I've noticed this from a few people I follow on Strava. They ran track in HS and college, yet finished their 5k TT when their watch hits exactly 3.1 (which, even if accurate, is equal to 4.98897 km), which means they ended up running roughly 12.2 laps rather than 12.5.
You're on a track, you know each lap is 400m, just count the laps lmao
Yes. People do this often. But insta thots don’t know the difference and don’t care. It’s all about the follows.
“Omg. You’re so inspirational “
Running at a track for some people may mean they have to run in different lanes throughout the workout, depending on how many others are on the track, so there isn't a convenient lap count in those cases. If they just consistently track distance with their GPS, then they have a good comparison when they take it to an unmarked setting, like the roads.
Just run. It's amazing to me how slow everyone is anymore. Put down the damn phone, stop posted selfies, and run.
Why do you care grandpa, stop hanging at letsrun and just go out and run.
a GPS can be more accurate because it takes into account your full path of travel, shifting between legs, etc, which makes your total distance run more or less than it would be if you had run in the same lane the entire run,
bartholomew_maxwell wrote:
a GPS can be more accurate because it takes into account your full path of travel, shifting between legs, etc, which makes your total distance run more or less than it would be if you had run in the same lane the entire run,
*shifting between lanes
holpin wrote:
Running at a track for some people may mean they have to run in different lanes throughout the workout,
No. Just no.
bartholomew_maxwell wrote:
a GPS can be more accurate because it takes into account your full path of travel, shifting between lanes, etc, which makes your total distance run more or less than it would be if you had run in the same lane the entire run,
Not true. The GPS is not accurate enough to track distance on a track. The curves are very problematic for the GPS. It will always long on the track. This has nothing to do with weaving from lane to lane, though the GPS track may make it look like that is what was happening.
Maybe I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for running on a crowded track and shifting lanes, but still it probably didn't amount to 100-150m of weaving
big HONKING birds wrote:
Maybe I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for running on a crowded track and shifting lanes, but still it probably didn't amount to 100-150m of weaving
You shouldn't and it didn't. That's a lame and extremely unlikely excuse.
If you're doing a time trial for a metric distance, why would you set your watch for miles? Switch it to kilometres for the time trial. Problem solved.
My GPS watch is always off by about 25s-50s per mile on the track. I did a 3000m time trial the other day and when I finished my watch was at nearly 2 miles. i still save the data because it tracks, more or less, my total mileage throughout a year or week and its convenient to have the training log all in one place, but obviously the TT is the time it took to get to the line, not when garmin said it was. people that count it as their PR are fluffing their own ego, nothing more. just wait for the real race and they'll run something subpar, then post about how it "wasn't their day" and they were 30s off their PR. oh well.
the weaving/passing argument doesn't stand IMO. in a race you have to weave and pass and no one considers your PR a few seconds faster.
Agreed--current Garmin algorithms for loops yield distances that are too long or, conversely, times that are too short. My 16:54 5k on the track was a 15:43 on Garmin (plus another ~300 meters of running).
When running on the roads, though, Garmin works really quite well. If anything, distance run is too short normally. It's only on tracks (and probably other short loops) where the Garmin seems to overcount distance.
My watch registers a longer distance on the track when running normal direction than opposite direction. I wear the watch on my lefthand which could account for a meter or two but it is off by several meters each lap which makes the difference about 25 meters in one direction as opposed to the other.
I appreciate your attempt to offer a counter point of view, but this statement is horribly wrong. GPS don't work on tracks.
If you are doing a 5k TT, run it at a time or place that you wont have to swing into lane 3
moorest wrote:
Agreed--current Garmin algorithms for loops yield distances that are too long or, conversely, times that are too short. My 16:54 5k on the track was a 15:43 on Garmin (plus another ~300 meters of running).
What mechanism would cause the watch to overestimate distance on the track? My garmin 220 always measured distances on the track at ~80% of the true distance. This makes sense since if the watch is updating position every few seconds and assuming you ran straight then it would always cut off parts of the curve and never assume you ran farther.
big HONKING birds wrote:
I've noticed this from a few people I follow on Strava. They ran track in HS and college, yet finished their 5k TT when their watch hits exactly 3.1 (which, even if accurate, is equal to 4.98897 km), which means they ended up running roughly 12.2 laps rather than 12.5.
You're on a track, you know each lap is 400m, just count the laps lmao
Hobby joggers. Pffft.
Besides for the fact that gps devices are not accurate enough to measured distances on a track, your calculations seem to be way off.
First of all 5000 m = 3.1068555 miles. 0.006855 more then 3.1 which is only 11 meters less the a full 5000m.
That would equate out to 12.4724 laps, not 12.2
Bottom line- start at the 5 k start, run 12.5 laps and turn off the gps