Bold Predictions for 2016: Revisited

By Jarrett Felix

So for the past three years, I’ve been making some Bold Predictions for the new year toward the end of December. However, I realized that no one has actually been keeping tabs on my predictions to check on the accuracy. What if I somehow scalped a really good prediction? What if I was wildly incorrect on everything I said? What if Carson Wentz and I became best friends? I think the readers deserve to get an end of year status update on those questions. So, for starters, no Carson and I are not best friends. Boom, one question off your minds. You can sleep easy tonight. And now, let’s review my Bold Predictions for 2016.

PREDICTION: I will alternate between referring to myself in first and third person throughout my posts in 2016. Readers will be extremely confused by etrain’s decision to alternate between these two points of view.

RESULT: TRUE. This was an easy one. To this day, I continue to be confusing with the first and third person references. Having a Jarrett and a Garrett on the staff doesn’t help either.

PREDICTION: CB West will win the 4x800m at Outdoor States. And it will Rock.

RESULT: FALSE. CB West did not win the 4x8 outdoors. They finished a narrow 3^rd with State Colle grabbing gold and Abington beating them by less than a hundredth of a second for silver. But to be fair, if they had won it would have Rocked. You will be missed Rock Fortna.

PREDICTION: The NCAA championships outdoors will switch from a 1500m to a mile. In protest, I will start keeping track of my mileage in 1500m intervals, calling it fifteen-hundredage.

RESULT: FALSE. The NCAA championships, as far as I know, has not made this switch and I certainly haven’t been protesting about it. I guess you can thank Shelia Reid for that one.

PREDICTION: I will almost immediately go back to calling it mileage because that is a stupid idea.

RESULT: FALSE. Technically this one is false because I never protested. Probably shouldn’t have doubled down on the whole fifteen-hundredage thing. To be fair it certainly is a stupid idea.

PREDICTION: After having such brutally inaccurate predictions last year, etrain will throw in some obvious predictions just to make himself look better for potential sponsors. When he tries to call himself Nostraindamus, his fellow writers take away his computer privileges. 

RESULT: CONTESTED. So technically, I was right. I did throw in some obvious predictions to make myself look better. However, the predictions were made on December 28^th, 2015 and thus, were not in the year 2016. Therefore, they can’t be bold predictions for 2016. Get your crap together etrain.

PREDICTION: Dom Peretta will run something fast and etrain will talk about it in a blog post. That’s right, we go bold here on the blog.

RESULT: TRUE. This happened. A lot of times. Almost weekly at a certain point. He debuted indoors, won indoor states, nearly set the state record at nats next to Slagowski, then ran 1:50.10 outdoors and won states some more.

PREDICTION: The etrain writing staff will put together a DMR for the Corporate Race at Penn Relays. As long as etrain isn’t actually on the relay they will do pretty well.

RESULT: FALSE. Turns out we don’t qualify as a corporation nor do we have the woman or masters runners needed to jump in on this. To be fair, Fox looks good in a dress and I run like an old man so maybe we could have gotten away with it.

PREDICTION: A fan will be arrested for storming the court at a Warriors-Sixers game to try and hug Steph Curry. Although the fan in question will be held in custody for a week, Curry will call it the “best hug he’s ever received” because of all the love and passion behind the hug.

RESULT: FALSE. I didn’t end up getting arrested.

PREDICTION: The blog will have no posts for a week after the Warriors and Sixers face off in Philadelphia

RESULT: FALSE. Gotta stop doubling down on predictions. It’s killing my record.

PREDICTION: Nick Dahl will finish with the fastest 2 mile in the state for 2016. This will lead to a bunch of “we need a meet of champs” type posts that no one will read.

RESULT: TRUE. Nick ended up getting that honor with his 9:02 at Henderson. And if I told you that I wrote a “we need a meet of champs” post, you’d have to believe me because we all know no one reads that stuff anyway. In fact, most people probably just skip around to they see their name. So I’m just going to throw in random names here. Gavin Inglis, Evan Hassman, Stephen Paul, Paul Chelimo, Mark McGwire.

PREDICTION: Council Rock North will win Cross Country States but not the Viking Invitational

RESULT: TRUE. North did in fact win states and, because the Viking Invite didn’t happen, they did not win that meet! Shout out to technicalities.

PREDICTION: In an unrelated story, ForrestCRN and PADon’tPlay will suddenly begin posting in bunches around October.

RESULT: TRUE. Let’s be real, this kinda happened. Forrest did a pod with me, was riding the comment train hard and wrote a post for the first time since who knows when. It went up on this site, but I’m counting in.

PREDICTION: It will be a leap year in 2016. You heard it here first.

RESULT: TRUE. I tried to tell you guys, but no one wanted to listen.

PREDICTION: Robby Andrews will grab a medal in the 2016 Olympics at 1500m. When he returns to the states, he and etrain will share a platonic date at Rita’s Water Ice to discuss his tactics and kick. Once again, it will be pretty Mac and Cheese. 

RESULT: FALSE. I don’t really want to talk about it, OK? I’m in a glass case of emotion.

PREDICTION: My fellow writers will continue to do a great job expanding the content on the site. So much so that people will appreciate we have eight writers who are balling on all cylinders.

RESULT: TRUE. My writers are great. I enjoy those guys and they started to get some well-deserved individual love in 2016. GZ even got linked to on the LetsRun home page.

PREDICTION: etrain will try to work the phrase “balling on all cylinders” into more posts. He really likes it.

RESULT: FALSE. I didn’t! Gosh, that’s really unfortunate. I really do like that phrase.

PREDICTION: After Steph Curry wins a second straight MVP and the Warriors get another title, etrain will suddenly jump off the Steph Curry bandwagon, claiming that he has become “too mainstream” and he will move on to a new, exciting point guard.

RESULT: TRUE. Alright so this is only a little true, but I did discuss this very topic in a post about Steph maybe a month ago (it’s called 13 going on 30, y’all should check it out). I’m still looking for that new exciting point guard.

PREDICTION: Contrary to popular belief, it will not be Ish Smith.

RESULT: TRUE? I’m not really sure how to score this one. It was indeed not Ish Smith but it also didn’t really happen. Alright this year I should probably stop doubling down on predictions.

PREDICTION: Garrett Zatlin and company will lead the college section into a golden age for 2016. We will owe it all to the Craig Lutz shrine we pray to within our staff office.

RESULT: TRUE. As mentioned, GZ’s college section was blowing up in 2016 and we do, in fact, owe it all to Craig Lutz. And maybe we don’t have an office, but we do have a shrine. Ok, fine we don’t have a shrine, but we follow him on twitter and occasionally like his stuff.

PREDICTION: In 2016, we get a staff office for the website. I know, right? Apparently, we become a pretty big deal in 2016.

RESULT: FALSE. We did not get the office.

PREDICTION: We don’t actually become a big deal in 2016. The office is just etrain’s mom’s basement. But to be fair, she makes us hot cocoa in the winter. So overall, we decide it’s a sweet deal. Jealous flotrack?

RESULT: FALSE. We didn’t even get the basement! But to be fair, I still have the occasional glass of hot cocoa.

PREDICTION: They will hold the Olympic Championships in Rio for the Summer of 2016. Just call me Nostraindamus.

RESULT: TRUE. Sure, this was an easy one. But this potentially could have been wrong. There was a lot of pre-olympic buzz around Rio.

PREDICTION: Penntrack and etrain will eventually have that prediction contest face-off for indoor states. After talking a huge game and getting super cocky about it, etrain will lose handily and be forced to hand over the rights to the website.

RESULT: TRUE AND FALSE. We did finally have that prediction contest for indoor states (shout out to Dan Beck). Thankfully, etrain did narrowly pull out the victory over penntrack, but the overall competition was actually won by D6 Legend (shout out to D6 Legend).

PREDICTION: After indoor states, the blog will suddenly have Gatorade and Chocolate Milk ads on every page that automatically play every time you click on a post.

RESULT: FALSE. Man, I really like this doubling down on predictions for comedic effect thing. I hope the readers were laughing because otherwise I shot my prediction resume in the foot for nothing.

PREDICTION: A variety of runners through the state (and the nation) will continue to overcome obstacles and make huge improvements. Although not all those runners will end up in a blog post or on penntrack’s home page, it does not mean their stories are not worth celebrating. So don’t forget to celebrate what you and your teammates have accomplished this past year and dream big for what next year could bring.

RESULT: TRUE. Cheesey, but probably true. The last part isn’t really a prediction it’s just a suggestion which actually concerned me even a year ago when I wrote “I don’t think that was actually a prediction. Not sure that will affect the stats for sponsorships …” It’s almost like I foresaw this exact post coming …

Classic Nostraindamus.