Rob Dickson writes…
Having joined the club at the same time as Ben Hardisty, and had an ongoing mid / lower league rivalry all season, I decided to examine the situation in some depth.
In a rather ‘sad’ moment (must have been only ‘Big Brother or ‘Love Island’ on TV) I plotted our times around Horne over the previous three years (see attached), and drew the following conclusions:
- To have any chance of beating Ben next season I will have to start doing some really proper training, or (perhaps more realistically) rely on the newcomer to his family to keep him otherwise occupied.
- You don’t need to win (or have any chance of winning) to enjoy competing – it really is the taking part that counts, as long as you can find someone as ‘mediocre’ as yourself to compare times with (apologies to Ben – especially given his current rate of improvement – see point 3 below).
- By applying a linear trend line to the results (the limit of my statistical skills, and clearly unrealistic), and also plotting Steve Dennis’s best times from the previous 3 seasons, it can be seen that, given the current rate of improvement, Ben will beat Steve for the first time at the end of the 2011 season (aged 52 – which will be a fine effort), with me following in August 2014 (a mere 46), which is all the incentive I need.
Statistics never lie !
see them for yourself
