Did old runners lie about the training mileage? (Pre-GPS)

Current runners lie about mileage. And PBs, and splits and last rep times etc.

Human nature.

Oh, for goodness' sake: 2/10

Yes, Gerry Lindgren's mileage totals were exaggerated, though he was still running more miles than almost everyone else.

The "guy" you are referring to is indeed a famous liar, who also happened to be very fast. So the boundary between fact and fable is very blurry in his case.

Otherwise, the errors could go both ways. I used to measure my routes on a map with a piece of string, which understimated the distance a fair bit.

People don't lie about mileage. As someone who has also done 300 miles per week, I can tell you people do this without lying.

As an "old runner" I have found that in my pre-GPS watch days I generally overestimated my running routes by about 5% to 10%.

YMMV wrote:

I used to measure my routes on a map with a piece of string, which understimated the distance a fair bit.

Lol thinking of all the millennials reading this line who have no idea what it means or even how to do it...

The Daniels book was written before the great conversion, when we used to be on the metric system. So what he's calling 300 miles really was kilometers, so it's only 186 miles. Much more manageable.

Talltales1 wrote:

without GPS watches - how would you even know how far you're running?

I know. That's why nobody built roads or bridges before GPS. Couldn't figure out how much iron you needed for a railroad without the GPS. And all those guys just blindly setting out across the ocean with ships full of cargo and no idea how far they had to go. Unbelievable.

If someone had come up with a way to chart or map the world before GPS, it probably would have made things better for everyone.

Old Maps are Fake wrote:

Talltales1 wrote:

without GPS watches - how would you even know how far you're running?

I know. That's why nobody built roads or bridges before GPS. Couldn't figure out how much iron you needed for a railroad without the GPS. And all those guys just blindly setting out across the ocean with ships full of cargo and no idea how far they had to go. Unbelievable.

If someone had come up with a way to chart or map the world before GPS, it probably would have made things better for everyone.

Like a compass and tape measure?

Fable wrote:

YMMV wrote:

I used to measure my routes on a map with a piece of string, which understimated the distance a fair bit.

Lol thinking of all the millennials reading this line who have no idea what it means or even how to do it...

Hmmm, a paper map drawn to scale and a string? I will never figure that one out without google...

my Dad used to tell me that he had to walk 5 miles to school as a small boy. When I visited the area, he lived about 600 yards away. His excuse was he was much smaller, his legs were shorter, and it seemed like a long way.

Old people are liars. This is why the Inuit send them out on a block of Ice.

We had a bunch of courses we used from my high school- measured with a car.

Then, someone used a calibrated device that they use to certify courses- some were right on, some were off my 0.1-0.3 either way.

Now, 40 years later, we run them with GPS watches and they're within 0.1-0.2 of the "certified" measurements.

If not measured by car, then mosty by pace estimate. In HS, I drove most of my courses. In college, I generally estimated 7 min/per mile. (I've heard this method called "Badger Miles", but I never heard of that until a few years ago) Which basically means I underestimated most of my runs. I live 15 miles away from where I went to College, and have measured the courses and most of them are a 1/2 mile to 1 mile longer than what I wrote down in my training log. Not a big difference, but when running what I thought was 85 miles weeks, they may well have been 90+, that is a bit of a difference. In fact, when I went back many years later and used "map my run" to check the runs I did during my first 100 mile week, I actually ran 109.

Fable wrote:

YMMV wrote:

I used to measure my routes on a map with a piece of string, which understimated the distance a fair bit.

Lol thinking of all the millennials reading this line who have no idea what it means or even how to do it...

I'm a millennial and I never heard about people doing that indeed, but it's not like anyone who has the slightest clue about math/geography would have a hard time figuring out how to do it...

I always moved every 2-4 years. So when I moved I'd run routes a few times to decide if I liked it then bike measure them to get my miles. I assumed most distance runners did that.

Of course they lie. Just like I lie about being a coach. A coach that spends allllll day on this site. I like touching people on the tube.

Talltales1 wrote:

I was reading Jack Daniels Running Formula last night and read a blurb about some runner from the 60's/70's who said he averaged 300 miles a week for 8 weeks... that just seems absurd and not even believable in the slightest way.

Is it possible that these guys lied about their mileage of vastly overestimated it?

I tend to think so - without GPS watches - how would you even know how far you're running? Also - without GPS, I think it would be very easy to embellish your totals..

I think lots of people lie about their mileage, which is why Strava is nice. You still get people who upload phantom "treadmill" miles - some probably lying, but it keeps us in check..

Scroll through social media profiles..I enjoy looking at other runners and how their progressing with workouts and what not..I cringe at some though..treadmill monsters posting times that don't even remotely come close to the race stats they post..I am just looking at some like..really?

Call the grammar police.

Yeah, in the old days we could never measure anything without GPS watches. You'd get on a plane in Philadelphia to fly to Miami and often needed to stop in Atlanta or somewhere for fuel because they couldn't figure out how far the flight was or how much fuel it would need. I was usually either too early or too late for out of town races because I couldn't figure out how far it was from my home to the starting line and could only guess how long it would take me to drive there.