Distance vs Time

I log mileage but going out the door I think in terms of time. I tell my wife I'm going out for an hour not a 7 or eight miler.

If you know your pace judgeing 5-10 miles should be close.

I've been running mostly by time for a while now. But, every once in a while I like to run by distance to check my pace. About once ever few weeks or so. I'm on the treadmill quite a bit these days, so it is very easy to do both.

You are right about that.

1. Humans have a tendency to exaggerate and embelish their accomplishments. Example - runner A tells runner B "I do all my running at 6 minutes mile pace" - when in fact the truth would reveal that the pace for runner A is closer to 6:40 per mile......with a few 6's thrown in toward the end of the run, on occasion.

2. Time is a good way to run, especially for runners who use hilly courses, with significant uphill stretches, where the overall pace will drop a lot.

In the final analysis, go by time, and step on the track occasionally to verify if you are really aware of the TRUE speed you run at.....the track is the final judge!

With such things as either bicycle or car odometers, or even better goolge maps/google earth, it's quite easy to know how far you ran. Combine that with your time, and you have a pace...I enter time and (accurate) distance into each one of my running log entries, therefore I always have an accurate pace. Distance combined with time is much better than just time, as you could go putz around for an hour at 10 minute pace and not accomplish anything, or you could go for a 10 miler in the same period of time, thus working a whole lot harder.

Everyone in my team runs by time. They say, "I'm going out for a 30 minute or a 40 minute run..." So at 15 or 20 minutes they turn around. They'll be around 2 or 3 miles... slowing down for fear of having to run back a longer distance and what not. To me, that sounds f***ing gay. When I walk out the door, I walk out with a miles in my mind and not time. If I know I have to run 12 miles... I know I'll have to finish them, no matter how long it takes. I don't like to lie to myself and therefore use google.earth to measure my miles. Running by miles instead of the time is the way to go.

I run by time and have done so for about 10 years.

45:00 hard is 45:00 hard, an easy run is an easy run with the purpose being to recover. The only time I am concerned about my time/distance is on the track. I can't believe this GPS Google crap. Who gives a f*** if you ran 13.337 miles?

When I run by time outside, I normally hit my minutes at normal workout type of speed and then just walk home from wherever I am and if I get fully cooled down I'll walk/jog the rest of the way. I'm normally not more than a mile from my house even when I have ran 15 miles. My neighborhood isn't big enough to get too far from home without needing to cross a street that is too busy to safely cross. So I end up doing a lot of 1.5ish mile loops with my house in the center. That prevents me from needing to slow down for fear of having to run back.

It would be interesting to see the amount of variance in the google.earth distances to see how accurate those things really are. It seems like it would be really easy for that to be off by 5-10%. If there is anywhere near that kind of inaccuracy, then it would make it not much better than running for time.

Allergic to modern technology old man? Quit being closed minded and realize it's just a useful running tool. How can you say it's bad to know what pace you train at? There's no lying to yourself this way, just an honest way of assessing your speed versus your effort level, thus giving you one way of assessing your fitness.

Give it a shot, go measure a course with google maps/earth, then go try it with a bike odometer. From everything I've read/heard, and from my own experiences it's very accurate, atleast within the 5% margin. Also, try measuring a track, it'll come out within a couple of meters of 400 if you're careful enough to accurately follow the turns. Another option would be a road race course that you know well.

quote]Tommy2Nuts wrote:

Time spent running is a far better stat than distance run.

I dont know why almost everyone who posts their workout does so in terms of total distance run. First of all how accurate is it? How do you really know how long your runs are?

Secondly, the distance of your run is really a meaningless statistic. Your body only understands time and intensity...how long its been stressed and the level of stress...these are far better marks of your fitness level and daily/weekly training than posting your mileage.

So for those of you who are running 5-10-15 miles..how do you know the distances and how long does it take you....whats your pace??[/quote]

im a high believer in this. recently in college is the first time i actually had to note how much mileage i was doing because my coach is all about counting miles. In high school my coach was all about time. He never told us to run X number of miles a week, instead he told us to run X number of hours a week. The plan he had me on during the summer was to run for 6 hours for the entire week with 45-75 minutes of it being ran at a fairly hard pace.

Also during the season we never went on a __ mile run, it was always, a timed run. 45 minutes, 50 minutes etc etc. Normally he would have the freshmen guys start off at 30 minutes a day, than by the end of the season they were supposed to build up enough stamina to run for 50 minutes at the same pace they were running for 30 minutes at the beginning. at that time you had freshmen who couldnt break 12min for 2miles in the beginning of the season, end up running sub 17:30 5k's by the endof the season.

In college since ive been aware of my mileage i have not been anywhere near as mentally strong as I was when everything was time based.

Get yourself a Garmin Forerunner and just go out and run. It will give you your pace, time, distance , speed, heartrate and map. Just go out an run and let the technology do the work. Garmin tools are pretty accurate as far as I can tell. Just ran a 9k last weekend and came out with 5.63 miles on my Garmin. Get a Forerunner and run baby run.

I think mileage counting is also related to the "running too hard on your recovery days" debate. Instead of doing a 45 min. recovery run and taking it as slow as feels comfortable, mileage counters will want to get in that extra mile to pump up the mileage count for the week. Same goes for long runs. Instead of a 90 min. "easy to medium" long run you have a tendency to run harder to get to a certain mileage number.

From a coaching standpoint, and especially a coaching girls standpoint, if I say "hey kids, go run 40 minutes" they'll jog a pitiful sloppy waste of a run. So from a coaching standpoint, it's pointless to go anything other than distance, or preferably distance at a given pace. slowmotiofomeslomotiofome.

It is simply another crutch for a very simple sport.There are no lies on the track either.I hear all of you guys spouting this Kenyan, Ethiopian nonsense - how many Garmin Forerunners do you think are in Kenya or Ethiopia? How many tracks equal to the quality of the average US highschool do you think are in either of these countries? Even a "decent" high school track would be the equivalent of the national stadium in both of these countries.

Kele wrote:

Allergic to modern technology old man? Quit being closed minded and realize it's just a useful running tool. How can you say it's bad to know what pace you train at? There's no lying to yourself this way, just an honest way of assessing your speed versus your effort level, thus giving you one way of assessing your fitness.

Very well put.