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Jul 2017
10:32am, 27 Jul 2017
1,109 posts
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Uyuni
Have a great race at Heckington lark, I really enjoyed it last year - pancake flat Lincolnshire countryside is perfect for 10 miles, over a marathon though it can send you a bit loopy 
Is your super-fast lad racing it this weekend? Would be interested to hear how he gets on
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Jul 2017
10:32am, 27 Jul 2017
2,429 posts
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larkim
Cheers - and of course you're right about inherent inaccuracies, though that is all we have to work with. It's been interesting that as I've got better devices for running with (from various phones through to a couple of watches) miles have got "longer" and turning points got further away. Fortunately I've got faster in the meanwhile!
What was most satisfying about last night was taking down some strava segment PBs which have hung around for a good long time, back to the days when a) I was one of the first strava users locally so I got course records (a thing of the past now!) and b) when I thought running every run as fast as I could was a good idea!
strava is definitely the tool for looking at this sort of stuff I think. Setting up personal segments over which you tempo for example means no faffing around with starting / stopping runs or breaking them down into individual runs, and you get the nice ability to compare your history. I know there's a lot of willy waving which goes on with strava but I wouldn't be without it now.
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Jul 2017
10:34am, 27 Jul 2017
2,430 posts
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larkim
@Uyuni - he's on the start line, but he's still battling with a 3 month long groin strain so there's a real possibility I'll drop him on the second lap! Hopefully not, that won't do his self confidence any good!
Plan is to run together for the first half and see where it goes from there.
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Jul 2017
10:35am, 27 Jul 2017
2,431 posts
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larkim
@Uyuni - he's on the start line, but he's still battling with a 3 month long groin strain so there's a real possibility I'll drop him on the second lap! Hopefully not, that won't do his self confidence any good!
Plan is to run together for the first half and see where it goes from there.
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Jul 2017
10:53am, 27 Jul 2017
1,110 posts
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Uyuni
Ah shame that he's injured, hope he gets round in one piece.
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Jul 2017
10:58am, 27 Jul 2017
26,986 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
I've never thought about using strava like that (I'm not on Strava). I have never had a problem with measuring (as accurately as any Garmin can) my intervals, tempos and MP. I have a really simple approach.
Set Garmin up to display current pace and mile pace (same as you would in your marathon race day). Just glance at watch and see if your current pace is what you're looking for.
I don't even bother using lap to cut the thing into chunks. 8 with 4 at tempo pace is what it is. Doesn't matter how fast or slow the warm up before and cool down after is. Look at Fetch or Garmin Connect after to see how you varied within the miles, your HR, your cadence etc. But during the actual run you only need to look at one number.
Or am I missing some complexity somewhere?!
Fantastic that your son runs at pace too. Something I would love to do together with my boy, but running isn't really his bag. We've done a few ambles together which were lovely, but not much more. G
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Jul 2017
11:05am, 27 Jul 2017
2,432 posts
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larkim
It was him that got me running when he was beating my ass aged 8 on the local downhill fun run! He's done 16:50 for a 5k aged 16, but a bit stalled by injury / girlfriend (!) at the moment - but he's my inspiration for running, though I don't think he quite realises how important that is for me!
I'm a bit more anal about data though in general - I like to review retrospectively quite a bit, so strava plus Fetch gives me data in the bucket loads which I love!!
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Jul 2017
11:12am, 27 Jul 2017
26,987 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
I like the data, but I have been happy enough in the past to do manual manipulation in Excel. So I'll take the mile (or shorter than mile, if doing intervals) splits and put them in Excel and use that to look at whether I was hitting my targets, what progress I've made over a marathon campaign, comparing my pace now with a previous marathon cycle etc.
Do you run on a track? One really good thing about track is that it shows you how inaccurate (and always on the optimistic side, I'm afraid!) a Garmin is. You think you're doing 6 min per mile, so should be just under 90s for 400, but you're way over.
And in big city races, Garmin tends to measure further than the road markings. So you constantly think you're ahead of or on target, but you're actually behind. In the race, Paul The Builder's manual lapping technique deals with this, but it's worth being aware of in training too.
In summary, I'd say the Garmin is always slightly flattering us in training, so just be aware of that when using strava Fetch or the GPS data direct. Track, accurately measured races or other known (not GPS-) measured distance routes are your friend! G
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Jul 2017
11:28am, 27 Jul 2017
2,433 posts
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larkim
I try to counter the GPS inaccuracy thing by running tempos etc in a straight line where possible.
Irrespective of GPS inaccuracy, if the route you're running on is broadly straight then its fairly difficult for a mile to be measured at anything much short of a mile (e.g. even if the start point is inaccurate by 3m and the end point inaccurate by 3m, the distance between them will still be at least 1603m which is good enough for me!). A track mile offers 8 opportunities for the GPS to cut the corner, so I would generally expect a track to measure short if a GPS was used so I'd always only trust the lap timings as I pushed the button = 400m, irrespective of what the watch says.
But you are of course broadly right - don't trust the watch too much on GPS measurement. Though to be fair, my experience to date has generally been that GPS distances on measured courses have well matched the certified distances, perhaps I've just been lucky!
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Jul 2017
11:52am, 27 Jul 2017
26,989 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
Good approach larks. And if it works for you, that's great. It's just a tiny word of caution, as nothing would be more annoying in a marathon than to miss target by a minute or even seconds due to GPS issues. It's happened to me in a 5K, which wasn't a prob cos I just did another one the next week, but shows how it can happen.
The Garmin measures track *long*. Cutting corners is less of a factor than tolerance in per second measurements and how the GPS corrects for them. There was a great article that explained the mathematics of it, which I'll try and dig out.
But whatev, as long as one is aware of it and not caught out, all is well! G
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