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Average Lap pace (Read 150 times)

    It seems to me that most people find instant pace to be totally useless.  It tends to look like a seismograph of San Francisco during an earthquake.  Perhaps elite runners with a steady pace or people on a treadmill get a better graph.

     

    What seems to me to be much more interesting would be average lap pace, because after the early portion of the lap the oscillations dampen and converge to something meaningful.  I don't really understand why nobody has done this.

     

    Anyway, just my $0.02.


    #artbydmcbride

        I don't get a graph, I just get a digital number, it is usually the same as the lap pace.  Maybe I am a very consistent pacer.  I do have one readout give me average pace.   That way I can see if I am gradually slowing.

       

      Runners run


      an amazing likeness

        What seems to me to be much more interesting would be lap pace, because after the early portion of the lap the oscillations dampen and converge to something meaningful.  I don't really understand why nobody has done this.

         

        Anyway, just my $0.02.

         

        Perhaps I'm completely missing your point -- but where does RA fit into this?  Your RA log reports the pace averaged per lap -- ie, it says your lap 4 was a 9:54 min/mi average pace in your last workout).  Graphs on RA average (an adjustable) number of GPS points to smooth the pace.

         

        On most of the current Garmin Forerunners, there is a lap average pace available and some (most?) don't even show instantaneous pace as a data field.

        Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.

          I was just speaking of the graph for pace in RA.  Averaging any number of points does not differentiate between laps run at different paces, such as warm up or cool down laps.

            I don't  get it. You can easily graph lap pace on RA.

            Runners run

              I don't  get it. You can easily graph lap pace on RA.

               

              This was my first reaction. But I think what the OP is looking for is on the Pace vs. Distance graph in a workout, show it as a step function using lap pace. It looks like you should be able to get this if you set x-axis to "Splits" instead of "Distance". However when I do this, the pace on the graph does not reflect the lap paces shown on the splits tab.

              Dave

                Have a feeling that when we select splits for X-axis, its calculating split pace based of the time elapsed rather than actual running time, which is a valid way to calculate pace, but not very useful if running intervals.

                basing this off my run on 6/17 when I had a 2 min stretch/water break after running a bit, it's adding that 2 min to the overall time for the first mile.  Similarly mile 5 was hill repeats, on which I stopped my watch for the jog down, and ran up at about my normal pace.

                  Have a feeling that when we select splits for X-axis, its calculating split pace based of the time elapsed rather than actual running time, which is a valid way to calculate pace, but not very useful if running intervals.

                  basing this off my run on 6/17 when I had a 2 min stretch/water break after running a bit, it's adding that 2 min to the overall time for the first mile.  Similarly mile 5 was hill repeats, on which I stopped my watch for the jog down, and ran up at about my normal pace.

                   

                  OK this makes some sense. In looking at a few workouts, the splits that show as ridiculously slow (even for me) appear to correlate to bathroom breaks.

                   

                  But it doesn't seem like a useful way to do it -- if unintended, it would be nice to fix this so it uses actual running time.

                  Dave


                  an amazing likeness

                    Have a feeling that when we select splits for X-axis, its calculating split pace based of the time elapsed rather than actual running time, which is a valid way to calculate pace, but not very useful if running intervals.

                    basing this off my run on 6/17 when I had a 2 min stretch/water break after running a bit, it's adding that 2 min to the overall time for the first mile.  Similarly mile 5 was hill repeats, on which I stopped my watch for the jog down, and ran up at about my normal pace.

                     

                    I think we'll find that the current behavior of using the "elapsed time" (aka calendar time) rather than the "activity time" ("moving time" in Garmin-speak) in the splits is not intended....it showed up in this release of the log.

                     

                    For clarity only:  a workout which starts at 7:00AM and ends at 8:00AM calendar time. During that 60 minutes, you had the GPS stopped for 10 minutes = 50 minutes activity time.  The workout will show as a 50 min workout in the RA log.  But the spit paces will be based on the total calendar time of the split -- the split time start and end are using the calendar time.

                     

                    I think the OP is asking for a neat idea -- which is basically a step graph of the interval workouts with straight lines of average page per. I think we can get close this using a bar chart...

                    Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.

                      Ok folks, I'm finally back.  I got off work early and then ran 10 miles in 94F with 71F dew point.  Thought I was going to die.  But I digress.....

                       

                      I said Lap Pace, but I really meant Average Lap Pace.  So, one would see the wild error divergence for the first part of the lap, and then the average would start to hone in on the actual average the farther into the lap one gets.  It would show how far into a lap one needs to get for the Average Lap Pace to start appearing meaningful.  At the end of the lap there would again be large divergence until the errors began to again dampen for the new lap.

                       

                      It would probably end up looking something like the green graph below, with each lap starting with a fluctuation both above and below the approaching average and then approaching a more steady line until the beginning of the next lap.

                       

                       

                       

                       

                      (This image pertains to seismographs, but I thought it might convey the idea.)

                       

                      Make any sense?

                        Why would you want to see that?

                        Dave

                          Well, to my mind instant pace doesn't provide any value. The Average Lap Pace would at least converge to a meaningful value each lap.  Such a graph would also indicate about how long/far one has to be into the lap before the average begins to settle down.

                            Well, to my mind instant pace doesn't provide any value. The Average Lap Pace would at least converge to a meaningful value each lap.  Such a graph would also indicate about how long/far one has to be into the lap before the average begins to settle down.

                             

                            Okay, so I think I understand what you're looking for and neither RA nor STRAVA provide this (despite providing nearly every other possible type of graph, chart, etc... I am NOT complaining here...).  I've often focused on my GARMIN and the "moving lap average".  For instance... I'm three-quarters of the way into a mile lap and my pace is currently showing 8:15/mi, but I want to finish the lap (mile) at an average pace below 8:00/mi... then I need to run the final quarter mile faster (four times the difference between current avg. and goal avg. = 7:15/mi pace) than my goal average lap pace to finish the lap (mile) and meet my goal.

                             

                            Most (all?) GARMIN devices display this as your default while running, it just doesn't really show up on any logs.  The "moving lap average" is far more variable as RV-D explained in comparison to the seismograph, but it would show if a runner was consistent with their pace throughout the run and each individual lap/split.  When your chart of this does not look like a seismograph, you are running very smooth pace.  That's generally an objective for most runner's at any pace; hit your target pace and stick with it, thus it could be quite a useful tool to analyze a run.

                             

                            An overlay of moving lap average and final lap average would be kind of neat to see...

                              The beginning of a lap will always look a bit like a seismograph because of the error factors, but as one progresses into the lap they begin to cancel out and if one is running a constant pace the graph will then converge to a straight line.  Or if one is gradually slowing down or speeding up the line will gradually move up or down, but without the wild fluctuations.

                               

                              i wrote my own running/mapping software applications once long ago, back before RunningAhead and GarminConnect existed.  They were written in Java and hosted on my own site.  This was back in Forerunner 201 days.  Kind of wish I still had that software around so I could implement stuff like this.  I'm too lazy to write it again from scratch and this functionality wouldn't be as convenient as a standalone application.  

                               

                              I think every running related site has that instant pace graph and yet it has to be the most meaningless chart around.

                              bhearn


                                Average lap pace is useful to see on your Garmin; I have it on my main screen. Seeing a graph of afterwards I'm not sure would be so useful. Why do you want to see all the numerical artifacts damping down from noisy to smooth? That's a reflection of sampling noise, not anything relevant to your running.

                                 

                                I think want you want, to avoid the super-noisy instantaneous pace plot, is averaging of that data. And you can get that on RA. In your graph, see the box that says how many points to average? Play with that.

                                 

                                Also if you do want to write your own software, there is an RA API; you can access your data that way and do whatever you want with it.

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