Do you only count official race results as your PR's or do you count practice/training runs as well?

Only actual races. I suppose if you videotaped yourself running on the track and had footage of the entire time trial, you could count that since there are no races right now.

Interesting. Made me realize in over 45 yrs on the roads I never did measured time trial.

Have recorded all races on track and road races only.

Maybe because I only ever went all out in races.

Racing was time trial. Running was for lifestyle, thinking, sometimes socializing. I was pretty serious about race times and analyzed them and tried to learn from them. Sometimes completely at a list as to why some days I breezed along at sub six for 10+ miles and others dragged anchor.

But time trials just did pop up in my wish list for daily fun and sun.

"did not."

South Lake Tahoe!

Ha! Yeah you be over the moon with that time!

We ran on a track up there while waiting for the big Tahoe Relay over a week away. We all ran 15-20 secs slower pm than at sea level. And at the relay that one long Hill 2nd leg, up to 7k ft or so was like cement shoes and LSD trip.

An official race is only needed if you are qualifying for something.

You can run a sub 5 mile in practice and call it a PR

Anyone that’s run sub 4 in practice has an official mile time that is faster than that.

PR is personal record. It’s personal. You get to judge what you call your PR.

That fits.

If someone wants to have a result officially evaluated that is of general interest (i.e. all records in institutions or organizations), this must be done according to generally known and binding criterias (certified and measured routes, presence of competition judges and so on).

Everything else is personal. This does not mean that it is less important for yourself. Why else do elite runners post some workouts that went particularly well? Why else can you proudly look back on a good time trial as a hobby runner?

Usually you can also see who is a phony and who is an honest runner when it comes to training results.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

I’ll clarify if it’s a practice PR. For example, my official 1k PR is 2:41, but I ran 2:36 in practice before. Neither is necessarily indicative of my potential, but if someone were to ask about my 1k PR for some reason, that’s what I’d say.

Same line of thinking here.

For instance, never raced an open 200 but I’ve closed workouts in a 27 so I’d say that’s my PR

That would normally be true but will not be this spring. There will be some college runners and possibly a few HS runners breaking 4 in time trials. The 2 CT kids ran PRs in a time trial so it is not crazy to think that many developing kids will be doing it.

Only certified and measured races should count.

For example I would not count my Boston Marathon time as a PB because it is a net downhill course.

But at the end you can do whatever you want.

Official races times except for sprint distances cause obviously as an older guy I never race those.

seriously?

prs are accomplished in races, not on training runs.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Typically timing yourself using a stopwatch or GPS is going to be far from as accurate as the timing used in an official race. Unless you're running tens of seconds faster than your race results in practice when timing yourself, I think there is too big of a margin of error to say you've PR'd in a non-race setting. Sure, if your best official race mile was 5:00 and you're doing 4:30 in practice with a stopwatch, the margin of error is not going to be an issue. You're definitely a sub 5-miler. But if you're running 4:55 in practice with coach's stopwatch, you're not really a sub 5 miler.

I accept whatever Strava tells me as my PRs. Truth is I ain't running in any Olympic finals, so I'm pretty cool with whatever Strava says is my best IS my best.

I don't need to be paying some local sub elite race organiser anything to me when I put in my best performance. Especially when it turns out they didn't measure the course properly in the first place.

jamese1045 wrote:

Interesting. Made me realize in over 45 yrs on the roads I never did measured time trial.

Have recorded all races on track and road races only.

Maybe because I only ever went all out in races.

Racing was time trial. Running was for lifestyle, thinking, sometimes socializing. I was pretty serious about race times and analyzed them and tried to learn from them. Sometimes completely at a list as to why some days I breezed along at sub six for 10+ miles and others dragged anchor.

But time trials just did pop up in my wish list for daily fun and sun.

I don't like time trials personally. I don't think I've done a fresh tt since college. I've done things like time trial a course as part of a workout or the second half of a run. I haven't gone into any solo run with a race mindset or stepped on the track to time trial. In normal times, freshening up for a non race effort at race pace takes too much out of training. Plus for me, its hard to get that some shot of adrenaline when no one else is in the race. I'm considering doing some over the next month or so.