Member spotlight

Steve stenzel

When did you start running and why?

I started running in high school. In P.E. freshman year, I ran a mile faster than a friend who was on the cross country team, and he told me to go out for track in the spring. I figured it could be something I could be good at.

That spring, I went out and “trained” for track season by running down the gravel road where I grew up to “the corner” (and then I walked back home). That was a good workout that prepared me for track practice - “the corner” was a quarter mile away. I was shocked to hear the coach tell me to run TWO MILES on the first day of practice. It turns out that my singular quarter mile run didn’t really help my endurance all that much. Who knew?

Why do you run or what keeps you motivated?

Three reasons. First, I run to eat. Second, I love that deep burn in my chest after a long and/or hard run. Third, I get a sick satisfaction from filling up my training log. (I can’t be the only one, right?)

What do you consider to be your favorite distance/race?

I enjoy mixing business and pleasure. What I mean by that is I like races where food is involved. I’ve done two donut miles (four donuts/ mile) and four beer miles (four beers/mile). And, I even drove three plus hours to Iowa with my brother-in-law a few years back to run a Donut Run 5K. I ate 15 Krispy Kremes over the course of the race and actually finished first. (Take THAT, Iowa.)

In terms of “normal” races, I like one milers, 5Ks and 10 milers. I don’t have a 10K PR that I’m happy with because that seems to be some sort of weird middle distance that I haven’t fully figured out how to conquer yet.

What is your best memory from a race?

I trained hard leading up to the TC 10 Mile in 2010 with the goal of breaking 60 minutes. Walking back to my family post-race after running a 59:05 is a feeling I’ll never forget.

Now that I have two boys, I enjoy any race where I get to push one or both of them in the stroller. Last year, my boys and I were seventh at the MDRA Lake Johanna 4 Miler, and I ran an 18:20 5K Thanksgiving morning with the double stroller (only being beat by high school boys).

And really all of 2012 was a fond memory. It was my best year of running, and that’s still the year with my most mileage (and half of my miles were with my son in the jogging stroller). Running so much in 2012 enabled me to win the MDRA Grand Prix series. I approached that year-long series as my “A” race for the year, which made the whole year feel different. I hope to race the Grand Prix again in a few years.

What does a typical week of training look like for you?

I get injured a lot. So, I can’t run more than three to four times each week. I swim and bike a lot, too, and enjoy competing in duathlons and triathlons (which gives my cross training a purpose). An ideal week is probably three runs (with one of them being longer and one of them being harder), two swims and two bike rides. And a decent amount of core/strength work mixed in, too. And lots of eating.

Steve Stenzel. Photo by Neil Craigan Photography

What is your shoe of choice?

Right now, the Nike Zoom Structure. If I find them on sale or at the Nike outlet in Medford, I buy whatever I can find. I have three pairs at the moment.

What is your favorite quote?

A ship is safe in a harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

William Shed

What are your interests outside of running?

Photography (I’m a photo professor at Hamline and I taught for six years at the U of M), cooking, eating and running around by the Mississippi River with my two young boys to tire them out.

What are your favorite pre- and post-race meals?

Pre-race: a Chipotle burrito with chicken, black beans, medium salsa, corn, extra cheese and some lettuce. Post-race: two Chipotle burritos with chicken, black beans, medium salsa, corn, extra cheese and some lettuce. But seriously, our family recently got a NutriBullet mini blender, and I really enjoy a smoothie post-workout. Frozen berries (blueberries and strawberries), a banana, a handful of spinach, some almond milk and a scoop of protein powder. (Jeez, that makes me sound like a hippie.)

What’s your bucket list/running goal for 2017?

For 2017, I want to race as injury free as possible and try to put up some points for my team (YWCA of Minneapolis Endurance Sports) at the USATF Minnesota events. Also, I was injured last year during duathlon and triathlon season, and I really want to race a few multisport races this year. I’m already registered for Cannon Falls Duathlon and Trinona Triathlon.

You often wear short or bright shorts when you race. Why?

As I started getting better at running and triathlons, I got more “official” gear (like a nice Sugoi tri suit in about 2009). But then it started feeling too serious. So I started wearing “fun” things to lighten the mood and remind myself that this is just a hobby. I have 2 pairs of super short 70s-style running shorts, rainbow shorts with lightning bolts, pink plaid shorts, some green and orange shorts that almost appear nude, and some new full-length tights that are a little loud. My wife actually loves it because if she’s cheering me on at races, she can see me coming from miles away.

VALUE Get the most out of your 2017 race season

BY NATHAN CAMPEAU

The topic for this article started like most great ideas throughout history have: on a long run. My running buddies and I were discussing what constitutes good “value” in a race. As the miles clicked off along the creek trail, we presented which benefits each of us looks for in the races we choose to run: distance, competitive fields, fast courses, prize money, swag, festive atmosphere, history and much more. Each of us determined the value of a race by comparing those benefits to the cost of entering the race. Pretty simple economics, we thought. But then the discussion turned: how might we actually measure that value and compare races? Our calculations continued well past the conclusion of our run, and we eventually bumped into Sarah (of MDRA fame) who mentioned that she had a rather complete spreadsheet of local races (almost 500 races) that we could use to settle our debate.

For me, the most interesting (and most easily measurable) value in a race is the cost of the race as compared to the distance raced. Having run over a dozen races in distances from one to 103 miles in 2016, I was intrigued by the concept of economy of scale. How much of a better “value” is a longer race than a shorter race, in terms of dollars per mile? I was also hoping to at least qualitatively assess the value of other race benefits.

So, I took the MDRA 2017 race spreadsheet, added about two dozen other local races and began to compile data on cost and distances. MDRA’s data didn’t have race cost so that meant that I had to do a lot of web searching to determine the cost of as many races as possible. I set a few rules and went to work.

First, the rules

In every case I would use the early bird race price, the cheapest cost of doing the race if one signed up as soon as registration opened (I didn’t include online processing fees). One observation I made is that I could save probably 30 to 40 percent of my annual race entry fees just by registering for a race right away!

Key terms in this story

Economy of scale

Cost advantages achieved by size (in this case, length of race).

Trendline

Line in a chart that indicates the general pattern or direction of a data set (in this case, 347 races).

Box-and-whisker plot

A graphic way to display the median, quartiles and extremes of a data set to show the distribution of the data.

Quartile

One of four equal groups into which a data set is divided.

Median

The value separating the higher half of a data set from the lower half.

n=xxx

“n” is the number of samples in a data set (in this case, n=347 races).

If a discount was provided for not accepting the race shirt, I took the discounted cost.

I only included races where I could find the cost of the race with three or fewer clicks. Shocking to me was how difficult cost information was to find, and, in fact, for many races, one would have to sign up for the race and go all the way to entering payment information to even find the cost of the race. I didn’t waste my time getting information on those races.

I took the cost that would be provided to a standard MDRA member. This rule mainly affected the costs of MDRA races, a couple of which are free and only open to MDRA members (I’m assuming that most of the readers of this magazine are MDRA members). Out of 511 local races, I was able to collect cost and analyze data on 347 races ranging from distances of one to 100 miles.

What races have the best cost per mile?

I first plotted all 347 races on a chart. This chart showed the race distance in miles versus the cost of the race per mile. I wanted to determine if longer races were indeed a better “value” in terms of cost per mile. Not surprisingly, as shown in the chart below and associated trendline, the cost per mile of races drops as races get longer. This is not a surprising phenomenon as there are mobilization and one-time costs (permits, medical, start and finish lines, website and admin, etc.) that most races must cover, regardless of distances. This means that the longer a race gets, the less expensive it is to put on per mile.

VALUE

Figure 1. Race Cost per Mile Compared to Race Distance for Local Races (n=37)

Interestingly, however, there is a pivot point around the 10K. There is a big drop off in the cost per mile from the one mile through 10K distance, after which the benefit of economy of scale is less pronounced and the value of races increases more slowly. This drop off could be because races shorter than a 10K can be relatively self-contained, whereas longer distances start to spread out race support services over many miles and increase the number of permits required so the benefits of the economy of scale are less pronounced.

So this analysis tells us that to get the best “value” in racing we should all run 50Ks and 100 milers, right? Perhaps, but given that we don’t all want to run those distances regularly, or at all, I knew I had to take the analysis a step further and look at the value within specific race distances. I thought that it might be useful to know what constitutes good “value” for a 5K or for a marathon separately.

How do I determine the value of a specific race at a particular distance?

So, I again plotted all 347 races, but this time looking at total cost versus distance. Again, I charted the resulting trendline. This trendline is the line that roughly determines the value of a given race. Races that fall on the chart ABOVE the line are more expensive for their distance, and races that fall BELOW the line are less expensive for their distance.

I then isolated each of the top nine race distances (1 mile, 5K, 4 miles, 5 miles/8K, 10K, 10 miles, half marathon, 25K and marathon). In this way, I was able to create (hopefully!) a cleaner graph that is easier to read without all 347 races individually plotted.

By isolating each race distance, I was able to do a bit of additional statistical analysis. Each race distance is mapped out on its own box-and-whisker plot. For example, I mapped all of the marathon races onto one box-andwhisker plot and then divided the marathons into quartiles, based on cost. These plots also display the minimum, median and maximum costs per race distance.

Not surprisingly, the trendline of each race distance nicely matches up with the median value of each of the nine distances. I think that this chart (Figure 2) is a nice tool to assess value on the basis of cost. For example, if you’re looking at a 5K that costs $35, you can look at the chart and realize that based on cost alone, the race is likely NOT a good value, as the data suggests that 5Ks greater than $30 are not good values.

But what about the swag!?

But, as we know (and as my friends and I discussed), there are many other factors that define value. Some of my friends like races with a festive atmosphere and a lot of swag,

VALUE

Figure 2. Race Cost Compared to Distance for Local Races (n=347)

This story is continued from Page 13

while some of my friends like races with competitive fields.

Not one to leave any rock unturned, I set out to figure out how I could assess how these subjective preferences stack up on cost.

I returned to my data. I decided that, for the festive, swag-heavy races I would use the Team Ortho races as a representative surrogate. Team Ortho’s races are known for providing a lot of gear and fancy race medals and for promoting a festive race atmosphere.

For competitive races, I used the USATF Circuit and MDRA Grand Prix races as representative surrogates. Those races, as well as MDRA’s own races, are also plotted on the chart in Figure 2.

From this data analysis, I can offer a few observations:

Fast and competitive races are generally very good values in terms of cost with the exceptions of marquee races like TCM and Grandma’s Half.

Races that provide a lot of “frills” charge you for them. Most of the Team Ortho races plot above the line, indicating that on cost alone, they are not a good value.

MDRA races, which have the reputation of historical, fast, well-run, low-frill, family friendly races are all phenomenal deals (I know where my paycheck comes from)!

As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun and spent a lot of time compiling this analysis. And if you’re a statistician or mathematician, you’ve probably also made the observation that I am clearly an amateur at this. Because I know that so many (or at least a few) of you will want to see the data and maybe do your own analyses, I’m placing the data online in a Google spreadsheet. Perhaps you’ll want to do a geographical analysis (locations are available) or figure out which month is the cheapest one for racing. All the data that I compiled and analyzed is available for download here: http:// goo.gl/NGEvJQ

Here’s to a wonderful and value filled racing season!

AT THE RACES

SECURIAN WINTER RUN 2017

The Securian Winter Run was held in downtown St. Paul on Saturday, Jan. 28. Pictured above is the start of the half marathon. There were also 10k and 5k events.

MDRA had a presence at the race, too, as shown by the photo to the right. Photos courtesy of Wayne Kryduba