I'm about 40 so growing up in a rural area we had someone spray paint spots on the road via measuring car odometer, and those basically ran as the splits for a decade. We also used a measuring wheel on grass the put posts in teh ground. Other than that .... mapmyrun came out and that helped but you always had a longer route cos of lack of tangents etc... but yea, generally car odometer and friends committing to measuring mile markers!
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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?
Car odometer back in the day, or the track coaches would use the wheel thing to mark the XC course and we'd just guesstimate length on any trails branching off of that.
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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?
It's sort of like asking, "how did you know what your friends were up to before social media?" GPS watches are awesome, and I have one, but the next time you see someone running down the block to roll a digit on a watch, ask yourself, does this matter?
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CountryBoyHick wrote:
Rural roads in the US are for the most part laid out in a 1 mile grid. Road to Road =1 mile.
The beauty of the Public Land Survey System.
Many major city roads fit this system too. You just need to find those that were from the original grid and branch out from there.
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map guy wrote:
I used three methods. I had a good sense of pace and even on hilly trails could make good enough estimates of distance by how much time I took divided by estimated average pace. This was mentally calibrated by known distances on some of those trails. So my sense of average pace was improved by sometimes checking against measured distances on those trails, and my estimated distances were improved by having a good sense of pace even on trails. (I also had a perfect sense of pace on a track and made for a good pacer in workouts. . . the wavelight would have done nothing to help.)
On sections of road that I ran frequently, I memorized mile marks based on a calibrated bike computer. A calibrated bike computer counts wheel rotations, which is what the Jones counter mounted on bicycles used for course certification does. It can be as accurate as a Jones counter if you are careful with how you use it. A bike is a better than a car odometer because you can't drive your car on the exact path that you run most of the time, such as on the sidewalk or on multiuse paths/trails. (I'm fortunate to have access to trails and multiuse paths right out my back yard and haven't really run much on roads since the '80s and '90s.) Car odometers can be off by several percent (might have non-OEM tire size on the car, worn tires, etc.).
Old paper road maps often had distances between intersections labeled. You still see this on some trail maps (see link for an example). So you would just add up all the segments between the intersections.
Finally, I'd sometimes measure a route on the map with a ruler that I'd rotate tangentially along any curves and then make calculations against the scale bar. Kind of like amkelley's thread method, which sounds more difficult than just using a small ruler (but I haven't tried). There are also tiny map measurement wheels that you can roll along a map like the measurement wheels people roll on the ground. I never used one. . . a ruler was good enough for me.
Park map with distance between intersections:My coach back in the 90s used to hand write all our programs and distance runs were always written as time. E.g 60 minutes easy undulating, 45 minutes steady etc. Distance was never mentioned unless it was track repeats or a time trial.
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gidbob wrote:
40yearsofrunning wrote:
We had maps and measured our training courses that way.
And after your run you wrote your time and distance into a notebook. That was it. No Kudos, no upload of a photo or comment needed.Those where the times when people where fast.
Yes average finishing times were faster, but much fewer people ran. Back when fewer people did it, those that did were relatively dedicated to it compared to the masses of today. So we can't just look at average times as proof that old training was better.
Certainly, current state of the art training methods must be better. Whether people follow it in practice may be different. Considering so many more people participate in races these days, it's not surprising that average times for all runners in a race are slower. That all makes sense. But it does seem the dedicated runners finished faster "back in the day."
Elite runners are certainly faster now than before. But let's take NYC results in 1980 and 2023 to look at sub-elite runners.
1980/2023
100th place: 2:28:41/2:35:37
150th place: 2:32:49/2:39:10
200th place: 2:35:31/2:41:34
300th place: 2:40:14/2:45:05
500th place: 2:46:23/2:49:29
I just chose 1980 at random but I would imagine other years around then would show similar results. So, it seems that when comparing "dedicated" runners of different eras times many years ago were better than now.
Good thing I wasn't of the older era otherwise I wouldn't feel nearly as good with my times.
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I just measure routes on Google maps.
I would actually recommend using a stopwatch above a GPS watch for everything except workouts. You really can't jog your easy runs too slow so measuring time is better than distance. I run around 17:40 and jog 9 min miles on trail. Even 10.
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accurately
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I usually ran for time and approximate distance, measured with a car, but I did mark things off accurately when I wanted to know exactly what a mile was.
First, I put tape on my front tire. I used electrical tape, and several times over the rim, over the tire, etc. When the tape hit the road it made a clicking sound.
Second, I put a mark on the road, and then peddled for 5 clicks, and put another mark in the road, and then measured with a steel tape measure.
Third, I did the math and figured out how many clicks in 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile, etc.
I usually measured each course multiple times to get good precision.
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HRE wrote:
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."
It only works in a more level terrain. Texas has similar grids, whereas Appalachian states have to work around mountains and rivers and could not do this. I think most of the middle of the US has a similar structure in populated areas.
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amkelley wrote:
I normally traced the route I was going to run or had run with a piece of thread on a printed map, then measured the length of the thread and referred to the scale on the map to find the distance.
Now, I trace the route on Google Maps and it tells me the distance to the nearest 0.1 mile, which is good enough.
I have never owned a GPS watch. Yes, I'm old.
Exactly.
I also had an odometer for my bike and would bike the route, before or after the run for accuracy.
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some old Hoosier wrote:
HRE wrote:
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."
It only works in a more level terrain. Texas has similar grids, whereas Appalachian states have to work around mountains and rivers and could not do this. I think most of the middle of the US has a similar structure in populated areas.
I will add that the city block I lived on was about half mile around it, so I would go run it during a two-minute commercial break. I rarely missed anything of any consequence.
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Back in the 80s, we didn't obsess with paces when running easy. I would only wear my watch on an easy run to make sure I knew what time it was so I would get home when I was supposed to. When doing a longer tempo, we would go to a trail with mileage markers. Even when GPS watches were available, I stuck with my digital watch for a very long time as my usual running trail had markers every 1/4 mile. On easy days, I would be sure to stay off the trail and run around the neighborhood to keep from pushing the pace unnecessarily.
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WDC Runner wrote:
gidbob wrote:
Yes average finishing times were faster, but much fewer people ran. Back when fewer people did it, those that did were relatively dedicated to it compared to the masses of today. So we can't just look at average times as proof that old training was better.
Certainly, current state of the art training methods must be better. Whether people follow it in practice may be different. Considering so many more people participate in races these days, it's not surprising that average times for all runners in a race are slower. That all makes sense. But it does seem the dedicated runners finished faster "back in the day."
Elite runners are certainly faster now than before. But let's take NYC results in 1980 and 2023 to look at sub-elite runners.
1980/2023
100th place: 2:28:41/2:35:37
150th place: 2:32:49/2:39:10
200th place: 2:35:31/2:41:34
300th place: 2:40:14/2:45:05
500th place: 2:46:23/2:49:29
I just chose 1980 at random but I would imagine other years around then would show similar results. So, it seems that when comparing "dedicated" runners of different eras times many years ago were better than now.
Good thing I wasn't of the older era otherwise I wouldn't feel nearly as good with my times.
I'm actually surprised by that. That's in the range of being well above the masses. I wonder how other races with unchanged courses look, or if there is some factor preventing more good but not elite runners from showing up. Do men in the 2:30's get in without the lottery? If not maybe Boston would be a better comparison for this. It's very interesting though.
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In college we would run the same series of 15 or 20 routes and knew the distances. Pace was also a lot easier to measure when I was young and fit because the variance in mile per minute was a lot less. Most of our workouts were time based and around familiar loops, so we'd do a 25 minute tempo and knew what the mile markers were. We also used to have people bike along side our runs a lot with an odometer.
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I'm still holding out on using a GPS watch (or Strava).
Some background:
I've been running for the past 25 years. I only just started tracking my training last year though. I know I'm obsessive, so I haven't historically wanted to record and track my running. I regret it now though somewhat, as I'm clearly only getting slower with age, and I'd love to have had a record beyond race times of what type of shape I was in, what mileage I once was doing, and what my workouts looked like.
Anyway, now I record using an online map - used to use gmap pedometer, but that seems to no longer work.Positives:
1) it seems fairly accurate - maybe more so than a watch?
2) I really enjoy looking up and planning out routes - especially in nee locations.
3) they have an elevation feature
Negatives:
1)If I'm running somewhere new or different, I'll hesitate to go in an unplanned direction if I'm concerned I can't map it accurately once I'm home. Means missing out on going down some cool trails that I might just happen upon.
2) I know it's more of a time suck
3) They don't have a satellite feature - well it no longer works. So I wind up using this map along with Google Maps in planning routes. For some runs, I will also sometimes set a pin in Google Maps at a location I turn around at when I'm running, which then let's me more accurately have the long/lat to input into the On The Go map. Yeah, a big time suck!
Anyone else doing this not old school, not new school approach?
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I would use my car. In areas where it was safe to do it, I would try to drive the same tangents I would run in an attempt to be more accurate.
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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?
Incredibly great question, you got people to respond and moderators did not cut you. Surprisingly not many LRC members cut you down much.
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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?
Lived in a Detroit suburb. Grid of N-S and E-W roads a mile apart, courtesy of the Northwest Ordinance. The survey baseline was known as Baseline Rd. (wow, how about that), otherwise known as 8 Mile Rd. made famous by Eminem.
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I used my car and my bicycle to measure out a bunch of regular routes.
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