Chad Starks' English Channel swim contest
Gords
Syracuse, UTCharter Member
I've been coaching my good friend, Chad Starks for his English Channel crossing coming up next month (tide window runs Sep 19-25th). Our local Open Water Swim club in Utah (Salt Lake Open Water) is sponsoring a fun little contest to get folks involved and invested in his success. You could win $100 gift card to SwimOutlet.com if you can guess his finish time closer than anybody else. Check it out!
http://saltlakeopenwater.blogspot.com/p/chad-starks-english-channel-swim.html
His spot will be live on that same page once the swim starts. You can also follow the swim live on his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/chad.starks.3
Comments
Can you give any times/places for other distances that he's done? The bookies are refusing to make predictions until they know.
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
Yeah that info is on the link I provided to base your guess on.
@Gords - Thanks.
OK. Speed per increasing distance usually has a non-linear decay function or even two functions: one before glycogen depletion and one after. In this case, it's probably safe to ignore the pre-glycogen depletion function and estimate based on the post-depletion one. Unfortunately, the data set is not very rich and has some issues such as a data point set in abnormal conditions. This means that most non-linear extrapolation methods like LaGrange are going to be suspect. In that case, I like to use cubic splines or B-splines as they tend to constraint wildness. I used cubic splines and the extrapolation to EC distance was a nice extension to the speed decay curve.
Therefore, the official bookie betting value for the over-under betting is: 16:03:31 (Sixteen hours, three minutes, thirty one seconds.)
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
Wow, very scientific, Leonard! Me, I just looked at the swim speeds and took a guess, which was pretty similar to yours: 16:08. (They didn't ask for seconds, so I didn't list any.)
May the best estimate win!
More important, may his swim be successful!
@Gords, what if two people have the closest time?
For the record, I put in 15:48.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Chad Starks' English Channel swim is now live on SwimTrack. Go Chad!
http://swimtracking.com/live/
Looks like very good progress!
Bump...
What ever became of his swim? Anyone?
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
http://saltlakeopenwater.blogspot.com/p/chad-starks-english-channel-swim.html
Congrats to Chad on successfully swimming the English Channel and to Matt for successfully earning first place in the guessing contest! (Gotta say, though, Chad had the tougher job here.)