All the people I know are obsessed with every little metric you can possibly track. Just go run.
All the people I know are obsessed with every little metric you can possibly track. Just go run.
Take your car out and measure the distance. Also, just having a good sense of pace.
I used to have Microsoft Streets & Trips and I'd plot out my run to get mileage before I got my first Garmin.
I'm sure before that was an option some people would drive the course or just go by time.
Used to drive routes from home. Not exact, but close enough.
Estimate 7 minute pace.
Take your time run and divide by 7.
If you ran 40 minutes (5.7143), that was a 6 mile run after rounding up.
No need to be anal about it.
For workouts that weren't on the track, my coach used to either measure distance by his car or would measure with a distance wheel. For summer training, we would just run on time and divide that time either by 7.5 or 8 minutes depending on individual's talent to get mileage.
When I wasn't in season (base training and such) I used http://milermeter.com to make my courses. In-season I didn't measure anything, just used badger miles (calculated all runs as if they were 7:00 pace, whether they were 6:00, 8:00, or anything in between).
7:40/mile slow kid badger miles.
Measured the distances on a paper street map and confirmed it using my car odometer. Used a cheap wristwatch to keep time.
I used cars when I could get one, or someone to drive me, I used a bicycle with a wheel distance device, I used common sense pace for courses I'd run frequently, I'd use estimates by looking at telephone book maps in cities where I knew major roads came every mile, that sort of thing.
I would also use race routes that I was near, to add 10K or whatever to the run I was doing.
For longstanding, school-tradition routes we ran in XC practice, I've found that those were nearly exact.
Looking today at routes I ran commonly, I was within .1 mile compared to gmap-pedometer for the hilly/crazy routes I ran, and much closer than that for routes along established roads, so thinking that's pretty good.
But yeah, I'd go 35 minutes in the a.m. for 5 miles, I'd say an hour running was 8 miles, 1:15 was 10, etc.
It's not pre-GPS, but I don't own a fancy watch, so I just use manometer.
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Take your car out and measure the distance. Also, just having a good sense of pace.
This. Also, usatf used to have this online map where you could measure the distance. Mostly it was just get in your car a drive the route. Sometimes I’d take a marker or spray paint and make small marks at the mile.
Aunt Jemima bye bye wrote:
All the people I know are obsessed with every little metric you can possibly track. Just go run.
Yep!
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Take your car out and measure the distance. Also, just having a good sense of pace.
Or these cool things called maps you measured ot off of that. As far as keeping track you wrote what ever info you wanted-called a training log
Mapmyrun.com
Or just roughly guestimate my pace. I always ran with a simple stopwatch in high school and my early 20s.
There is a loop run frequently in the foothills above Boise. I heard before GPS the runners said it was 12 miles. Well it could be on a flat road using time, but you were climbing 1,000 feet. Some of the hills were fairly steep, at times slow going, even though you made up some time on the downhill. It turned out to be 9.5 miles.
bvffn wrote:
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Take your car out and measure the distance. Also, just having a good sense of pace.
This. Also, usatf used to have this online map where you could measure the distance. Mostly it was just get in your car a drive the route. Sometimes I’d take a marker or spray paint and make small marks at the mile.
I ran a lot of routes where I couldn't drive a car to measure the mileage.
Online map? Didn't have internet.
You simply estimate the distance.
A good way to do a tempo run was to go out 25 min and come back in 20 min.
Doesn't matter what the exact distance was, you knew you ran 20% faster than easy pace.
But you'd call it 7 miles going out at 7:10 pace and coming back in 5:45 pace.
If you had an off day and didn't start off as fast, you didn't hit those paces but it didn't matter.
You got in the effort.
Or find some loop that seemed to be about a mile.
Run "mile" repeats there.
Doesn't matter if it was exactly a mile if you always did the same course.
You could still compare you pace from previous workouts and know if you were running faster and getting better.
There is no need to be accurate in your training.
You do want to be consistent so you can judge progress.
The races are where you want to be accurate.
Even then, courses were not accurate, plus hills and turns make distances not very comparable from one course to the next for XC and road races.
In the 80’s, we would ether drive the course or use the Thomas Guide maps to estimate. I think most runners have a handful of commonly run routes, so once you know the distance, you don’t really need GPS to know how far you’ve gone.
I did most of my running in farmland in the midwest on gravel roads. The general rule of thumb is each intersection is a mile from the next intersection.