Miles or Minutes?

i use strictly miles, but that's just because i've always logged that way and don't want to change

i think minutes would be better because you can run by feel more easily without worrying about pace. so you can go get in your 60 minutes without worrying about if you ran 8.1 miles or 8.4 miles

when first getting into shape I will use minutes (after coming back from injury, etc.). Once I can do an hour each day I will switch to miles.

I can usually estimate about how many miles i ran on a non-measured route by the time i ran for.

I can also generally estimate about how many minutes I ran for if i'm running a known course without a watch.

I don't often just aimlessly run about, not knowing time or distance. If i did that, I'm afraid i'd overestimate stuff and quit early a lot of days. Might be fun though - totally running by feel!

Mitch H. wrote:

I don't often just aimlessly run about, not knowing time or distance. If i did that, I'm afraid i'd overestimate stuff and quit early a lot of days. Might be fun though - totally running by feel!

i tried this yesterday, sort of. i put my garmin on another screen and just never looked at time/pace/distance. was aiming for about 8 miles, ended up with 7.85 with fairly consistent mile splits. i pretty much nailed my average pace, with 7:44 actual and 7:45 predicted. just a recovery run so obviously nor difficult

but i could never run without a watch or without knowing distance

I do both. For example, if I set out to run 60 minutes, I'll run for 60 minutes and then tack on the extra tenths of a mile to finish whatever mile I'm on. So if I run 8.6 miles in an hour, I'll make it a 9 mile run in 1:03. That way there's no pressure to run a pace that isn't right for the day, yet I don't have to deal with half miles when tallying up the weekly total.

In high school my coach had us go by miles. In college my coach had us go by minutes.

I use both now. Easy training run days i'll go by minutes. Long runs and tempo runs, when distance is more crucial, I'll go by miles.