Do you only count official race results as your PR's or do you count practice/training runs as well?

I’d only consider actual races at their full distance. For example my fastest HMs have actually come at the full marathon distance but officially timed at the 13.1 mat. So My actual HM PR is quite a bit slower than what I’ve actually done.

Hourunner wrote:

I’d only consider actual races at their full distance. For example my fastest HMs have actually come at the full marathon distance but officially timed at the 13.1 mat. So My actual HM PR is quite a bit slower than what I’ve actually done.

I think the in-route times should count since they're part of an official timed event..of course, Joe Average would not know this but pointing it out to the more dedicated running community would be effective.

I’ll clarify if it’s a practice PR. For example, my official 1k PR is 2:41, but I ran 2:36 in practice before. Neither is necessarily indicative of my potential, but if someone were to ask about my 1k PR for some reason, that’s what I’d say.

What about when it comes to a sub 4 mile? If you were Webb would you have mentioned in interviews that you ran sub 4 in practice, despite not yet breaking 4 in a race?

If it's a once-in-a-lifetime type of achievement for someone's skill level (ex: breaking 3 hours in the marathon), I think it is fair to highlight that you ran the time in practice. So if I were Webb and had run 3:55 in practice at South Lake, I definitely would have told John Dye if he interviewed me.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

What about when it comes to a sub 4 mile? If you were Webb would you have mentioned in interviews that you ran sub 4 in practice, despite not yet breaking 4 in a race?

If it's a once-in-a-lifetime type of achievement for someone's skill level (ex: breaking 3 hours in the marathon), I think it is fair to highlight that you ran the time in practice. So if I were Webb and had run 3:55 in practice at South Lake, I definitely would have told John Dye if he interviewed me.

That’s clearly different. Who would have run a faster mile in practice. It’s a little different for off distances or short/mid d races if you’re a distance runner.

I only count official race results.

I can't really imagine this issue ever coming up except at distances you've never run in competition. Who the heck runs invitational and championship races against NCAA competition or the best high schoolers in their state, then just shows up at the track with their teammates on a random Wednesday and beats the time they ran in competition? I just can't imagine ever coming close to my PRs in any situation other than a high pressure race against top level competition.

That said, I would only count actual competition as my PR.

It’s a personal record so how you treat it is personal.

I have tracked 40 yard and 50 yard PRs in my own tracking and never raced those distances.

I have run 400m faster in practice than in a race.

I consider the race my PR but the practice run like a relay split.

If you’ve done a hard time trial in a distance you never race, I consider it a PR.

It has to be really fast for anyone to really care.

If I PR in a time trial I do consider it to be my PR but I don't when talking to others because I hate the way I sound when I say "well I ran x:xx in a time trial"

It doesn't really matter if it's for yourself and you know the circumstances. Many people have unofficial PRs at distances that they've never raced. I've not raced a lot of very common distances, such as 100, 200, 400, 800. What what to say if there's a thread about 400 speed vs. time, etc? It's all unofficial. Even my times at All-comers meet back in the day were timed from my wristwatch.

I also have the circumstance of being at my fittest when I didn't really have a chance to race. I wasn't on a team in college, had no car, so only raced courses on campus that probably weren't certified. Then getting ill with overtraining syndrome for 2 years, after which I never trained for PRs again. So my unoffical PRs are way superior to official PRs.

taking into account the very special situation (corona, cancellation of all races) and the fact that i have been training since summer 2019 in the hope of running a good time in the m50 category in spring 2020 - yes, i count a time trial a few days ago over 800m as my personal best in the m50.

i don’t talk about it but also i don’t want hide it when people ask me about my current training. i am in peak shape now and the drag of the past few months has to make sense to me.

It happens more than you realize for post college runners. I know guys who ran 15:30 in college and now run 2:20 for the marathon. They have done 5k time trials at 15 flat. One had never run an official 10k but had done 30 minutes for 6 mile steady state.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Typically timing yourself using a stopwatch or GPS is going to be far from as accurate as the timing used in an official race.

An official race may not be as accurate either. There are many examples of RD's having races on short, or long, courses.

Good point I hadn't really thought about. But you are correct. I have run hundreds of road races and I am certain that some were significantly off in distance. In fact, I don't count my mile PR or 5k PR from road races that were obviously short. We know that XC courses are sometimes 1/4 mile short.

I count my personal best regardless of where it happened.

I've frequently run faster than my PR in training, especially after a crazy hot summer of big miles when it cools off right before the fall races.

Using self-motivation to put out a max effort isn't a problem for some people.

Hourunner wrote:

I’d only consider actual races at their full distance. For example my fastest HMs have actually come at the full marathon distance but officially timed at the 13.1 mat. So My actual HM PR is quite a bit slower than what I’ve actually done.

Serious question ... on a certified course, are there any requirements that timing mats for splits are also placed accurately, and is this ever enforced? If not then that might affect how I feel taking a split as my PR.

This actually affects me, since my 5K PRs are all splits of 10Ks, but until right now I never thought about those split distances being off. Well shoot!

I think you definitely count it. If you are a high schooler and you have a 1600 PR of 5:05 from your freshman year, and you are trying to get it down now but there are no races due to corona virus, and you get on the track and run 4 laps in 4:48—in what world is that not a PR?

I remember I couldn't make a race my senior year so I had to go to a track and run the 800 by myself. I ran a 2:00, which was 3 seconds faster than my last time. Of course it was a PR, all alone too.

I have a calibrated Stryd, so I kinda trust it to be pretty accurate for longer stuff (1k+).

I never ran an official 5k, so I don't list it as a PR on Strava, for instance, but in my mind a time trial I ran on the half of a track (the other half was occupied by kids, unfortunately) switching directions every 200m reads as "in a real race I should be able to run quite a bit faster than this 19:33". Actually my official 10k is very much in line with that, 40:43.

wow you're a god damn genius.