Week 1 stats for Let's Run Strava group

zzzz wrote:

glacier speed wrote:

Joining the Let's Run group at Strava has been humbling. I knew I wasn't very fast, but wow I stink. After a few weeks, I'm typically around the top 25% overall for weekly mileage, but I'm almost dead last for average pace.

Yeah, I run a lot of hills, and I do my easy runs very slowly, so that brings down my average a bit. But most of you people do your casual daily runs at a pace better than my 5K race pace! I think I need to start a new web site: LetsPlod.com.

I just joined. I'll keep you company at the low end average pace at about 10 minutes per mile. I'm not actually slow though. I just don't give a damn about my average pace. All my runs are on hilly, snowy trails, some with tight singletrack and bad footing/roots right, and all of my runs are with my dog. I should be near the top in elevation gain though. If I hopped onto the treadmill, like I did for a bit last year, my average pace on the treadmill was more like 7:00 pace, with a 10 miler under an hour. But I'm not training for anything at the moment, so no treadmill for me, even though I have a nice one in the garage.

zzzz wrote:

Olympic Trails Qualifier wrote:

zzzz wrote:

I just joined. I'll keep you company at the low end average pace at about 10 minutes per mile. I'm not actually slow though. I just don't give a damn about my average pace. All my runs are on hilly, snowy trails, some with tight singletrack and bad footing/roots right, and all of my runs are with my dog. I should be near the top in elevation gain though. If I hopped onto the treadmill, like I did for a bit last year, my average pace on the treadmill was more like 7:00 pace, with a 10 miler under an hour. But I'm not training for anything at the moment, so no treadmill for me, even though I have a nice one in the garage.

You don't care, that's why you're qualifying yourself so hard ;)

Ha, ha, I know. I actually un-joined a few days later. Like others have mentioned, the large size of the group causes technical issues because the leaderboard only lists the top 100. For a few days, I showed up as the previous week's #2 in elevation gain. But I didn't show up in the current week, even sorting the leaderboard by slowest pace or highest elevation gain. My runs are public, so they should have showed up. It must be some kind of glitch, but it takes the fun out of looking at the club list.

The bigger problem is that no one knows who anyone else is, and it's hard to care about a stranger's runs. It's even harder with 381 strangers. I looked through the member list and only recognized Christian Hesch. Previously, I was in a club made up of people in a Runnersworld marathon training thread that made more sense, because we posted about our training in a RW thread and got to know each other. I dropped out of that strava club because I'm not really a marathoner and don't plan on running another anytime soon - but I still follow and have followers from that group. With 381 members and growing, that's too much to try to follow.

What would help to create a community would be to have a thread in the discussions section of the strava club where people share their Letsrun handles for those willing to reveal that information. Also having some active training threads on letsrun would help. I know there have been "racing and training" threads here, so strava could be an additional way for those people to connect.

I browsed through some of the profiles. The two top dudes in mileage the previous week (at 120 miles) actually have slow PRs - but good on them for getting after it. When the new week started, the leaderboard reset, so only 5 dudes from the eastern part of the globe showed up on the leaderboard. I looked at their profiles and was surprised at how fast these dudes are. The guy with the slowest training pace for his first run of the new week of this 5 has a marathon PR of 2:11! Another one of the 5 had a 10K PR in the 29s.

I might join up again later, but for now has been more annoying than fun.

LetsStrava! wrote:

zzzz wrote:

Ha, ha, I know. I actually un-joined a few days later. Like others have mentioned, the large size of the group causes technical issues because the leaderboard only lists the top 100. For a few days, I showed up as the previous week's #2 in elevation gain. But I didn't show up in the current week, even sorting the leaderboard by slowest pace or highest elevation gain. My runs are public, so they should have showed up. It must be some kind of glitch, but it takes the fun out of looking at the club list.

The bigger problem is that no one knows who anyone else is, and it's hard to care about a stranger's runs. It's even harder with 381 strangers. I looked through the member list and only recognized Christian Hesch. Previously, I was in a club made up of people in a Runnersworld marathon training thread that made more sense, because we posted about our training in a RW thread and got to know each other. I dropped out of that strava club because I'm not really a marathoner and don't plan on running another anytime soon - but I still follow and have followers from that group. With 381 members and growing, that's too much to try to follow.

What would help to create a community would be to have a thread in the discussions section of the strava club where people share their Letsrun handles for those willing to reveal that information. Also having some active training threads on letsrun would help. I know there have been "racing and training" threads here, so strava could be an additional way for those people to connect.

I browsed through some of the profiles. The two top dudes in mileage the previous week (at 120 miles) actually have slow PRs - but good on them for getting after it. When the new week started, the leaderboard reset, so only 5 dudes from the eastern part of the globe showed up on the leaderboard. I looked at their profiles and was surprised at how fast these dudes are. The guy with the slowest training pace for his first run of the new week of this 5 has a marathon PR of 2:11! Another one of the 5 had a 10K PR in the 29s.

I might join up again later, but for now has been more annoying than fun.

The LR club is now past the 500 mark, thanks to everyone who has joined.

I agree with some of your points. I'm on another forum where we had a Strava club and I just about managed to link up handles and Strava names but most people prefer to not actually announce the connection in public. That one was easier because although the forum handles were unique to the other site they linked to profiles which included pbs and race times so the connections were easy to figure out if you were so minded.

If this forum had profiles or even just signatures where we could list pbs that would be helpful, but its not going to happen.

Jamie Barnett was leading the board at first and has had a big breakthrough in times from his big mileage so congrats to him.

In the UK we also have clubs for many of the parkruns which are more friendly because everyone tends to know everyone else. My local one has Derek Hawkins (Olympic marathon runner and brother to Callum) in it and he usually tops the board for training speed.

I did sugget on the main training thread here that people link to their Strava profiles when they are posting.