Welcome to the KFH College XC Power Index, a ranking index of the top 25 men and women college cross-country runners in D1 cross-country. But, before getting to the actual index, I would like to briefly explain why it exists and how it works.
Also before I get started, I would like to say that I am not the first one to rank runners, but I am the first one (that I know of) to do it this way. With this considered, when I came up with this idea I thought about how other ranking systems work, how they don’t work the best for cross-country, and that I wanted to make a better system.
At first thought, you may think that the top 25 would just be the top 25 fastest runners purely based on their season’s best. But, that’s not how cross country works, courses are different, some are harder, others are easier, and times can’t be solely compared. This ranking index fixes that issue and levels the playing field for runners’ results on all different courses.
Along with taking time into consideration, this index also accounts for placement in races, and the difficulty of the courses that results are being run on, the sum of this equals the runner’s score. But, how is this done?
How the Index works
Each time gets a Weighted Time Score (T) where each time is put up against a fast benchmark time like 3:40 in the mile. It subtracts the time the athlete ran or AT by the fast benchmark time or FBT. The FBT is then divided by that product, the product of this division is then multiplied by 10 to get a time score. A faster time equals a higher score. The equation for this is shown below.
The next portion of the Index is the place metric known as the Weighted Place Score (P) score. How this works is by giving a runner a score based on how many people were in the race, and what place they got, rewarding people who place higher over those who place lower. How this equation works is by taking 1, subtracting it from the runner’s place (p) dividing by the total runners (t), and then multiplying that number by 100. The closer a score is to 100, the better it is. The equation for this is shown below.
The final portion of the Index is the Weighted Course Difficulty Score (D) which uses the course’s difficulty rating which is a number 1-5 that shows how difficult the course is, these scores are determined by elevation gain and other factors. The difficulty rating (d) is simply multiplied by ten. The equation for this is shown below.
Final Equation
The final equation simply put is the sum of each equation mentioned earlier. But, each portion of the equation takes a different emphasis within the final equation. In this Index, the Weighted Time Score takes a smaller emphasis and is multiplied by 0.5. The Weighted Place Score takes a large emphasis, putting emphasis on competition over time, the P value is multiplied by 0.8. The last score, the Weighted Course Difficulty Score takes a smaller emphasis than the rest and is multiplied by 0.3.
As I said earlier, the final equation is the sum of all three smaller equations that were multiplied by their emphasis score, which allows for the Performance Score (S).
Final Thoughts
The Index then ranks the top 25 average performance scores over the duration of the season thus far. Runners may fall down in the index because a worse performance may lower their average, and subsequently their position in the top 25.
Thanks for Reading and if you would like to check out the first KFH College XC Power Index click here.
Good to know. I didn't know you was going to take me to school. Nice article.