Summary for week ending Sunday, February 21 2016:
Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 50.42
Average miles per run: 7.20
Miles in February: 142.80
Miles in 2016: 326.80
Only on the treadmill one day last week -- weekdays of running in the cold, only to be rewarded at the weekend by comfortable spring-like temperatures. Last week -- 15F on Sunday drove me inside. This week, it was mid-50s when I went out for my 14-mile long run, overcast and a little sprinkly, but it warmed to about 60 with the sun coming out. Mid-run I felt a little full (like the peanut butter toast I had eaten mid-morning had expanded to fill up my whole stomach) but after a water and Gu break a little after 7 mi, I felt a lot better for no obvious reason. I crushed the last 10K, running much faster than I think I probably should have based on miles per minute and my training plan, but it felt easy and comfortable so I just went with it. Ended up feeling like one of the best-ever long runs. I got up to 50 miles this week -- building up at just the right rate.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Why?
I ran outside in the park tonight, risking the last minutes of my workout being in the dark; pushing the limits of daylight preferable to running my scheduled intervals on the treadmill again. It feels like I have been doing too much of my hard running on the treadmill lately, as tonight it felt tough to pick my feet up and lift my knees to get my turnover to match how fast I wanted my legs to run. Running hard on the treadmill still counts, I think, because I'm still moving my legs and my heart's doing the work too, but keeping up with the belt moving below and powering my pace on the pavement myself are two very different feelings. It was also quite chilly, the "feels like" being in the mid-20s and once the sun disappeared behind the line of forest nearby, "feels like" began to feel even colder, which did not help my tiring legs churning as they tried to dip below 7-minute pace. By the end, my hands were burning with cold even tucked in their gloves, which was distracting and uncomfortable.
The cold kept the population at the park down, but a couple times I passed a dad and his very young son walking their equally-young dog. When I was in the midst of my second 1200m interval, the little boy asked me, "Why do you run?", dragging out the last word so it sounded like "ruuuh-uhhhn?" I was well past him before I came up with an answer I never got to tell him:
Because I want to.
Because I can.
The cold kept the population at the park down, but a couple times I passed a dad and his very young son walking their equally-young dog. When I was in the midst of my second 1200m interval, the little boy asked me, "Why do you run?", dragging out the last word so it sounded like "ruuuh-uhhhn?" I was well past him before I came up with an answer I never got to tell him:
Because I want to.
Because I can.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Week #7 -- deep into winter
Summary for week ending Sunday, February 14, 2016:
Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 47.35
Average miles per run: 6.76
Miles in February: 91.95
Miles in 2016: 276.37
The weather was all kinds of wretched this week, so I only got outside twice. Did today's 13-mile mix of tempo and easy running on the treadmill, too, because I didn't want to subject myself to an hour-forty-five of 15F-feels-like-1F even though it was super sunny. I opened the curtains on the windows next to the Landice and pretended I was running outside somewhere warm, as the sunlight through the windows was actually quite toasty on my right side. I stared at my in-progress accolades wall while I worked through 2 mi E + 5x5 min T + 60 min E; that last half hour of easy running got to be a real drag, but getting a good look at that unicorn medal from a year ago can still bring the motivation.
Supposed to warm up a bit this week after a messy day tomorrow, but lots of rain forecast on the warmest day so it might as well not be warm for all the outside running I'll be likely to do that day. Winter is starting to wear on me; a stretch of dry 30s and 40s would be welcome.
Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 47.35
Average miles per run: 6.76
Miles in February: 91.95
Miles in 2016: 276.37
The weather was all kinds of wretched this week, so I only got outside twice. Did today's 13-mile mix of tempo and easy running on the treadmill, too, because I didn't want to subject myself to an hour-forty-five of 15F-feels-like-1F even though it was super sunny. I opened the curtains on the windows next to the Landice and pretended I was running outside somewhere warm, as the sunlight through the windows was actually quite toasty on my right side. I stared at my in-progress accolades wall while I worked through 2 mi E + 5x5 min T + 60 min E; that last half hour of easy running got to be a real drag, but getting a good look at that unicorn medal from a year ago can still bring the motivation.
Supposed to warm up a bit this week after a messy day tomorrow, but lots of rain forecast on the warmest day so it might as well not be warm for all the outside running I'll be likely to do that day. Winter is starting to wear on me; a stretch of dry 30s and 40s would be welcome.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Cold coldy cold
Because the sun was out, and I couldn't bear another run on the treadmill, I ran outside in spite of the cold. The air temperature was tolerable (20F) but it was the knife edge of the wind (20 mph with stronger gusts) that was brutal. Still, I enjoyed running on the very frozen trails and even trudging through some packed snow here and there left over from last week. I was coming up into one of the most exposed parts of the run, where a thin ribbon of trees cuts across a wide-open hayfield, when I must have disturbed a gathering of turkey vultures. They flapped their heavy wings and settled themselves on branches of a sleeping tree. Earlier in the week, I had seen this picture on Facebook:
and that is almost exactly what this looked like. I laughed, and then I got the heck out of there.
and that is almost exactly what this looked like. I laughed, and then I got the heck out of there.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Data crunching
I bought my treadmill a year ago, in early February. Up until that point, whenever I needed to get a workout done and was unable to do it outside, I used the Precor machine in our gym at work. I did a lot of quality stuff on it -- many threshold workouts and at least one 19-mile marathon-pace session (2 mi easy + 15 mi MP + 2 mi easy). I ran a 1:34:46 half-marathon off training that involved those workouts on that machine, so I feel they were doing a lot of good. Having done so many miles on it (I can almost guarantee no one else at work ran as much on that thing as I did) I had a very good sense of pace and effort on it; 7:30 on the treadmill felt quite a lot like 7:30 on the track, if not a little harder. Whatever the treadmill said I was running more or less felt like the same effort outside, and when I was doing ~7:10/mi T workouts, I felt comfortable and in control at that pace setting on the Precor.
I was very pleased to acquire my own machine for convenience reasons, but I quickly discovered during my first T workout at home that 7:08 on my Landice felt nothing like 7:08 on the Precor at work. I felt like I was flying, and I had to really, really work to maintain the pace. By this time, I had a heart rate monitor with my Garmin and made sure to use it while running on the treadmill as electronic proof that I had actually done the workout as much as for the HR information itself. I did not have the HR monitor for very many workouts on the Precor (approximately 10) as I have had for the Landice (40+), so there isn't a large bucket of data for the work treadmill. Comparing the average pace/average HR data from both treadmills doesn't show a dramatic difference between pace settings. It may be that the Precor data isn't a large enough sample size to be significant against the larger group of data from the Landice; there is quite a bit of scatter, too. Whatever the reason, this comparison did not show unequivocally that I was working harder on the Landice. I'll admit this disappointed me somewhat. I'd wanted to see those Precor data points way offset, but the results say what they say. Regardless of what the data points told, I knew what I was feeling. The Landice felt fast. There had to be a way to show that.
I set up an experiment.1 I measured the length of the belt and then timed its revolutions at different pace settings. My first experiment averaged 3 trials timing 5 revolutions at a range of pace settings, from 1.5 mph up to 8.6 mph mostly in steps of about 1 mph to cover what I would ever be likely to run on it. I later also did a trial averaging 3 trials of timing 10 revolutions with a similar range in mph but adding a few more steps in the higher range (8-8.7, where I would expect to do my threshold running); it was easier to time 10 revolutions than 5 at faster speeds. From the time per revolution data, I was able to calculate actual mph and convert to actual pace, which I then compared to the theoretical pace based on the machine's setting.
At all settings, there was a significant delta -- the belt was moving faster than what the console claimed. Aha! So I was not mistaken; what felt faster really was faster. I plotted the data; I was expecting some linear dependence where I could calculate some constant I could use to estimate how fast I really ran (e.g., if, based on treadmill settings, I ended up with an 8:15 average mile for my workout, what was my real average pace?), and was confounded when the plot did not show any such dependence. See below (plot from the 5 revolution data set).
The plots for both the 5 and 10 revolution experiments have the same features, so I expect what I see is real. At low mph, there is a very large difference between the setting and calculated pace (more than a minute per mile); the difference jumps up between 1.5 and 2.5 mph, then, as mph increases, the delta decreases -- to a point, where it stabilizes between 5 and 7 mph; a slight increase at 8 mph before suddenly stepping down again at mph greater than 8, where it appears to stabilize again.
Well, this all looked weird. How should I treat this odd relationship? I never, ever run below 5 mph on the treadmill as part of the recorded workout, so in coming up with a correction factor I could ignore that region, which includes the curving part. The great majority of the miles I've put in on the treadmill are below 8 mph (only T workouts go faster, and they are not generally representative of the bulk of the running I do inside), so I could set aside those strangely-offset data points too. I'm left with data points that form a basically straight line with a slight upward slope due to the slight increase in difference at 8 mph.2 (See below; plot from the 10 revolution data set, similar obtained for 5 revolutions.)
Using the slope of that line, I calculated adjusted pace for each mph setting; then, I plotted expected pace and adjusted pace for the range of mph settings I typically use to obtain a correction factor (the equation of that line):
Even though the calculations confirmed what I felt to be true, that the treadmill is faster than it says it is, I still thought that somewhere in the heart rate data would be the smoking gun to prove the calculations represented something real. Over the year-plus that I've had the Garmin with the HR monitor, I've racked up about twice the amount of HR data from running on the roads as I have from the treadmill. I've had fun playing with that data too -- correlating HR to altitude, temperature, etc. There is considerable scatter due not only to those factors, but others such also to terrain differences3 -- for example, some times I was in better shape than others or not recovered; some of those workouts are hillier than others, which can skew HR depending on whether I try to run even effort or even pace. Even with all the scatter, there is still a general slope correlating HR with pace. I wanted to compare road HR data (where, assuming reasonably accurate GPS, the reported average pace can be assumed to be actually what I ran) with the treadmill HR data. To cut down a little bit on the scatter, I limited the road data set to runs done in Delaware. The trend is still obvious regardless of the remaining scatter. By plugging in the as-obtained average treadmill place data into the equation from the correction factor plot, I obtained adjusted pace data, which I then plotted with the road data. The treadmill points fall right into the thick of the road points.
The calculated pace of the treadmill looks like it's comparable to the road pace, based on my heart rate. At last: I'm satisfied, and when I'm aiming at a target pace running inside, I can adjust the treadmill mph in good faith.
See anything I missed taking into consideration in my data crunching? Please let me know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Note: experiments were performed with no one running on the treadmill. It can be expected that the weight of a person running would create some drag on the belt, slowing it relative to no weight on it at all. I cannot judge how significant that would be for me at 110-115 pounds. All data analysis treats this as negligible. Perhaps in the future, in the interest of scientific accuracy, I'll redo the experiment and have someone else do the timing while I'm running those speeds.
2Perhaps someone with experience/knowledge of motors could explain to me why it would work so inconsistently in this fashion.
3I deliberately treat trail workouts separately (due to GPS accuracy issues, mostly).
I was very pleased to acquire my own machine for convenience reasons, but I quickly discovered during my first T workout at home that 7:08 on my Landice felt nothing like 7:08 on the Precor at work. I felt like I was flying, and I had to really, really work to maintain the pace. By this time, I had a heart rate monitor with my Garmin and made sure to use it while running on the treadmill as electronic proof that I had actually done the workout as much as for the HR information itself. I did not have the HR monitor for very many workouts on the Precor (approximately 10) as I have had for the Landice (40+), so there isn't a large bucket of data for the work treadmill. Comparing the average pace/average HR data from both treadmills doesn't show a dramatic difference between pace settings. It may be that the Precor data isn't a large enough sample size to be significant against the larger group of data from the Landice; there is quite a bit of scatter, too. Whatever the reason, this comparison did not show unequivocally that I was working harder on the Landice. I'll admit this disappointed me somewhat. I'd wanted to see those Precor data points way offset, but the results say what they say. Regardless of what the data points told, I knew what I was feeling. The Landice felt fast. There had to be a way to show that.
I set up an experiment.1 I measured the length of the belt and then timed its revolutions at different pace settings. My first experiment averaged 3 trials timing 5 revolutions at a range of pace settings, from 1.5 mph up to 8.6 mph mostly in steps of about 1 mph to cover what I would ever be likely to run on it. I later also did a trial averaging 3 trials of timing 10 revolutions with a similar range in mph but adding a few more steps in the higher range (8-8.7, where I would expect to do my threshold running); it was easier to time 10 revolutions than 5 at faster speeds. From the time per revolution data, I was able to calculate actual mph and convert to actual pace, which I then compared to the theoretical pace based on the machine's setting.
At all settings, there was a significant delta -- the belt was moving faster than what the console claimed. Aha! So I was not mistaken; what felt faster really was faster. I plotted the data; I was expecting some linear dependence where I could calculate some constant I could use to estimate how fast I really ran (e.g., if, based on treadmill settings, I ended up with an 8:15 average mile for my workout, what was my real average pace?), and was confounded when the plot did not show any such dependence. See below (plot from the 5 revolution data set).
The plots for both the 5 and 10 revolution experiments have the same features, so I expect what I see is real. At low mph, there is a very large difference between the setting and calculated pace (more than a minute per mile); the difference jumps up between 1.5 and 2.5 mph, then, as mph increases, the delta decreases -- to a point, where it stabilizes between 5 and 7 mph; a slight increase at 8 mph before suddenly stepping down again at mph greater than 8, where it appears to stabilize again.
Well, this all looked weird. How should I treat this odd relationship? I never, ever run below 5 mph on the treadmill as part of the recorded workout, so in coming up with a correction factor I could ignore that region, which includes the curving part. The great majority of the miles I've put in on the treadmill are below 8 mph (only T workouts go faster, and they are not generally representative of the bulk of the running I do inside), so I could set aside those strangely-offset data points too. I'm left with data points that form a basically straight line with a slight upward slope due to the slight increase in difference at 8 mph.2 (See below; plot from the 10 revolution data set, similar obtained for 5 revolutions.)
Using the slope of that line, I calculated adjusted pace for each mph setting; then, I plotted expected pace and adjusted pace for the range of mph settings I typically use to obtain a correction factor (the equation of that line):
Even though the calculations confirmed what I felt to be true, that the treadmill is faster than it says it is, I still thought that somewhere in the heart rate data would be the smoking gun to prove the calculations represented something real. Over the year-plus that I've had the Garmin with the HR monitor, I've racked up about twice the amount of HR data from running on the roads as I have from the treadmill. I've had fun playing with that data too -- correlating HR to altitude, temperature, etc. There is considerable scatter due not only to those factors, but others such also to terrain differences3 -- for example, some times I was in better shape than others or not recovered; some of those workouts are hillier than others, which can skew HR depending on whether I try to run even effort or even pace. Even with all the scatter, there is still a general slope correlating HR with pace. I wanted to compare road HR data (where, assuming reasonably accurate GPS, the reported average pace can be assumed to be actually what I ran) with the treadmill HR data. To cut down a little bit on the scatter, I limited the road data set to runs done in Delaware. The trend is still obvious regardless of the remaining scatter. By plugging in the as-obtained average treadmill place data into the equation from the correction factor plot, I obtained adjusted pace data, which I then plotted with the road data. The treadmill points fall right into the thick of the road points.
The calculated pace of the treadmill looks like it's comparable to the road pace, based on my heart rate. At last: I'm satisfied, and when I'm aiming at a target pace running inside, I can adjust the treadmill mph in good faith.
See anything I missed taking into consideration in my data crunching? Please let me know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Note: experiments were performed with no one running on the treadmill. It can be expected that the weight of a person running would create some drag on the belt, slowing it relative to no weight on it at all. I cannot judge how significant that would be for me at 110-115 pounds. All data analysis treats this as negligible. Perhaps in the future, in the interest of scientific accuracy, I'll redo the experiment and have someone else do the timing while I'm running those speeds.
2Perhaps someone with experience/knowledge of motors could explain to me why it would work so inconsistently in this fashion.
3I deliberately treat trail workouts separately (due to GPS accuracy issues, mostly).
Week #6 -- a new month
Summary for week ending Sunday, February 7, 2016:
Number of workouts: 8
Total miles run: 44.60
Average miles per run: 5.58
Miles in February: 44.60
Miles in 2016: 229.02
Amid the general mileage (about half on the treadmill, half outside), I had two quality workouts involving speed or specific effort. The second, on Sunday, had 20 min of T effort which I ran at ~7:25. It felt quite comfortable and I think I may be able to push that effort a little faster next time. I did notice, in the 20 min of easy running beforehand, that occasionally running easy starts to feel worse than running harder, and it's simple to spiral into a false sense that I'm having a tough time even though I'm supposed to be running easy. Best cure for that is the T interval, which came along at just the right time to break the spell.
In addition to the quality workouts, I got to run on the trails on Saturday which went better than I expected it would after a week of melting snow and significant rain, too; it had not been above freezing for very long when I went out, and what would have been very sloppy mud was still mostly frozen. I'm not going to bother going through all my records to check, but Saturday may have been the slowest I've ever run over there (certainly right up there if not), but that was exactly my goal: I needed an easy day to be very easy. My legs were still feeling the hard intervals from Thursday and the jog did its duty, as my legs felt refreshed for the T workout on Sunday.
Mileage was about the same as last week, but with an increase in intensity. That's a good way to do it.
Number of workouts: 8
Total miles run: 44.60
Average miles per run: 5.58
Miles in February: 44.60
Miles in 2016: 229.02
Amid the general mileage (about half on the treadmill, half outside), I had two quality workouts involving speed or specific effort. The second, on Sunday, had 20 min of T effort which I ran at ~7:25. It felt quite comfortable and I think I may be able to push that effort a little faster next time. I did notice, in the 20 min of easy running beforehand, that occasionally running easy starts to feel worse than running harder, and it's simple to spiral into a false sense that I'm having a tough time even though I'm supposed to be running easy. Best cure for that is the T interval, which came along at just the right time to break the spell.
In addition to the quality workouts, I got to run on the trails on Saturday which went better than I expected it would after a week of melting snow and significant rain, too; it had not been above freezing for very long when I went out, and what would have been very sloppy mud was still mostly frozen. I'm not going to bother going through all my records to check, but Saturday may have been the slowest I've ever run over there (certainly right up there if not), but that was exactly my goal: I needed an easy day to be very easy. My legs were still feeling the hard intervals from Thursday and the jog did its duty, as my legs felt refreshed for the T workout on Sunday.
Mileage was about the same as last week, but with an increase in intensity. That's a good way to do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)