Just a little self-justifying commentary on the race last week...

I ran the Groton Road Race last week and took almost two minutes off my time from last year. Alert readers will notice though, that I did not do as well in terms of overall placement or standing in my age group.

There is a reason for this: There were a lot more runners this year and they were faster than last year. This year, the race was selected as a "Grand Prix Race"

USA Track & Field's New England chapter (USATF-NE) has selected the Groton Road Race 10K to be the championship race in its 2007 Grand Prix series. Elite runners from throughout the region will gather in Groton to test their mettle on our renowned course and to compete for points toward the Grand Prix individual and team championships.

So last year I came in 103rd out of 446 and 36th out of 95 in my age group. This year I was 326th out of 912 and 84th out of 197 in my age group.

A very simple statistic can sometimes be a very powerfull one: In this case the median time tells a huge story.

Here we look at the middle place finisher in each year: Last year 53:03 this year 48:37!

dbp