(sources at GitHub)
This post is about negative splits. Which is a fancy way to say that you start running slower and then increase the speed during the race. The name comes from the fact that when you look the splits, the list of time it took you to run each kilometer (or mile), the numbers decreases.
The splits strategy is somewhat disputed, but many coaches recommend using negative splits (look here).
The question of this post is whether negatiive or positive splits running has any relation with the results.
The race(s)
This time I had to change the races used. The thing with the races in Santiago is that they must have uphill and downhill segments, which could affect the results. So I went for a flat race, and flat Berlin is. So the chosen race was the Belrlin Halb Marathon.
The specific races where from years 2011, 2013 and 2015 (see the results site).
This races had some runners:
##
## BerlinHb2011 BerlinHb2013 BerlinHb2015
## M 13726 14229 14636
## W 6330 7786 8658
that ran at certain speeds (km/h):
## $BerlinHb2011
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## 6.154 9.061 10.150 10.320 11.310 20.880
##
## $BerlinHb2013
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## 6.745 9.448 10.550 10.700 11.730 21.240
##
## $BerlinHb2015
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## 5.915 9.481 10.590 10.740 11.770 21.190The splits
The races results contains partial times for the first 10 km, which allows to calculate the average for the two segments. Splits are negative if the speed on the second segment is faster than the first. Two attributes were added to the data, dsign, which is -1 (for negative splits), 0 or +1. Anddelta_pct which is the change of speed expressed in percent.
This is how the sign of the splits is distributed:
## event
## BerlinHb2011 BerlinHb2013 BerlinHb2015
## -1 2316 6399 6483
## 1 17740 15616 16811
And the total percentage of negative splits is 23.25%.
The percentual change in speed (delta_pct) range is (overall):
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -125.000 0.276 3.807 4.515 8.271 60.510
and by race:
## $BerlinHb2011
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -125.000 3.006 7.044 7.443 11.630 60.510
##
## $BerlinHb2013
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -100.6000 -0.5542 2.5780 3.2540 6.5550 50.2200
##
## $BerlinHb2015
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -86.0400 -0.3607 2.6520 3.1850 6.3650 42.2600
and looks like this:
2011 race looks different than the other two years in shape and center, for reasons unknown to me.
Most people runs positive splits, ranging from 0% to around 8% slower in the second half.
Splits and speed
This plot illustrates the relation of speed with the change in speed (delta_pct):
From this charts its clear that there is a relation between the speed difference and the total speed. Those with lower splits tend to run faster. But at the same time splits don’t seem to explain the best times, fastest runners tend to have small splits, around zero.
Let’s do the numbers, comparing negative splits speeds with no-negative, for women:
##
## Welch Two Sample t-test
##
## data: vNeg and vPos
## t = 29.93, df = 8198, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
## 0.5788349 0.6599688
## sample estimates:
## mean of x mean of y
## 10.244138 9.624736
and men:
##
## Welch Two Sample t-test
##
## data: vNeg and vPos
## t = 33.954, df = 19185, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
## 0.6164811 0.6920167
## sample estimates:
## mean of x mean of y
## 11.54288 10.88863
So in both cases we have a significant difference (p-values almost 0).
That was using just a negative/non-negative attribute. What about the size in speed change?
Relation with other factors
Let’s compare with Sex:
##
## Welch Two Sample t-test
##
## data: vM and vW
## t = 0.80468, df = 52630, p-value = 0.421
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
## -0.05981364 0.14313333
## sample estimates:
## mean of x mean of y
## 4.529098 4.487438
So it doesn’t seem to be an association between Sex and the speed change.
Then the relation with Age:
## lm(formula = delta_pct ~ Age, data = df)## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 1.99655813 0.099077172 20.15155 4.903596e-90
## Age 0.06117036 0.002324882 26.31117 8.867464e-152
And there is a a relation with Age, 0.6% of change in speed for each decade of age.
Comparing association with speed
First look at the relation between speed and speed change on splits:
## lm(formula = complete ~ delta_pct, data = df)## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 11.01116582 0.0079639887 1382.61947 0
## delta_pct -0.09155948 0.0009969797 -91.83686 0
So the split delta accounts for 11.4% of the total speed variability among runners.
Comparing with Age:
## lm(formula = complete ~ Age, data = df)## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 11.39360173 0.0267821824 425.41723 0.000000e+00
## Age -0.01933209 0.0006284537 -30.76136 2.580757e-206
Which explains just 1.4% of the total variability.
Considering also Sex, with delta_pct:
## lm(formula = complete ~ Sex + delta_pct, data = df)## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 11.46368706 0.0086571097 1324.19335 0
## SexW -1.29515316 0.0128251465 -100.98545 0
## delta_pct -0.09184154 0.0009272741 -99.04465 0
it’s 23.4%.
And with Sex and Age:
## lm(formula = complete ~ Sex + Age, data = df)## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 12.09752538 0.0259742116 465.75140 0
## SexW -1.34793835 0.0136330736 -98.87267 0
## Age -0.02502357 0.0005889715 -42.48689 0
it’s 14.3%.
How well the splits predict the speed?
This is the residuals plot for fit with Sex and delta_pct:
As was seen in the second figure, the speed change between first and second half seem to be a better predictor of slower speeds that of higher.
Let’s see what is the range for delta_pct for the top 5% of male runners:
## $BerlinHb2011
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -125.000 1.825 3.831 3.734 5.965 18.040
##
## $BerlinHb2013
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -7.7820 -0.7309 1.0590 1.1630 2.9570 19.0100
##
## $BerlinHb2015
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
## -17.2200 -0.7451 0.7912 1.0450 2.4950 38.0200
The center of this ranges is closer to 0 (and more negative) than the range for all runners.
And if we test for difference between negative and no-negative splits:
##
## Welch Two Sample t-test
##
## data: vNeg and vPos
## t = 2.0686, df = 1013.3, p-value = 0.03883
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
## 0.006702763 0.254118218
## sample estimates:
## mean of x mean of y
## 15.50940 15.37898
We find the in this group the split sign still have a significant association with the speed, being positive splits slower (with a p-value of 0.039).
Conclusion
Negative splits are a good thing for running. But as most good thins should not be overdone. Best results are associated with just a slight improvement of speed on second half.
One notable thing is that having negative, or lower splits, have a stronger association with the overall speed than age. Meaning that some of the age disadvantage can be neutralized with pace management.
regards
