How can you not know how fast you're going?
How can you not know how fast you're going?
ienjoyracing wrote:
Wave light costs 20k??!! I promise you I could make my own with the help of Home Depot and a programmer friend for less than $500
Sounds like a great Kickstarter or one of those similar services. I bet there are plenty of college / universities that would pay thousands for something like this. Probably some high school tracks too. ($20k seems steep, but if this could get down to $1k - $2k, it should sell well.)
As people said, make an app to dial in a distance and pace over Bluetooth. I don't think the recent "last chance" meets here in the US used pacing lights, but at $1k-2k, it would be great.
Use it to help runners gain the feel for a particular pace - even work on negative splits. The coach dials in slow pace for lap 1, then custom progression.
SDSU Aztec wrote:
semi_pro wrote:
They're "pacing" lights, not "all out effort" lights. Set the pace for whatever you want.
FGR referred to squeezing out that last 0.1%. Whether or not a workout is perfectly paced, is meaningless.
i didn't mean squeezing out the last bit of pure effort - more optimizing that last little bit of training to hit the tippy top of that effort vs. effect curve. that is, if you're a galen rupp type pro you might benefit from being able to dial in evenly paced 1K repeats down to the 0.5 seconds if you're going for a very specific training effect. for most of the rest of us who don't live in altitude houses, that benefit will be lost in the noise. idk, just spit ballin' here.
I see a bigger market for this with high schools than with pros.
How many times did you run in high school with no competition? I was in a weak conference and only my teammates could compete with me. I never lost a race to a non teammate for over 2 years. Generally I'd be running the 800 and/or 1600 while my teammate was 1600 and/or 3200. We rarely raced. I'd win the 800 by 5+ seconds, the 1600 by 10-20 seconds and the 3200 by 40 - 60 seconds. What I wouldn't have given for a set of pace lights to follow. I only ever got a pacemaker a few times a year when I got to the bigger end of year meets. In retrospect, our coach should have had us rabbiting each other since we were of about the same ability.
Also, would be HIGHLY useful for workouts. High school and under kids haven't developed a sense of pacing yet. What better way than to follow a light?
An advanced version of this could have a ticker style LED that goes all the way around. It could just have a string of finish times that move along at pace, e.g. 4:30, 4:20, 4:10... Coach says" keep it between 4:25 and 4:30, then let it rip..."
If these are selling for 20k, the cost should come down with mass production. Many school districts would be able to cover a 10 - 20k cost for stadium equipment very easily. I don't know how long they last, but assuming the system lasts 5 years, that is 4k per year cost, chump change.
fethullah gulen rupp wrote:
SDSU Aztec wrote:
FGR referred to squeezing out that last 0.1%. Whether or not a workout is perfectly paced, is meaningless.
i didn't mean squeezing out the last bit of pure effort - more optimizing that last little bit of training to hit the tippy top of that effort vs. effect curve. that is, if you're a galen rupp type pro you might benefit from being able to dial in evenly paced 1K repeats down to the 0.5 seconds if you're going for a very specific training effect. for most of the rest of us who don't live in altitude houses, that benefit will be lost in the noise. idk, just spit ballin' here.
So if runner A did 10 400s ranging from 61 to 63 and B did 10x62, B got a better workout?
When I was a serious runner I ran doubles including a run the morning of an interval day. Some days it felt easy and I ran relatively fast and other times I felt like crap. Have runners morphed into robots?
SDSU Aztec wrote:
fethullah gulen rupp wrote:
i didn't mean squeezing out the last bit of pure effort - more optimizing that last little bit of training to hit the tippy top of that effort vs. effect curve. that is, if you're a galen rupp type pro you might benefit from being able to dial in evenly paced 1K repeats down to the 0.5 seconds if you're going for a very specific training effect. for most of the rest of us who don't live in altitude houses, that benefit will be lost in the noise. idk, just spit ballin' here.
So if runner A did 10 400s ranging from 61 to 63 and B did 10x62, B got a better workout?
When I was a serious runner I ran doubles including a run the morning of an interval day. Some days it felt easy and I ran relatively fast and other times I felt like crap. Have runners morphed into robots?
that's why i qualified that if anyone would benefit, it would be pros, some of whom i would argue do train a little bit like robots. i would say rupp is the poster boy for that. i agree with you that for weekend warriors cranking out 61-63 second quarters, it's absolutely useless.
fethullah gulen rupp wrote:
WRONG. wavelights should not be allowed in competition. it's absurd. i can see how they might be useful for training, but only if you're trying to squeeze that last 0.1% out, i.e., you're a pro. IMO there should not be a big market for these things.
I agree.
People will make the argument that fundamentally wavelight is just a pace making/setting tool - no different to a human pacemaker which have obviously existed for decades.
But the difference is astronomical. No human pacemaker - not even the best ones can literally move at a perfectly uniform pace for the entire duration of a race. Now you can turn around and say " but a human pacemaker provides protection from wind/offers a drafting effect" which is true - but in good conditions that benefit is minor and in any case the benefit can easily be offset by a pacemaker that deviates from a perfectly uniform pace.
You know what the problem is now? World Athletics has let this become precedent and we aren't going back. 4 world records have been smashed with the athletes (Cheptegei, Hassan and Letesenbet Gidey) running outrageously even split times that in some cases vary by less than a second per km for 90% of the race. People who think that this is "shoes and doping" are simply wrong. But the point is this is a done deal - they let it in without fully investigating what would happen and how effective it would be and so how can you take it away now? How can you say to athletes going for national records/contract bonuses etc based on time "oh we now realize it's actually an incredibly effective performance enhancer and we are banning it/only allowing it for half a race" etc.
This ship has sailed.
No need for anyone to drop more than $6 for the same thing but in a different form. Look up the PaceBeeper app on the IOS app store. Set any interval you want, any time you want, how often you want it to beep, and you have an audio sound. Every time it beeps, you should be at whatever pre determined distance you set it up for. Pretty standard to set it to 50m intervals, when you hear the sound you should be at one of the 50m marks on the track. If you can't keep pace over 50m and need a light to see the entire time your running, track might not be for you. Play it over loud speaker.
SDSU Aztec wrote:
So if runner A did 10 400s ranging from 61 to 63 and B did 10x62, B got a better workout?
When I was a serious runner I ran doubles including a run the morning of an interval day. Some days it felt easy and I ran relatively fast and other times I felt like crap. Have runners morphed into robots?
No, but runner B ran a more energy efficient/economical workout. Which of course in a workout might not matter because there is a recovery time of some length and the point of training anyway is to stress and adapt so the fluctuation in pace makes the workout more difficult (in this case only slightly) which might be the point of the workout.
A better example is something like 10 400's in 62 vs 10 400's running 58,64,62,60,62,58,64,62,60,62 - which is a type of workout I've heard many elites do - the pace fluctuation makes it so much more difficult. Same average time, the same workout is way harder.
I would run 800m reps in training running 41 (300m) 16 (100m) 26 (200m) 16 (100m) 14 (100m) and it those were tough. The total time was only around 1.54 but it's brutal. At that point in my career running 1.54 was nothing - but that way of running it was savage.
Now these guys aren't pushing their pace up and down that extreme or at such speeds, but to suggest that over 10000m a pace fluctuation of 2-3 seconds per km does nothing is pure ignorance.
Cheptegei ran 2:39, 2:37, 2:37, 2:37 2:38, 2:37, 2:37, 2:37, 2:37, 2:34. That block from km 2 to km 9 is so efficient it's crazy.
Bekele? 2:40, 2:36, 2:38, 2:37, 2:39, 2:35, 2:39, 2:40, 2:40, 2:32. He's fluctuating by up to 4 seconds per km in the middle km's.
I'm just stunned in general how little knowledge of this there seems to be here on this messageboard. Like this is one of the first principals my coach taught me (even paced running and it's effect on energy efficiency and economy) back when I was a teenager? This a messageboard of runners/followers of the sport/people who think they know running and I'm reading that it's just shoes and drugs and that wavelight and how it offers absolutely perfect pace management/distribution whatever you want to call it, means nothing. Wow.
Hardloper wrote:
There's no excuse for EVERY track not to have it. Within a few years, any track without Wavelight should be considered archaic, like a dirt track. Discuss.
I agree, and it should be coin-op! You show up at the track, pump $2.00 of quarters in, and select the pacing you want. Would pay for itself.
I'd also pay $1.00 extra for a large hook to remove walkers from the first 3 lanes.
Like like the idea of cheap, widely available wavelights, but who gets to decide what pace they're set at in a given HS or college race? The #1 seed? The home coach?
my 2c wrote:
Like like the idea of cheap, widely available wavelights, but who gets to decide what pace they're set at in a given HS or college race? The #1 seed? The home coach?
You don't use them in HS or college level races - this exact dilemma is why. You use them for training, unless someone is going for some kind of record or everyone agrees on the pacing beforehand.
It's almost certainly patented. I seriously doubt tracks are buying for 20k. I thought it was rented and installed for each meeting and then the owner took it back.
Patented how? The tech to make flashing lights flash in succession around a circle has existed probably more than a century. There is no invention, just a product.
Slow Bro wrote:
my 2c wrote:
Like like the idea of cheap, widely available wavelights, but who gets to decide what pace they're set at in a given HS or college race? The #1 seed? The home coach?
You don't use them in HS or college level races - this exact dilemma is why. You use them for training, unless someone is going for some kind of record or everyone agrees on the pacing beforehand.
You could modify it and have multiple lights for separate paces...sub 430 is the red light, sub 440 is the blue light, etc.
Had the wavelight idea many years ago but didn't develop it. Others probably did as well.
No.
The track at your local jr high or high school should not have wave light technology.
Hardloper wrote:
There's no excuse for EVERY track not to have it. Within a few years, any track without Wavelight should be considered archaic, like a dirt track. Discuss.
Yeah let's pool together funds. Proportional to our income and you got my share!
Everyone making a fuss about the light costing 20k, how about the fact a track costs 500k, like wtf
Surely there is a way to make cheaper tracks.
This should be illegal. Might as well have a mechanical rabbit like at dog tracks.