town, whose excellent 28:22 performance nearly matched his guess of 28:20. Senseney also came close at last year's race, missing his prediction by just eight seconds. (But we still recall Bill's comically high guess at the 2002 Predicted Time event, which resulted in a miss of nearly forty-two minutes!)

Another newcomer to the Predicted Time 4 Miler, Jim Harden of Martinsburg, wound up with the third best prediction result, finishing four seconds faster than his 35:15 target. And six runners were off by just five seconds: co-workers Duane Williamson and Robert Gurtler, first-time predictors Judy Pollard and Mary Leigh, and second-timers Peter Mattens and Stephen Meier. (Both Mattens and Meier came close in their first attempts as well, with Mattens missing his guess by ten seconds in 2003 and Meier missing by seven seconds in 2006.) In all, over half of this year's field missed their guesses by a minute or less, and just over a third of the participants came within twenty seconds. Among this third was a surprising cluster of high-quality guesses near the back of the pack, where the 43rd through 48th finishers-- Peggy Duvall, Gurtler, Nancy Specht, Pollard, Leigh, and Carol Culvyhouse-- all came very close to their predictions.

While the race's cheap prizes were awarded based on the time predictions, runners were also competing against each other in the traditional sense, with many trying to solidify their position in the standings of the eight-race SVR Winter Series. On the men's side of the race, 24-year-old Charles Bowles of Boyce put together a commanding performance, taking the lead half a mile into the race and never looking back. A gap of maybe ten seconds over his nearest competitor at the turnaround became a sizeable thirty-seven second margin by the time Bowles crossed the finish line in 23:12. Some may have been surprised by Bowles' victory at the Run for a Rose 2.7 Miler two weeks earlier, but he proved it was no fluke with another great run.

Coming in a distant second among the men was course measurer Karsten Brown, 32, who spent much of the race in fear of hearing the approaching footsteps of last year's 4 mile winner, 40-year-old Brad Rippey of Bunker Hill, WV. Although that sound never came, Rippey was not very far behind Brown, finishing third in 24:09 to Brown's 23:49. Taking fourth place was another Bunker Hill resident, 29-year-old Stephen Meier, who finished two seconds faster than last year with a 25:05 performance. Winchester's Raymond Bollock, 41, rounded out the top five in 25:22.

35-year-old Brenda Schrank of Winchester set a women's course record of 26:36 at last year's Predicted Time race, so she was the clear favorite among this year's field of seventeen female participants. Sure enough, Schrank didn't disappoint, breaking her own record with a 26:05 finish for the overall victory. Youngsters took three of the next four spots in the top five. 13-year-old Presley Parkes, a straight-A student at Byrd Middle School in Winchester, finished second in 28:59. 12-year-old Brittany Pollard of Falling Waters, WV placed third in 31:01, but this was enough to vault her into the overall female Winter Series lead with just one race remaining. 15-year-old Alyssa Meadows of Martinsburg also moved up in the series standings, thanks to her 33:56 fifth place finish. Winchester's Vicky Krossman, 37, crossed the line between Pollard and Meadows in 33:12, while 41-year-old Shelley Klee was the top Masters woman in 37:15.

The race's order of finish was maintained through the use of numbered cards handed out at the finish line, and as at previous editions of this event, each card contained a multiple-choice poll question asking runners to predict which film would win Best Picture at the following day's Academy Awards ceremony. It wound up being a split decision among the runners, with The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Little Miss Sunshine garnering nine votes each. The Queen picked up three votes, while just one runner chose Babel. The Departed turned out to be the big winner at the Oscars, with Martin Scorsese's film also picking up awards for director, editing, and adapted screenplay. So congratulations to the nine runners who picked the winning film: Patrick Barrett, Robie Cone, Peggy Duvall, Myron Kremer, Mitchell Lippy, Stephen Meier, Presley Parkes, Bill Senseney, and Duane Williamson! (Dishonorable mention goes to Charles Bowles, whose write-in response of "Hogan Knows Best" is a television program, not a theatrical movie.)

Terry Leckie did his usual fine job in his fourth year as Predicted Time race director, with assistance from volunteers Gail Bollock, Alexander Snyder, Nancy Bullock, Joel McKenzie, Myron Kremer, and Karsten Brown. The race also benefitted from the hospitality of the Stonebrook Racquet & Fitness Club, whose employees and patrons were once again nice enough to put up with a crowd of runners clogging up their entranceway for a couple hours. With any luck we'll be back at Stonebrook next year for another running of the Predicted Time 4 Miler!

(COURSE NOTE: Although the same basic route was used this year, the four mile course was approximately 220 feet shorter than last year. How is this possible? The course had originally been measured in 2004 with the SVR's measuring wheel, but unbeknownst to anyone at the time, that measuring wheel is inaccurate. It was later determined that the SVR's wheel tacks on a little over fifty feet to each "mile" it measures. So the Predicted Time course was remeasured this year using a different measuring wheel, and sure enough, the new turnaround point wound up being 110 feet short of the old, presumably less accurate turnaround. This may not seem like much, but 220 feet is worth a good twenty seconds at a pace of eight minutes per mile-- and an accurate course is certainly important when the race itself is based around predicting one's performance over a specific distance! So with the course now remeasured, we're confident that this year's race was reasonably close to the required length of 21,120 feet.)