New Year, New Statistics

As you can tell from the December 13th edition of this blog, I'm kinda sorta into technology and data. But in order for that data to be useful, I need to correlate that data into statistics. For example, here's a post that members of one of my Facebook running clubs saw from me back in November:

2021 was a good November for me. I blasted through the annual mileage goal (1700 miles) that I failed to achieve last year. New target: 2,021 miles in 2021! The good news: as of the end of November, I am on track to reach my annual goal by 12/29 and to end the year with 2030. With 1 day off each week, the holidays & travel days, I’m guessing I have 22 running days left this year. So, I need 7.4 miles each of those days I run to reach my goal. Here are the November details:

200.01 miles in November, which is 2.5 miles less than last month. I am at 1854 miles for the year so far. I’m on track for 2030 by 12/31/20, currently running about 4 miles ahead of schedule on my annual goal of 2,021. November’s miles are an average of 9.1 miles per day for 22 running days, which was 73% of the month. An average of 6.7 miles per day over all 30 days in November. That is above my 8.3 miles-per-running-day average for the year and also above my YTD average (67%) of days running (223 days out of 334). My November average of 43.1 miles per week was less than October but above my annual average of 38.7 miles per week 2021 YTD. 

As I described in the December 20th edition of this blog, there are many different things out there that can motivate us as runners. Call me a nerd, but setting a goal and tracking the statistics along the way motivates me! If you, like me, are motivated or at least interested in tracking your running statistics, keep reading for more details. On the other hand, if your eyes roll back in your head when you think of such details, or if you have arithmophobia, you may want to stop reading now.

There is Raw Data

Here's a snapshot of a spreadsheet that I've been using and refining for a few years now to generate all 

those statistics:

As I update this sheet during the year, all I have to do is add a new line, enter the distance run that day, and the sheet does the rest. If you're interested in having a spreadsheet like this of your very own, leave me a comment on this blog or in the Facebook group Realistic Running and I'll fix you right up!

There are Daily Statistics

Date

Day of the Year (1-365)

Days Left in the Year

Total Miles in the Last 7 Days

Monthly Miles to Date

Annual Miles to Date

Miles You Should Have Run to Date

Miles Remaining to Reach Your Goal

Miles Per Day Needed to Reach Your Goal

Days Until You Reach Your Goal

Projected Date to Reach Your Goal

Projected mileage at End of the Year

There are Monthly Statistics

Average Miles Per Day This Month

Running Days This Month

Average Miles Per Running Day This Month

Average Miles Per Day This Year

There are Annual Statistics 

Number of Running Days This Year

Average Miles-Per-Running Day This Year

Average Miles Per Week This Year

Maximum Miles Per Week This Year

Average Miles Per Week for Each Month

And Then There are the Graphs!

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here are two pictures! The top graph has the "target" line for Miles Per Year in red, and the actual mileage in blue. The bottom graph has the target 2021 MPY as the horizontal centerline, and my actual mileage in blue, wavering around the centerline.

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A Special Motivation Just for You

With the year coming to a close, it’s a time when many are working hard at finishing up the current year's goals while looking ahead to new goals in the new year. Regardless of the goal, it’s motivation that is responsible for getting it done. There is a wide range in the amount of motivation an individual needs to reach their goals. Some of us are intrinsically motivated, while others require one or more carrots-on-a-stick to get us up and out the door. And that intrinsic motivation can change based on current circumstances. This post looks at a few of the different forms of motivation you can try, whether you just need a kick in the pants to get out the door on a snowy Saturday, or whether you need something extra to get you through those last few runs to meet an annual mileage goal.

Many Options

Dictionary definitions of "motivation" say things like:

• the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way
• the general desire or willingness of someone to do something

Let's face it... the fact that you are reading this blog probably means that you are a Runner. (I'm pretty sure my wife - not a runner - doesn't even read this!) That's a capital-R Runner, meaning you make somewhat of a habit out of this pastime. Just that fact alone means you are already more motivated than 85% of Americans. (About 50 million Americans participate in some form of running or jogging, according to to a 2020 report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.[1])

A Matter of Life &Death

For some, it's a simple fact: run or die. Literally. There are a number of chronic conditions that running helps to keep in check. Running has benefits in the prevention of obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and hip replacement, benign prostatic hypertrophy, respiratory disease, cancer, and disability. Running, even in quite low doses, is associated with a substantial reduction in cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.[2]. I can relate! With a family history including hypertension & dyslipidemia, and having had asthma since childhood, maintaining and even improving my health is definitely high on my motivation list.

Annual Mileage Goals

Another good source of motivation is to set an annual mileage goal. I've been doing this for a few years now as a background goal in addition to any events I might have on my schedule. It started in 2016 with a magazine-based challenge for 1,000 miles per year. I thought, "That's less than 20 miles a week, I can do that!" So I started tracking, and ended up that year with a bit over 1200 miles. Every year since then I raised my new annual goal by 100 miles over what I achieved the previous year. In 2020 I had my first "failure"; I topped the previous year's 1600 but failed to reach the current year's 1700-mile goal. I more than made up for that in 2021, when I blew past the 1700-mile goal in early November. At that point I did some quick math and set a new goal: 2,021 miles in 2021. As I write this on 12/20/2021, I am only 24 miles away from this lofty goal. "Running The Year" has been a thing for many years. I never thought it was within my realm of possibility. But CONSISTENCY (that's another post [3]) got me close enough to go for it, and achieve it!

Event-Based Goals

Whether it's your first marathon or your fiftieth, a Couch-to-5k or your weekly Parkrun, races and other events on your calendar are a dependable source of motivation. Most recreational runners run "races" without any hope of winning. But realistically, runners of every ability and experience level can use any event as a motivational goal. Signing up for a race of a distance you've never run before means an automatic PR! In other cases, you can run your local annual 5k against "former you". This always gives you a reason to train and try harder. Successively harder goals are to PR, win your age group, and maybe even some day place overall, depending on your ability and how hard you want to try. Finally, there is always the run-for-charity option at larger events. Raising money and running for a worthy cause can help make training for and participating in an event more about the cause than about you. Any running event provides many goals for everyone! 

Running Streak

Again, I've detailed this topic in another post [4]. To summarize here, a Running Streak is a type of personal challenge where the runner vows to run at least one mile every day for so many days. It's fun to start small (for example, New Year's Day to Ground Hog Day. it's only a month!) and then see how long you can keep it going. A Running Streak helps teach you how to run slow and easy, to pace yourself, and to be determined in the face of daily adversities that may arise. By starting with only a month goal for this, you give it time to create a habit but it's not an insurmountable time period... it's only a month!

Friendly Competition

This is the realm of the office Step Challenge or Biggest Loser competition. As long as you can keep it friendly, this is a reliable source of motivation. It's great to be able to pit yourself against each other, driving each other forward to succeed. Even the "loser" is still a winner in this case!  

Running With Friends

Whether it's a neighbor or a local Running Club [5], running with friends can motivate you to get your lazy self out the door. In this case, peer pressure is a good thing. When someone is depending on you to be there, your activity- or lack thereof - is no longer all about you. Now there is someone else relying on you. Also, running with others of different ability can help you to either slow down or speed up, whichever you are having trouble doing. It's amazing how much more quickly the miles go by when you run them while you're having a conversation with one or more friends. It can also be amazing to learn that your "conversational pace" is actually faster than you thought it was. On the flip side, if you need to learn to slow down, running while chatting with others who are naturally a bit slower than you are can help you dial back your speed - while it's helping them to run with someone faster (see above). Need motivation? Try running for someone else for a change instead of just yourself!

Epilogue

Please don't ever forsake your running due to lack of motivation! There are so many different ways to get motivated. Bookmark this post. Share it with a friend. Share it in your running Facebook Group. Get to know what motivates YOU, and get ready to use it. 

References

[1] Running/Jogging Participation Report 2020

[2] Effects of Running on Chronic Diseases

[3] https://plantbasedplodder.blogspot.com/2020/01/consistency-is-key.html

[4] https://plantbasedplodder.blogspot.com/2018/07/streaking.html

[5] Find A Running Club

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Tech Can Be Your Friend

If you follow any online (or print, that is still a thing) running-oriented sites, you will see quite a few exhortations to “leave the technology at home” for a more relaxing run, and other possible advantages. That’s fine, but I think that as long as you manage the relationship, technology can be your friend and running buddy. 

I don’t want to say here that any brand is better than another, but I’ve been a Garmin user for so many years I can’t remember how long it’s actually been.  It all started maybe 15 years ago with the Forerunner 305, but that is not the story I want to tell here. (Can you believe I actually ran with this huge thing on my wrist?)

A quick Google search of “run without technology” will turn up a number of headlines exhorting us to unplug. Here are but a few:

 No, You Don't Need Any Technology to Have a Good Run

The Benefits of Running Without Technology

Ditch the Technology to Improve Your Running

Yes, you can go running without technology

Minimalist Running: Ditch the Technology and Run Free

But my thinking is that like anything else, as long as you can control yourself, technology can be your friend and faithful running sidekick. Here's a quick overview of some of the great things I think running technology has to offer.

Elapsed Time

This has been available on digital watches pretty much since we first saw digital watches. So I don’t think this one counts as “technology” any more.

Distance

When I started running, I had to get in the car first and go measure the route using my car’s odometer. Luckily I was young and could remember where most of the mile splits were. Having this data on my watch saves me time & gas now! I set my watch to do an automatic lap every half mile by default. But when I’m doing speedwork, I create a workout with the appropriate intervals. This way, I don’t have to go sneak onto a school track after hours to do intervals. Also, the watch tells me when to start and stop each interval, so I don’t even really need to look at it. But it’s there, watching me run. This feature also allows me to run in circles at the end of a run to end up with a total distance that is an even number of miles. Everyone does that, right?

Pace

This can be instantaneous or averaged by the lap, by the mile, by the run. I use this during tempo runs to know that I am staying on the prescribed pace. Instantaneous pace changes way too often to be useful. Conversely, the pace for the entire run is also not useful because it’s too late to do anything about my pace at that point. I have one of the watch’s data screens tell me the Current Lap Pace. With the default auto-lap set at every half-mile, I get a good average of my pace over the last zero to five or so minutes as that half-mile progresses. That gives me a chance to see something meaningful and adjust as needed without trying to figure it out with constantly changing instant data.

Heart Rate

Knowing my heart rate at any given moment is a great tool for keeping my easy runs easy. On Easy Run Days I can use my heart rate data to slow down. Many different things can affect your heart rate during a run: the terrain, the wind, the temperature, the humidity, your hydration, how much sleep you had the night before. Are you overtraining? That can also be reflected in your heart rate. I also like to train myself for good endurance by starting long runs slow – by keeping my heart rate lower, and then speeding up at the halfway point by just enough to end with a negative split – the second half faster than the first half of the run.

Beyond the above four data items, some watches can start getting complicated.

WARNING! Science and Math in Use Ahead!

Power

Do you remember your high school Physics? “Power” is defined as the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time. What does that mean in English? In other words, “Power” is the rate with respect to time at which “Work” is done. “Work”, involves moving something through a distance. When you consider how long it takes to move that thing, you’re talking about “Power”. So, running is ”Work”; the force is basically the weight of your body and the distance is how far you are running. When you also consider your pace, now you’re talking about “Power.” The thing is, having to move your body during a run changes based on going uphill or downhill, having a headwind or a tailwind, and even how slippery a wet path or sandy trail might be.  I have added an app to my watch that can estimate the Power I’m using. This works because the GPS watch knows how fast I’m moving, whether I’m going uphill or down, and even what the wind is. We all know that running uphill or into a headwind is more difficult. That’s because we have to generate more POWER to move at the same pace uphill than we do on a flat path. While this is more often used by cyclists, some runners train by power output, slowing down when going uphill to keep their power output as close to constant as possible. At the very least, it’s interesting just to see the data showing how much more power it takes to run uphill!

VO₂ & VO₂Max

I have another watch app that uses a tried-and-true 53-year-old method to estimate my body’s maximum use of oxygen and estimate in real time how my current efforts measures up to that. The Cooper Test is a test of physical fitness. It was designed by Kenneth H. Cooper in 1968 for US military use. The point of the test is to run as far as possible within 12 minutes. The outcome is based on the distance the test person ran, their age and their gender. The results of the Cooper Test do a fair job at estimating VO₂Max, which – oversimplified - is how much oxygen your body uses over time. [1] Professional athletes have this measured in a lab running on a treadmill wearing a breathing apparatus. Thank you very much, I’ll settle for the estimate. Some watches have a built-in estimate of VO₂Max. The watch calculates and adjusts this value over time, based on your running pace, distance, and heartrate data. Some research has shown this well-known formula to be up to 90% accurate. My watch tells me that my own VO₂Max “is superior for men in my age range,” that “my fitness age is 20,” and that “that’s the top 5% for your age and gender.” Well, thank you, Watch for making me feel great about myself! But I’ve noticed that my watch can change it’s opinion of me after a few easy runs. But it does track in line with my fitness over time, fluctuating along with the intensity of my training, so I’ll keep watching it. If I start running harder & faster but see my VO₂Max decrease, maybe then I’ll start to be concerned.

The above list of data points only scratched the surface of what's available with modern technology. There are runners who never use anything more than a simple wrist stopwatch. Yes, they exist - I know one of them personally. But I love my advanced-feature watch and will likely always run with one. The type of run I’m doing at any given time will determine how much I look at it while running, but I will look back and evaluate the reams of data after pretty much every run. I still use “old fashioned” technology – an Excel spreadsheet – to log my daily runs. The spreadsheet calculates so many data points: weekly, monthly, annual mileage; daily averages, and the number of miles left in my annual goal are some of the things I track. 

Call me a Nerd, but I enjoy looking back at the data to see how far I’ve come, and to aim for where I’m headed. I think you should, too. Tech can be your friend.

#realisticrunning

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[1] Reference: A comparison of methods of predicting maximum oxygen uptake

Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan

 I’ll take the liberty of stating that even if they don’t follow one, most runners are familiar with the concept of a training plan. Maybe you have never used a training plan. Maybe that’s because you’ve never prepared for a race. Maybe that’s because you “just like to run.” Maybe you use a training plan only when training for an event, but that’s a special time and most of the year you don’t use a training plan. Maybe I’ve used the word “maybe” too many times in this opening paragraph.

Whatever the reason - whether you are new to running, intimidated by training plans, or you just don’t like “structured running” – I’m telling you today that you really should be using a training plan. Especially for races, but also for specific goals (annual mileage), as well as year-round. Every run should be part of a plan. Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan.

To explain a little further, a “training plan” is a written plan for when, how far, and how fast you will run during a given period of time. Why is so much formality necessary? A plan is a secret weapon. A plan will get you moving when there are other obstacles to putting one foot in front of the other: weather, attitude, energy, etc. A plan will hold you back to keep you “safe” when you’re feeling too good for your own good. Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan.

A plan can be weekly, monthly, annual, or event-driven. Many of us are familiar with an event-driven plan (e.g., marathon training), which can guide you to the proper training needed to get to the starting line healthy and ready to achieve your goals for that event. Likewise, an annual, monthly, or weekly plan can guide you to the proper training needed to achieve your goals for that specific time period. A plan is a must to help you rehab from an injury or return to running safely after some time off.

But the secret power of a training plan is to keep you safe from yourself, regardless of whether you need protection from laziness or over-zealousness. The only thing you need to do is plan your runs, and discipline yourself to follow the plan. If you do those things, you have one more reason to get up, go outside and run. Valid though they may seem at the time, we all have an endless supply of excuses to avoid running: I didn’t sleep well; I just sneezed; my foot hurts; it’s too hot; it’s tool cold; it’s raining; it’s snowing; my running buddy just bailed so I’ll bail too (to name just a few.) Similarly, we all give ourselves ample opportunity to hurt ourselves by doing too much too soon: I feel great today; I just got my new shoes; I can catch that person up ahead of me; I can run faster/longer than the person on the next treadmill; I need to lose five pounds; I need to grab the Strava Local Legend. All of these are great motivators, but it’s when we overextend our abilities (especially our ability to recover) that we have the greatest probability of injuring ourselves. No one wants to hear those dreaded words from a doctor, “No running for two weeks.”

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll dial back the formality a bit. No, you don’t really have to write every run down before you do it. You should definitely have a plan for your run’s pace & distance in your head before you head out. But if you need an extra kick of motivation to get over a hump or slump, you should go ahead and try writing it down ahead of time. If there’s no event in your future, plan out the next month of running. How many days a week do you want to run? You should be varying the types of runs; which ones are going to be long, short, easy, hard, etc.? How long, exactly? How fast, specifically? How many intervals? Also make sure you don’t do “effort runs” on back-to-back days. Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan.

If you need a reason to get up and run, write it down and then do it because that’s What The Plan Says. Plan it, do it, and be proud of yourself. If you are going through a trying time – recovering from a race, preparing to start race training, feeling sick – write that plan to keep yourself in check. When the plan says “Run short and slow”, do what it says, rejoice in meeting your plan, and call it a day. If the plan says “Recovery Run”, do NOT race the next treadmill or try to catch that runner up ahead. Do NOT add hills on interval day “because you feel good.” Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan.

With the new year almost upon us, now is the time to build the discipline & consistency you need to be a successful, healthy, happy runner in the next year and beyond! Plan Every Run, Run Every Plan!

#realisticrunning