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

First, satellite GPS measurements on the ground are not 100% accurate. Differential GPS to can reduce the measurement error quite significantly. A good map is generally just as accurate as plain old GPS and the map doesn't need a recharge during those 50 mile days.

Second, everyone tends to be inaccurate. The Rule of 3s should always be used. For men, divide their reported number by three and for women multiply the reported number by three.

What about the runners before clocks? Do you think thy lied about their finish times? I know that the sundial is a relatively precise time measurement device but I am sure certain runners (Egyptians) manipulated results (and we all know how thy would do this. After 1940(?) and the invention of the clock and the discovery of electricity runners became a bit more accountable.

time and distance wrote:

As an "old runner" ...

I love that having competed before GPS watches makes us "old runners."

Yes, I think I also tended to overestimate a lot of my runs by 5 to 10%. In the dark ages before GPS, you could measure the length of a loop with your car but mostly we estimated it from elapsed time and perceived pace, then rounded up.

In 1978 when I started to train seriously I measured my standard 5 mile, 10 mile, 16 miler on a bicycle with an odometer. It was pretty accurate and after my running days when I found gmap-pedometer.com and re-measured the same loops there was no material difference. No point in cheating then or now

My high school coach had an 8 mile run that he would have us do and he would run it himself. it was 7.6 miles!

Guys measure miles the same way they measure their penises.

?

lying about mileage is in the human nature. in my experience as a masters runner most masters are very honest about their mileage. of course here and there one bumps up his mileage numbers to impress the young ladies. the best story i know is about a national class marathon and ultra runner who used to do the opposite. he gave the impression that he almost did not train and left everybody behind in pure shame and in the feeling to be a girlie man, while his neighbours had never seen him without running shorts and training shoes.

Yesterday i set out to run a moderate 15k. I ran a route ive never run exactly before without looking at my watch once. At the end it said 15.1. The thing is to get a feel for it.

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..

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This is ridiculous.......how was there no way to measure road courses in the 70's and before. People still lie about how far they run today. And how fast they ran. Back then and now, there is a thing called odometers (in the car). I would, like millions of others, take the car out and measure. When making turns, I ran in the exact same part of the street as the car travels (or safely make up the distance) [ex: if the car makes wider turns or something I would make up the distance by crossing the street or something]. Then when driving on the interstate, calibrate the car against the mile posts and come up with a formula (simple math). This is more accurate then today's GPS devices which are generally more than one percent over. My friend ran Boston recently with his GPS. What did the GPS read? Answer: 26.55 miles. So..... 26.55GPS/26.2875Actual distance=1.0126. Yes, his GPS was off by 1.26 percent. I run with him from time to time and all his courses are more then 1 percent different than my measurements. When we run one of my courses, his GPS ALWAYS shows longer then the course as measured by me is.

Folks also lie about performances for some reason. I have a guy who was 5th in the Group State Championships in 1976 just claim to be a Group State Title Holder in X-C. Even from '76, printed records are out there. Why lie anyway?

I remember a Sunday night about 11:30, totaling up my weekly mileage, and coming up with 89.5. I laced up my shoes and ran around the block three times to make it 90. I drove my courses, and was fanatical for accuracy. I've worked at a running camp where we have predict-a-mile contests, running down a stretch of road for what we perceive as exactly a mile, with whoever is standing closest to where the trailing vehicle stops winning. Invariably, those who have run big mileage estimate longest, and most accurately.

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...

so I was born in 1991 (which makes me a millennial) and I def know how to do this, I'd assume a lot of people who have even touched a paper copy map would know.

Overlay a piece of string following the route of your run on a map. Remove the string, taking note of how much was used to cover the route. Measure used the portion of the string. Find the scale (usually in the corner of the map). Multiply the scale distance and the measure of the string.

Chill with your assumptions.

I know a few old folk who lie about PR's. They either knock a few mins off their actual times or claim PR's on notoriously short courses. One local half marathon race was found to be a half a mile short when it was officially measured 10 years or so ago.

no fun wrote:

I know a few old folk who lie about PR's. They either knock a few mins off their actual times or claim PR's on notoriously short courses. One local half marathon race was found to be a half a mile short when it was officially measured 10 years or so ago.

All of those things do happen. It doesn't mean they always happen. And when courses are mismeasured there is as much chance the course will be too long as that it will be too short. There was a "marathon" in Auckland in the late 70s or early 80s where the winner ran 2:03 and there were maybe 2-3 guys under 2:08, and big "PRs" all over the place. On the other hand, the London Marathon began as the Highgate Marathon, named for the club that organized it. The first year it was held the course turned out to be 29 miles. But those sorts of things stood out because they were so rare.

Star wrote:

Guys measure miles the same way they measure their penises.

With a GPS?

Flounder wrote:

The Rule of 3s should always be used. For men, divide their reported number by three and for women multiply the reported number by three.

The opposite applies to number of sexual partners in total.

Star wrote:

Guys measure miles the same way they measure their penises.

Tape measure?

Back in the day, training withe the Florida Track Club, me, Frank, and Jack used the term "Barry Brown miles" for someone padding the ol' training log. Really, what's the point of junk miles? You're only fooling yourself.

You are spot on. Even modestly competitive runners had a much better sense of pace before GPS. When I was running in the 1970s, I knew within about 10 seconds/mile how fast I was going at any given time except, perhaps, on steep hills or on a muddy trail. So figuring out how far I went just required use of the simple formula of RATE x TIME = DISTANCE. I had a wrist watch (non digital, of course) to time each run, so I knew for example, that if I ran for 40 minutes at an easy pace of 8:00/mi I had run 5 miles. For tempo runs, I would carefully subtract the seconds that I was stuck at traffic lights. For my log, it was imperfect, but always recorded to the half or full mile, with slight rounding (the "long 10" or "short 10" someone else discussed above). I never figured warm-ups, cool-down jogs or strides into my mileage totals. So true volume was actually more than I recorded.

For long runs, I planned them on a street map before leaving the house. I used tick marks on a piece of paper to mark the length of each straight stretch off the map (and divided curves into straight sections), then used a ruler to determine the total length on the paper. I then compared that to the distance gauge in the map legend to figure out the distance. Then I joined Army ROTC in college and one of the very first things they showed me in my (topographic) map reading class was how to measure distances -- almost exactly how I was doing it on the street maps for running. (Both of my sons are now in college, one studying engineering, and I don't think either one knows how to read a street map, much less use one to measure distance!!)

Now that I am in my late 50s and have been running with a GPS for about 7 years, I have lost much of my ability to KNOW how fast I am going except for -- maybe -- my race paces. Part of that is the reality that my perceived effort is the same, but I am getting slower (aging sucks). But more of it is that I am obsessed with looking down at my watch every 10 minutes to check my distance and pace and let the watch do the thinking for me.

As for the dishonesty, when Gerry Lindgren was running in the 1960s and early 70s, volume was everything. Lots of guys were running over 100 miles/week. Lots of high school kids (including me) were running marathons then and focused most of their training on "LSD" - Long, Slow, Distance. Lindgren's claim may have been dubious. He had a colorful personal life filled with a degree of deceit, so I suspect he was untruthful about 350 mi/week. But it is known that he averaged far more than 100 miles/week.