Some Blog Site

Welcome back to the Warrior Dash recap. When we last left our hero, he was running the race. Let’s see where he is now…

The Obstacles

I’ll just list each obstacle and what I thought of it. And I have listed some helpful tips and hints for how to handle these Warrior Dash obstacles. After I realized that the obstacles were prime locations for passing people, my goal was to pass people in the obstacles. Note: the term “cargo net” means ropes connected together to make a grid of one-foot square sections.
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Since I know most of you weren’t there with me at the Warrior Dash, here is my recap of the day:

Background

Warrior Dash is a 3.1-mile race with about a dozen obstacles, most of which require climbing or crawling plus mud.

In my preparation for the half marathon in September, I wanted to do a 5k in July and a 10k in August. There were some 5k races in July around here, but this was the most appealing. If I want to run 3.1 miles, I can do that just about anywhere. A 5k obstacle course, however, doesn’t come along every day.
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Since we’re in the sports doldrums (between hockey and football seasons), there’s a lull in the play-calling world. I know baseball is being played, but there aren’t many different defenses you can have in a baseball game. But enough about baseball – don’t get distracted from the main topic…

To fill the void of play calling during the summer months, I present to you Defensive Schemes for Parents.

You can look at this in at least 2 ways:

1. You’re a parent who wants to understand sports lingo, or
2. You know sports but don’t know how to handle the number of children you have

Guide to Football-style Diagrams: O is for offense (children in this case) and X is for defense (parents in this case).

I haven’t quite figured out what’s analogous to the goal line. But whatever it is, I have to make sure my kids don’t get there.

Transcript:
For a two-parent family,
1 child = double team
2 children = man to man
3 children = zone
4 children = prevent

I know I said I wouldn’t have any more football posts for a while, but I forgot about the release of the 2011 NFL schedule. And between now and the start of the season, I may go back and analyze previous seasons to get more samples of prediction methods.

In the last week or two, we had the NFL draft and the announcement of the 2011 schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when (that is, if the NFL and players get their act together and resume football as we knew it), we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. During the course of 2010, I saw that predictions based on the previous season’s results were just as good as predictions that updated themselves week-by-week. View results of previous football seasons.

2010 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Arizona = 12-4
• Carolina = 7-9
• Chicago = 5-11
• Cleveland = 2-14
• Detroit = 1-15
• New Orleans = 16-0
• Pittsburgh = 11-5
• San Diego = 15-1
• St. Louis = 0-16
• Tampa Bay = 2-14

How they actually did was

• Arizona = 5 -11
• Carolina = 2 -14
• Chicago = 11-5
• Cleveland = 5 -11
• Detroit = 6 -10
• New Orleans = 11-5
• Pittsburgh = 12-4
• San Diego = 9 -7
• St. Louis = 7 -9
• Tampa Bay = 10-6

Only one of those was close. So much for the consensus picks…

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Beta and I got free admission to a Michigan football game!

Of course, so did everyone else. It was the spring game – the final spring scrimmage – which is open to everyone.

I met my dad, brother, nephew, and a couple of my brother’s friends there. I didn’t plan my route very well and had to go right through the Stadium-Main St. intersection. That slowed me down, so I parked by Industrial with about ten minutes left before kickoff. Beta and I had to walk 4/5 of a mile to the Big House. I should add here that I had to wake Beta up at that the end of the car ride, so he was not going to be moving very quickly.

I decided that the only way we would make it in time was for me to carry him on my shoulders. I didn’t want to run, since I haven’t started my annual running season (Halloween to Easter is chocolate-eating season, Easter to Halloween is running season), so I walked as quickly as I could with a 37-pound weight on my shoulders.

We made it in the stadium a couple minutes after kickoff. And I was sweating. Everyone else had their winter coats on, since it was in the upper 40s, but I took mine off and was quite comfortable in my long-sleeved T-shirt, for about two or three possessions.

Once we sat down, we were at the 40-something yard line, 40-some rows up. Here’s the view from there (offense in blue, defense in white):

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This should be the last post about football prediction schemes for a while. Or even longer if the lockout continues.

I have, until now, just tested the NFL forecasting formula against the regular season – seeing how well each predicts that week’s game results.

But the regular season is just to see who makes the playoffs, then who will win the division, win the conference, and then win the Super Bowl. Today’s update is to see if those methods could predict – using the results of the regular season – who will be playoff champions.

I tested the equations against the top four teams (i.e. who played for the conference championship) as well as the Super Bowl winner. I have no reason for going that route, other than it was around the time of the college basketball tournament, so the term “Final Four” was popular.

To spare you the details, let me just say that it was worthless. The prediction methods didn’t really get you any closer to knowing who would make it to the end of the playoffs.

The good news is that I don’t have to plan a trip to Vegas any time soon.

You can view the details over at the football predictions page.

The end result is that your best bet is to pick the teams that have a first round bye. Then you have a 54.2% chance of picking who get to the conference championship.

Now that there’s no more NFL for 2011, I updated the Football Formula page to show how accurate the formulae are for years 2006 on up.

Of course, my intention was to show that More Points Wins is the most accurate method. And lo and behold, it was! Also of course, if it weren’t then I probably wouldn’t be promoting it.

Here they are, in order from most accurate to least:

1. MPW –   62.0% accurate
2. MYW –   61.2% accurate
3. ITP –   60.8% accurate
4. DPE –   58.8% accurate
5. ITPLS – 57.6% accurate
6. DP –    56.6% accurate
7. MPWLS – 56.6% accurate
8. HTW –   56.0% accurate

I went back only five seasons to get an average accuracy. I could do more seasons, but it takes a little while to gather the data for each season. So I probably won’t go back before 2006 unless someone commissions (i.e. funds) it.

On a related note, that means that you can now browse the 2006, 2007, and 2008 season predictions and results. For when you have nothing else to do.