we simply didn't care about every little detail. for example, if we had to run to a certain park to do intervals, we just run there. the time it took us to run from the school to the park was approximately 8 minutes. was it a mile? a little more? a little less? who honestly cares. when we ran intervals at the park, it was estimated as well. was it 800m? 874m? 946m? doesn't matter. after running intervals enough times, you get a feel for the distance and you just aim for consistent times.
There are known courses. I used to strings and map out the routes. You will be surprised how accurate it was.
Trump #1 wrote:
There are known courses. I used to strings and map out the routes. You will be surprised how accurate it was.
I meant use strings on an actual map.
Odometer in the car
I used to use Map Quest, making estimate adjustments for course re-routes (like taking a parallel, less busy road). Google Maps let you move the route a little, and that was a help once it came on the scene. And then there are always those known routes - the "ten mile loop" or "three miles around the park" - I would take advantage of those.
My husband told me, while we were dating, that from his house, around a park path, and back was 2.5 miles and I (new runner) believed him. One day I discovered that the park path itself was almost 2 miles, and the total distance over 3. I give that mis-measurement a lot of credit for improving my running. I was running like 17% farther than I thought I was!
I could tell how fast I was running within 5 seconds per mile (confirmed many times on the track). Similar to how we all managed to figure out where we were going by car with no GPS.
kartelite wrote:
Whether racing or doing a workout or easy run, I always had a very good sense of my pace. If my coach told me to run 4:50 mile repeats on a flat section of a course or trail he had wheeled off (he was really into that and would measure full cross country courses as part of a big project he undertook), I would never be more than 5 seconds off, usually within like 2-3. I even used to test myself running laps at different target paces and checking my time at the end of the lap, especially with progression runs. 2 laps @ 100 seconds, 2 laps @ 95 seconds, etc. Obviously things like hills could add in some uncertainty, but it was good enough for government work. And I’d run a lot of the same routes repeatedly. I also know that at my easy pace it was about 205 breath cycles per mile (three steps breathing in, three steps breathing out) and I would often count as it’s not like I had much else to do while I ran.
This. Same for me.
I remember going to the Boston Marathon and the marathon did not have official mile markers. random runners would try to guess where the mile markers should be and mark them.
others used stores or other markers to know how far along they were.
MB132451 wrote:
Yes I know this may be viewed as a dumb question to an extent but I am curious to hear what people have to say.
I understand that- track exist, some trails/paths are marked, some roads in the country intersect every mile/ certain distance apart, and road signs can give distances. Also understand you could wheel a specific route to figure out the distance. I guess you could also measure a route using a cars odometer
how did you or people you know do it back in the day?
In Michigan roads are a 1 mile square. For example out and back is 2 miles. Around the "block" was 4 miles...ect. Then we'd look at our Timex 2nd hand and start on the 12 !
Rural roads in the US are for the most part laid out in a 1 mile grid. Road to Road =1 mile.
Username::: wrote:
"Badger miles" (time run ÷ guesstimated pace)
I was wrong on the pace (it’s 7:00/mile) but the concept of Badger Miles is the same. If the workout was a 10 mile run your task was to run 70 minutes. There was no credit for running any faster.
some old Hoosier wrote:
In Indiana, county roads were a mile apart, so if you wanted to run four miles, you ran out to the next road, turned right, went to the next one, turned right, and did this again until you got to the starting point. Six miles meant two roads before turning, then one road, then two and then one. Eight miles was out two, right two, right two and right two more.
That must be a widespread thing in the midwest. Joe Henderson told me that most of his runs when he was growing up in Iowa were four mile "runs around the block."
In a time not too distant. wrote:
I remember going to the Boston Marathon and the marathon did not have official mile markers. random runners would try to guess where the mile markers should be and mark them.
others used stores or other markers to know how far along they were.
There were two or three mile markers at Boston at one time but they were useless in terms of trying to figure out your pace. One was at six and three quarters miles. I think there was another one around, but not at, seventeen miles or so. They kept an official record of who was fastest getting to that six and whatever mile check point was.
folklore mostly (back in the day)
Time and effort on trails, mapmyrun.com for the roads. Even today waddling 8-9 min/ miles with the dog through the forest I can tell you how much we covered without a gps watch.
Map and ruler
bloviating wrote:
Time and effort on trails, mapmyrun.com for the roads. Even today waddling 8-9 min/ miles with the dog through the forest I can tell you how much we covered without a gps watch.
Yep.
Gmaps pedometer was and still is great for clicking out a route so as to plan or measure a long run or tempo.
But for day-to-day runs I would just divide time by my known easy pace. Pretty simple.
Farts did wrote:
15 years ago it was Gmap Pedometer
Even in the late 90s I had a CD-ROM map program called Map Art which would give you measurements along the way. So as long as I remembered the route I could measure (with less accuracy in trails - no satellite images and not all trails are marked)
USATF had a page where you could map out your running routes for distance. Timex for total time & then figured out pace afterwards.
MB132451 wrote:
Yes I know this may be viewed as a dumb question to an extent but I am curious to hear what people have to say.
I understand that- track exist, some trails/paths are marked, some roads in the country intersect every mile/ certain distance apart, and road signs can give distances. Also understand you could wheel a specific route to figure out the distance. I guess you could also measure a route using a cars odometer
how did you or people you know do it back in the day?
1974-1975:
6x6 green highway markers, paper road maps, coaches car, which was off by 15% after pulling into and out of cul-de-sac to reach us on a mostly-parallel route he drove…
1976: Walking or running with hand wheel, we got five measurements of what we thought was a 5 mile cross-country course and the largest variation was 80 m which is approximately 1 in 1000, or 0.1%, which is 10 to 20 times more accurate than GPS IF that wheel’s even accurate (it’s not, and neither is GPS).
1976: the first Olympic marathon was measured with a calibrated Jones device in Montreal) using the Ted Corbitt method adopted by Roadrunners Clubs of America, then later, USA track and Field, AIMS, and World Athletics.
around 2011-2014: used a Nike+ app that went with a sensor that went in my shoes, ran to the beach in my shoes, then took them off & carried them with me. My electronic recording of the run said “Congratulations on your new PR for 5K of 12:35!” (I ran 16:40 at best before, and was in about 25-27 minute “shape” after a career-ending injury, no running for 3 years, then finding I could run small amounts pain-free again).
2001-2014: Measured 121 courses for USATF certifications of accuracy along with countless other training, routes and road races that were not USAF certified where another runner and I wanted to find out if the courses were short. We found that every single course in the region that was not ATF certified was short. The average 5K road race course was short by 27 seconds. When we were able to find out how those short courses were measured, they were most commonly measured by GPS, then other times measured by car odometer, and the shortest course scenarios, measured by paper maps. In one case, the supposed 5K turned out to be 2.4 miles and the Mother Superior at the convent that was doing the fundraiser for their private school, told the timer who did course measurement that she did not use a map or a bike or a car to measure. He assumed that she simply guessed.