RunningAHEAD - Topic: Pacing by week and month

posted: 9/15/2006 at 2:25 PM

Okay, here's one of the reasons I'm still keeping my CoolRunning log and haven't completely switched over to this one yet... [currently I keep both.] On the summary page, I can't see the average pace for a week or month or year. It shows the total miles and total time for that week/month/year... but I'd like to be able to see the pace too (since total time doesn't mean much to me w/o calculate how many minutes/mile]. Thanks, Mike Woods

Ben1

posted: 9/15/2006 at 9:28 PM

Tell me why is average pace per week or month or year important? What information does it give you about your training or your conditioning? How can it help you improve?

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JakeKnight

posted: 9/16/2006 at 6:29 PM

Quote from Ben1 on 9/15/2006 at 9:28 PM:

Tell me why is average pace per week or month or year important? What information does it give you about your training or your conditioning? How can it help you improve?

Yeah, I'm a little curious, too. Since over the course of a week (or a month or a year), my runs range from 13:00 per mile trail runs to sub-6:00 track work, not sure if my average would mean much. I suppose from year to year it might get a little faster. But it'd also get faster if I just did more speed work and less long mileage .... which wouldn't help my marathon time much Shocked

Maybe you mean the average pace per specific type of run? That might be helpful, I guess. By the way, not to be Captain Obvious, but since RunningAhead DOES show you the total distance and the total time, a little long division (or a calculator) will show your pace. You know, come to think of it, it would be kinda cool if, where the little legend is for each type of running (tempo, interval, etc) ... there was a little notation of how many miles in each category and your average pace in each.

E-mail: eric.fuller.mail@gmail.com
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mikey_mike777

posted: 9/16/2006 at 7:07 PM
modified: 9/16/2006 at 7:09 PM

Quote from Ben1 on 9/15/2006 at 9:28 PM:

Tell me why is average pace per week or month or year important? What information does it give you about your training or your conditioning? How can it help you improve?

How is the current information any different? My suggestion is the same as is already on the log... except it's put into a format runners actually use. Total time and miles spent? Who actually looks at their totals, as opposed to their pacing? I could just figure it out using a calculator, but it would be a pain to always be doing this when the admin of the site could easily set up a script doing it automatically. He already has the two numbers, and scripts that already calculate pacing for longer runs... so it's not like this would be much of a task. Anyway, it would let you know how your conditioning has improved. I know for me, at least, as I've gotten in better shape, my "easy run pace" has increased dramatically... my tempo runs have gotten faster... everything is a bit faster, even when I'm not pushing myself. So it would let me see how much faster I've got... even if it factored in every type of run. Sure, if you switched up your training a lot... like harder trails and longer runs, your pacing would go down even though your fitness level necessarily didn't. But I would imagine most people keep their training relatively constant, since they are usually training for a specific event (a 5k, 10k, marathon, etc.) That would be cool if it show'd pacing for each kind of run, but I wasn't talking about that. I was just asking for the information that's already there to be put into a different format... because reading total minutes is meaningless to me unless I put it into an average pace format. I would think most runners would agree with me... since that's what everyone says when they talk about their runs. (i.e. "I ran an easy 6 at 9 min/mile pace."... rather than "I ran an easy 6 in 54 minutes."... and even when people say "an easy 6 in 54 minutes"... I imagine the other people hearing it start dividing 54 by 6 to get the pacing and an idea of how fast it was.)

Wingz

Professional Noob

posted: 9/16/2006 at 7:29 PM

When I want to see something like that I use the "graph" feature that's already in place. You can tell it to show pace by day, week, month, whatever. It'll draw nice little lines with different colors for each run type. Give it a try - you may like it!

Roads were made for journeys...

Ben1

posted: 9/17/2006 at 4:52 AM

Then isn't it important just to know the pace of each run rather than a weekly avg as each run is different?

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eric :)

posted: 9/17/2006 at 12:43 PM

Quote from mikey_mike777 on 9/16/2006 at 7:07 PM:

How is the current information any different? My suggestion is the same as is already on the log... except it's put into a format runners actually use. Total time and miles spent? Who actually looks at their totals, as opposed to their pacing?

Mike, Relatively speaking, this site hasn't been around for long, but it's long enough for me to learn that there is no such thing as a training log that fits everyone's needs. If everyone uses it the way I imagined it, this site will look very different from what it is now. There won't be mysterious errors that I need to track down. I don't have to worry about internationalization and shoe sizes in different systems. Everyone has a different way of looking at their numbers. I created the log for myself a couple of years ago to track my running. It is the way it is because I like to know my weekly and monthly mileages. I don't look at the durations myself, but I would imagine that folks that run for time instead of distance find that useful. I agree with other folks that an average weekly/monthly pace won't make much sense since it fluctuates from week to week and month to month. In order for pace to make sense to you, you'll need to hold many variables constant, such as distance, the type of workouts you do in each week, ambient temperature, your overall health that week... Using the weekly pace as an indicator of your fitness might also lead you to run your recovery runs faster. Right now, I have no near term plans to change how the numbers are presented. However, part of the plan for redoing the analysis portions of the site is to allow you to create your own graph for the summary page so you can create a graph of your weekly average pace or whatever that makes more sense to you. Would that be a good compromise? eric Smile

mikey_mike777

posted: 9/18/2006 at 12:37 AM
modified: 9/18/2006 at 12:40 AM

Ah, don't worry about it... I thought everyone would be behind the idea, but doesn't look like it. I'll just keep my CoolRunning log which shows it.

Pacing by week and month (Read 564 times)