Discussion: I wanted the option of bail...

I wanted the option of bailing without affecting my ranking, so I told Valerie to exclude this race from my rankings.

Unnecessary now, I think, since the new rules just call for your best 4 being counted.

Yeah, that's a very interesting rule development. I suppose it's attractive because attending more events can't possibly hurt you, but I am curious what the motivation of the board was. It is noteworthy that this is exactly how the WRE ranking works.

Too many OF's don't want their sprints to count. :-) (Like me.) Not sure if that's the exact motivation, but it might be.

I was one of the ones (the only one?) pushing for the change, which was back to the way it used to be. Seemed like too much trying to game the system, and reasons not to attend A-meets. Whereas the incentive should be to attend more A meets. And if someone gets an advantage by doing that, good for them.

For the short term, it seems like this ranking system encourages more variability in race results than the old one, since all but the best 4 races get dropped. I could run faster and take more risks and possibly get a higher ranking because of it. Is this a good strategy for long-term improvement, or should I be trying for consistency instead?

I think that's a red herring, though I've heard it mentioned before. You should always try to do as well as possible. I have a hard time believing that someone is going to take rankings into account when deciding on a route choice. If there are route choices that are faster, but that you can't reliably execute, it sounds like they are the kind of thing that you need to learn to execute reliably in order to move up a notch and fulfill your potential.