Lies, damn Lies, and running statistics

Since I started running, I have always been fascinated by statistics.  In the 80s, when I first decided that running was a reasonably sensible leisure activity to do, I kept an A4 sheet of paper taped to my locker at work where I meticulously recorded my daily mileage, adding up the weekly, monthly and annual totals.

Mileage was everything in those days with a few fartlek/strides sessions thrown in to get your speed work going for good measure but if I wasn't hitting my X miles per week, I was disappointed.  I really wish I had kept those sheets of paper, they were the forerunner to the spreadsheet and online version I use now, but needed a whole lot more work.  What I would have given back then for someone to invent spreadsheets - maybe he/she was a runner!

One of the major drawbacks to the manual log was the potential for inaccuracies.  A great deal of rounding up occurred, although I always convinced myself I was being fair and reasonable when I was probably just making myself look/feel good.  I always remember one of my older running colleagues telling me (on more than one occasion) that .."the easiest person to fool is yourself" and with running logs there was never a truer word said.

However, with the introduction of GPS tracking, all that guesswork and invention is a thing of the past, and there's an amazing array of different views of essentially the same data but with a different perspective.  More importantly, the only thing you have to cough up for is the tracking device itself - a suitable GPS enabled watch or phone.  All the websites I am aware of offer a free version as well as some enhanced features for a monthly fee.  I use a Garmin watch which comes complete with a www.garminconnect.com account, but synchronize the activities with Strava.com and Fetcheveryone.com, the latter being completely free.

Fectcheveryone started life as a running site, but has expanded reasonably well to include cyclists, swimmers and triathletes.  This seems to be visited by lots of different types of users, from joggers to Olympic racers and 5K Park Runners to ultra runners.
Strava has a cycling background (I think) but also incorporates running and swimming to a degree and is aimed at the more competitive loggers who register 'segments' where they can compare themselves to everyone else as well as providing good statistics on totals, targets etc.  The premium version calculates 'suffer score' based on heart rate, age, weight, speed etc. just to see how much you can suffer compared to other ordinary mortals.  Strava has the advantage of also having an iPhone and Android app that logs the run/ride and uploads accordingly without needing a GPS watch. 
Because I can, I also automatically synchronize activities with Runkeeper, but only because I found a 3rd a party website that did it easily.  I haven't logged onto Runkeeper for ages so don't know if it's improved or not but it was pretty basic stats when I used it as an app on my iPhone.

The other website of note is Trainingpeaks.com which was started by a couple coaches and former professional triathletes.  This allows you to log absolutely everything about your training - the basic GPS data, meals (inc. calories, protein levels etc etc), feelings, weather etc. as well as providing a comprehensive planning tool for activities and meals.  In my opinion, it's over the top for 99% of people, but given my recent iron distance training experience, it's not too over the top it just depends how much of your life the training takes over.  In my case, quite a lot, but not completely.

Here's a quick overview of my training stats since 1st Jan when my official iron distance plan started.

Swim:  63.1 miles
Biked : 3173 miles
Run:     841 miles

Total time: 339hrs, that's just over 14 days continuous training.

It should have been more, having reduced the planned swim hours by 1 session per week and sometimes not even doing as much as the plan some days, so if anyone stuck to the plan in it's entirety that's an awful lot of training.

Anyway, the big day is on Sunday and I've gathered most of my gear together and packed the caravan.  There's quite a bit to do on Saturday to get ready, and I need some time set aside to worry about what I have forgotten to bring/do.

So that's it.  The last short bike ride tonight to make sure nothing falls off and everything moves in the right direction then leave for Holme Pierrepont tomorrow morning. 

I'm told to smile all the way round because Channel 4 are filming.  I'm sure that one of those will be difficult towards the end of the day.


13hrs should be within 'easy' reach, so 12hrs is my stretch target.  Reality will probably be somewhere in between.

Picklist

Rest day on Monday, just an hour on the bike yesterday with 2 decent night's sleep so far this week.
When I say 'decent' I mean not having to set my alarm for 4:30.
Mind you, the dog woke me on Monday morning around 5:30 wanting to go out, but I was able to get back off again. 

I'll be doing my last swim tonight in the lake, a short run tomorrow and probably short bike on Friday.

I'm travelling first thing Saturday morning with the caravan + spouse with a plan to get to pick up my numbers etc. late morning, then attend the briefing after lunch.  I then have until 5 to get my gear in the right bags for the transitions, bike in it's allocated spot and the rest of the day worrying about what I've forgotten.
I have a list that I keep perusing, and it's getting quite long, mainly with contingency items that does not (as of today) include the proverbial kitchen sink, but there's time yet.

Sicko

It's Monday, with less than a week to go to the main event.
This means that the taper is getting thinner with only 5 hours planned for this week.  That excludes the race, obviously.

I did my last 'long' bike ride yesterday, only it wasn't really long, just the longest of the week at 42 miles.  Worryingly, I felt more niggles with my knee, hamstring and shin than I have done all year, but I can only assume that this is some psychological effect as the date gets nearer.  Even as I sit here I can feel an abductor straining, and don't get me started about the sore throat that's been threatening all week.

People say I'm suffering from hypochondria - I'm sick of hearing it.
The doctor prescribed anti-hypochondria tablets, but I'm worried about the side effects.

 

Twit.

Just 3 laps of the lake last night, which is about 2.4k.  It was quite warm and really clear, so much so that I was distracted by assorted fish feeding at the bottom.  There's also seems to be a large number of smaller species swimming near the surface, about 30mm long and probably stickleback sort of size which we used to fish for with jam jars in the local dyke.  If we were luck we would catch a newt, probably making that species even more rare.
You have to swim straight through these smaller fish, who appear to be unaffected by swimmers and never seem to try and get out of the way.  I've never stopped to inspect them, maybe they're bits of weed.  This reminds me of the owl we had perched on a telegraph post that I could see from the house.  After a couple of days of it being there and me telling a few people about our own personal owl, I looked a little closer and realised it was a plastic bag. 

Tapering off

I'm not 100% sure if I'm doing the right thing, but I'm keeping the frequency up and reducing volume as per the accepted wisdom for this taper period.  There's some debate about 2 week v. 3 week taper, and some even say to back off at 4 weeks to go.  So what does a beginner like me do?  Take the middle 3 week option knowing that it can't all go Pete Tong at this stage.  ...Can it?

I hope not, but my 8 mile run last night was hampered by my knee shouting at 6 miles.  I was hoping that as the miles reduced then the knee would respond favourably and last longer, but it just seems to have these random spasms of giving me grief.  I was going a reasonable pace for me, around 8 mins/mile rather then race pace of 8:30s so I'm hoping that was the root cause of it.  If not, I'm in for a long 26 miles.

Tried out my new corporate race kit on the run, and it felt perfectly OK.  The shorts had a bit of 'have I got a nappy on?' feel to them, akin to 'does my bum look big in this' but I'm hoping that was just because I've been used to normal running shorts. 

It was good to get out on the bike for 26 miles this morning at the start of a beautiful day, the sun rising over Caistor top as I headed for home. Average of 20.1 mph and felt like I could do it all day.  Well, for another hour at least.

Reduced Fat.

It s a good job the training volume was greatly reduced last week, because my available time was even less, resulting in 6 hours less than the plan.
However, I had a reasonable swim in the lake, did a comfortable 10 miler around Castle Howard estate and rounded off the weekend with a fairly swift Caistor 10K 'Sting in the Tail' race on Sunday.  1 minute faster than last year and felt good even when I'd finished, keeping a good pace up the hills (the sting) and about 7:15 pace on the flat.

To make amends for the reduced week, I have foregone today's rest day and did an early 6 miles round the village and back.  9:35 is the planned total for this week, so I'm aiming for a bit over that to compensate for last week.  Don't know if that's a sensible decision, but wouldn't be surprised if I don't make the 9:35 either!

Wet

I'm quite comfortable with this tapering phase - the theory is to reduce volume whilst keeping the frequency with a bit of intensity thrown in.  At the moment I'm reducing all 3.

The starting numbers were published yesterday, I'm 1131 out of 1160.  The numbers start at the youngest age group, so there's obviously not many older than me.  Can't wait till I'm 65, there's only 6 in that category.

3 laps of the lake last night which was a bit choppy in a fairly strong wind resulting in unplanned mouthfuls of water at certain stages.  Intended to do 4 laps, but needed a pitstop and couldn't bear the thought of washing my wetsuit out.

This could be me...

 

 

But probably more like this..

 

 

 

That's a big one..

A mammoth 122 miles on Friday as I went round the 1st stage of the TdF.  The rain came just after half way which was a bit of a dampener, but I survived intact and followed up with a 2 hour run on Sunday.  This put me up to 17:45 for the week against a plan of 17:20 so as well as just going over the planned total, I also got a good long ride in which the lack of has been bugging me for a couple of weeks.

So, the 3 week taper starts here, reducing to 13hrs for this week, 9 the week after.  This means I might be less tired and less hungry, although unfortunately this has not kicked in yet.

Barking Mad.

Getting out of bed this morning was made easier by the dog barking to be let out.  She must have known that I forgot to set my alarm because it was spot on 4:30.

Not that it was mentally any easier, it was just that the barking spurred me on to do something about it, which was her aim I suppose.

Anyway, seeing as that I was up and about I decided to get a run in.  Not as nice a day as yesterday, but still warm enough for it not to feel like too much hard work, and I did almost 8 miles in just over an hour.

I noticed a stiff neck as I set off, probably a result of yesterday's swim in the lake and made me ponder what it (the neck) will feel like getting on the bike straight afterwards.  As it turned out, the stiff neck discussion with myself didn't materialise into much and I forgot about it after a couple of hundred yards.

4 laps of the lake yesterday (about 2 miles) in 1hr 10mins, so that's about par for me.  If I really try hard I can knock a few minutes off it, so what's the point of that given the scale of the event?

I, Robot.

My legs are gradually seizing up, or at least that's what it feels like.
They're not, of course, but as I'm running along it seems like they are almost 'automated' in that they move in a fairly rigid fashion without much prompting from me as if they are disconnected from the rest of my body.  ..or it could be my imagination.

They probably have a fair amount of lactic acid squishing about in them as the amount of training hits the peak, but I'm hoping this is temporary and I'll get back to some sort of normal feeling before the big day.

10 mile run this morning, and it was bright, warm and sunny which made it much easier to do.  A planned 2 mile swim in the lake after work will keep me on schedule although I'm going to struggle to meet the target for the weekend due to a trip to watch the TdF on Fri/Sat.
Monday sees the start of the 3 week taper so if I need to get any more training it, it's too late.