I've been wondering about GPS versus course accuracy, and I was wondering what folks on here thought about that. I know a few people who take their GPS PRs as PRs, even on USATF certified courses. I guess it's fine if they then use that as their baseline to train harder... but unless a course really is measured long due to human error, wouldn't one adhere to the measured course time?

Using GPS time instead of a certified course distance is absolutely ridiculous!

For example when I ran the Eastbourne Trackstar Marathon in 2019 my watch showed 28 miles. If I’d stopped my watch at 26.2 then I’d claim to be a Sub2:50 marathoner. 

https://www.strava.com/activities/2358741670

darkwave - I've got the Garmin HRM Pro.  It's just arrived and I'm about to give it a test run, although all seems to be working on a test walk.  It's exciting to now add accurate HR data to the mix to nail down these zones.

Nice week and great to hear the race looks like a go.

skipping over most of the conversation had about two threads. It was tried. It didn't work. It's why things are separate from each other, AND equal (remember that time I said separate but equal and people were pissed off? ) TO each other. Both benefit from having a group training mentality where people can ask questions and obtain advice. Even if they didn't ask for it.

DK: I'm going to shorten your name to DK because I can. You'll have to ask JMac to put up his TDP (Temp + Dew Point) training scale. It's actually helpful, and for me (high desert) I pretty much NEVER get to sandbag any training. I think I could do some 3 minute 800s after some training. Here are some I did at 3:09/800m. I went sub-3 this year. https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/7529377813

Keen You're going to need to keep the spreadsheet, Strava link, TDP rules, and maybe a "famous" quotes section for the year 2023. Well....you don't have to. I'll just miss it and ask frequently.

Dwave I second the name change for Keen. I hope the new meds also work out well. Seriously, I would probably just quit running with how much work it seems like you have to put into keep going. I'm sure it's been covered, but do doctors say running/exercising helps with your meds and treatment? Your tempo runs sounds like a few of my M paced runs.

My week

I kind of just jumped into Boston training. I picked a speed workout to do and went out too fast, then finished the workout at what I could actually do. 6:15/1.2km.

Thursday after a work event I did 6M at 6:40/mi pace. It felt good. Not just running fast, or thinking about running a marathon at 6:40/mi pace, but just the running FELT good. It felt like exactly what I needed.

Saturday sucked. I woke up at 1am, fell back asleep probably around 5am, then woke up again just before 8am. Thankfully i'd talked with a guy about doing a run together, and he hit me up. It was so cold my super mittens (salomon mittens JMac recommended a few yeras ago) were not enough to keep my hands warm on the 6 mile run back home. I think it was 23F, but it felt MUCH colder. Sunday's weather was the same on paper, and the mittens felt warmer. Perhaps the top layer I wore was a little warmer and helped the gloves keep my hands warm. I was really only looking to do 5, and when others wanted to go father I just went along for the ride. I grabbed a new street since I'm "competing" with a buddy to run every street in Reno. NOW I work from home 100% again, so I might be getting more miles in random places again.

Weekly for period: From: 12/12/2022 To 12/18/2022

Total distance: 53.25mi

Dave - I've run the Houston Half twice (2018 and 2020).  Never done the full, so I figured what the heck.   I was going back and forth between Houston, Louisiana, and RNR Phoenix, but Houston is the easiest travel-wise.

RP - the neurologist is strongly in favor of my continuing to run and race.  One of the reasons I ran Chicago this fall is that he thought it was a good idea to do so.  Essentially hard aerobic exercise is believed to be neuroprotective, and exercise is considered to be part of the treatment plan for many neurological disorders.  Now - the level of exercise that I engage in is a lot more than what is normally prescribed.  But....it's my baseline, and so we want to keep me there rather than pull back.

Re: the cold weather and the mittens working better one day than the other - was the humidity different on the two days?  I find that when it gets really cold, the cold is much worse if the humidity is higher.  A super dry cold is actually not that chilling to the body (though it's hard on the lungs).

darkwave I don't think the humidity changed at all. I THINK it was the layers I work. UnderArmour Cold gear top one day, Nike cold gear top with long sleeves I can wrap my hands in, and a long sleeve shirt the next. Also, possibly having my wrist exposed was enough for the cold to reach my fingers after an hour of being outside. My right hand is currently really cold and I'm sitting inside my house.

I was having a talk with "my usual Saturday morning" buddy about how "we" (marathoners, and us doing what we're doing) are probably in a 1% of some 1% group far beyond the average hobby jogger who does 6 miles a week. Some people train to run 13 miles. WE just go out and do it. So the level of your excercise being far and beyond is just because of who they're comparing it to. Best of luck on the new meds. Hope it works out. I still remember you passing me at CIM and me having no clue how to "run by feel" at that point.

Flavio City strides. it matches up with Strava, so it counts walking and cycling as well. They have the outline of my city already loaded. When I ran my zip code I uploaded my runs into Google Earth and created the border for my ZipCode. I think loading them was more fun, because some of these "streets" aren't accessable. Gates and things get in the way. I think some of their data is a cell phone *ping* from a user ONE TIME while others are just plans submitted to the city. Sure, this will be a road, when the developer comes through in a decade. Just because they named the street in 1996 in some plans doesn't mean it is a street.

 

I'll be interested to see if you beat me for the year.  I'm on 4,033km, the way things are going, you may just over take me! 

I don't think so, I'm 60km behind (4055km - 3994km as of this morning) and hopefully you're back to normal now!  It shows how much volume at high quality you do, considering I've done 1.5 marathon cycles and will still finish with slightly lower volume.  You've also missed more time than me with illness although Covid did set me back 2-3 weeks worth of volume.

I used my chest HRM for the first time last night.  It takes a bit of getting used to comfort wise but I was very happy with the data I got back - I was consistently right on or around 130bpm which is in the middle of my "easy" zone (although this may get tweaked after we get some more data and I do the 5km).  Once we have that data the plan is to set workouts by HR zones rather than speed which will be great given I tend to miss the speeds usually by going too fast.  Along with the strength training it just feels like I'm doing everything a little bit better, although it's very early days.  I'm excited to see how it works out, even in the 5km next week.  I know my training changes won't make any difference to the 5km but the advantage of not having raced enough is there are soft PRs to take down.  I've done very little speed but surely I can beat my 5km PR, set in the second half of the Motorway 10km.  I'm claiming PRs in all distances from 5km to marathon in 2022 so it makes sense that I actually run a 5km....

I did try a chest strap HR for a while but didn't find it gave me materially different data to my wrist HRM, plus it got a bit annoying so I just stuck with the wrist HR.  IIRC your watch was giving some weird readings though so makes sense to use something that works.

It very often gets stuck on a value halfway through a run and stays there until the end when it can't be right - on Saturday it did that in warm conditions and with some late Aerobic Threshold kms.  Having said that, the readings I got yesterday from the chest strap were what I'd have expected based on my watch data.  The main reason is so that Andy can be confident about my zones when planning the training - he has less faith in the watch than me, saying it's basically useless unless you wear it uncomfortably tight.  He did mention some studies but I haven't investigated any further.

(Aaack - just deleted my carefully crafted 11-17 Dec 2022 report! Y'all got lucky. )

Hello! 11-17 Dec in a nutshell:

58.5 mi @ 9:45 min/mi. No LR but 5k race (Dec 17th) in 24:48 << slower than I'd like, for sure, but 40 s faster than on exactly the same course four weeks ago, and enough to wrap up a win in the 2022 Ed Barron Holiday series 50-59 F AG. Also: 25*130 lb on leg press machine Monday, 25*135 lb on Wed.

About the race series: there are five races (George Washington's birthday, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas). I'd won the 50-59 AG in 2020 and 2021, but this year got thoroughly beaten (deservedly so) every single time out by a fast newcomer. So I trailed all year until race #4, which for some reason she didn't run, after which I took a two-point lead. She ran and beat me this Saturday, too, but since she got five points for that performance and I got four, I ended up eking out the series win by one point, 21-20.

Got lucky!

In other news: my goal was to run 3000 mi for 2022. I'm at 2988.3 mi. Fingers crossed.

darkwave: Awesome week, and was nice to see you Sunday. You looked very perky for somebody doing a 20-miler!