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Running Speeds

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Re: Running Speeds

#151

Post by aziaziazi »

low_tech_love wrote: post #142
aziaziazi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get so annoyed when I hear people say things like “I like dogs more than humans.” Perhaps focusing on dogs awesome qualities may help you not getting annoyed. You seems to value a lot complex systems, imagination and willpower and yeah some humans are great at that. Most dogs beat us flat on group cohesion, kindness and perseverance. People value that, too.

I love dogs; the “one or the other” attitude comes from them, not me. The comparison is absurd in my opinion. And by the way you could replace it with cats, or pets in general, the point is the same. I just think it is a very shallow perspective to look down on humanity like that. To me it signals that the person is not really looking very deep into things.

I agree the comparaison is absurd in the literal reading. Comparaisons are also used as a language feature, like in “I really love chocolate more than anything else”. Don’t underestimate fellows perspective based on the view they’re expressing at the moment.

Re: Running Speeds

#152

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

jmye wrote: post #104
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an avid runner (10 miles every day, over 3k miles last year), shoes and tracks mean less than you think. Yes, the small fractions of a percent are meaningful but only to people who compare their results against each other to find out who is faster. To compare my result against a professional runner, they are running close to twice as fast as me and that less than 1% difference is completely meaningless.

Yup. People badly overestimate the shoe effect, especially.

The shoes are the worst thing. Yes, they do work. But it does not make any sense for anybody except people who race for top positions.

First of all, to make use of these specialist shoes you already need to have perfect running mechanics. You already have to be good at recovering good amount of the energy using springiness in your tendons and muscle and then the shoe will help with it. If you just put your foot on the ground and then pick it up a moment later, it will do nothing for you. So that probably already makes these shoes do nothing for something like 3/4th of all runners.

Second, these shoes are extremely expensive and the sticker price doesn't tell the story. Not only they are something like 50% more expensive than top of the line other shoes, they also get used up very quickly, something like 5 times faster. So you could say they are probably about 7 times more expensive than even most expensive regular shoes.

Third, it just does not make any sense! When I run, I am racing against my own times. Yes, I want to be better at running and having better time gives me joy and makes me proud for my accomplishment. For my hard work I put into it. What difference does 1% of improvement make if that improvement was totally artificial? Rather than use these shoes I could just take calculator and calculate the result to include 1% artificial increase in performance and it would cost me much less.

It only makes sense if you are racing against other people and that does not include you or me.

Re: Running Speeds

#153

Post by mattlondon »

nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

Absolutely nothing beats the feeling of being in a sprint race and reeling someone in and then overtaking.

I used to do a lot of 200m and the second leg of the 4x100 relay as a late teenager and I still get goosebumps decades later thinking back to some overtakes. Being faster than someone when you are both going at full clip is absolutely exhilarating. I genuinely have goose bumps now just writing this - your body doing what it was supposed to do, no thinking just doing something physically primal, the drama of the race itself, and then just blasting past someone and putting clear air between you and them. What a buzz. Watching the video in the article brought a lot of that feeling back.

These days I don't do much sprinting but it is still fun to overtake people when out on a casual 5 or 10k, even if the other person doesn't know you are racing them! :)

Re: Running Speeds

#154

Post by iamacyborg »

nlh wrote: post #118
ssgodderidge wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, time (and therefore speed) is a measure of fitness. I don’t care about beating others. I like to see that I am getting more fit than I previously was. The notion of “could I run 26 miles?” is the same to me as “could I run 26 miles in 4 hours?”

That makes a ton of sense. My measure of improvement has always been "how much pain am I feeling" ;) but that does correlate to speed I suppose.

Theoretically, if you know how to race, you’ll always be hitting the same relative level of pain, just for different amounts of time.

Easy runs should be easy though, and hard training runs should very, very rarely cause pain.

Re: Running Speeds

#155

Post by cratermoon »

nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

> Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?

People want to know their health and measure its improvement.

Speed is a proxy measurement for fitness. If there is another way to measure the health improvements of exercise directly comparable among groups, I'm not aware of it. Once a runner accomplishes the feat of running a certain distance, and doing it repeatably, the runner can either go longer distance or faster over the same distance.

Yes, you can go get a VO2 max test, RMR analysis, or body comp assessment, but those are specialty services costing money and requiring professional evaluation. Not something most people can have done every weekend.

Re: Running Speeds

#156

Post by theLiminator »

nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

Such a silly question. Why do people care about improving in anything?

Re: Running Speeds

#157

Post by iamacyborg »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12
croes wrote: post #2

Nitpicking: to truly compare the running times they should use the same shoes and tracks. There is a lot of effort put in to make athletes faster. I doubt Usain Bolt would be under 20s on a dirt track.

As an avid runner (10 miles every day, over 3k miles last year), shoes and tracks mean less than you think. Yes, the small fractions of a percent are meaningful but only to people who compare their results against each other to find out who is faster. To compare my result against a professional runner, they are running close to twice as fast as me and that less than 1% difference is completely meaningless.

> As an avid runner (10 miles every day, over 3k miles last year), shoes and tracks mean less than you think.

I’m also a fairly avid runner and I’m going to call BS on that.

There’s a ~14 second difference in world record times between track and road in the 5k. Track surface technology is a real thing, just as shoe technology is.

Re: Running Speeds

#158

Post by notacoward »

chatmasta wrote: post #76
nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

You would care if you ran faster to begin with. But if you're running mostly recreationally, especially if you took it up without a competitive racing background, then I can appreciate why you wouldn't care about pace. I was a competitive runner in college and it's actually the reason I won't run a marathon now. I got so burned out from that career that now I just run without a watch for fun, to de-stress. If I were…

FWIW, this kind of comparison can become even more discouraging as you age. At 58, I'm pretty sure most of my PRs are behind me. The amount of training I'd have to do to get back down to my peak numbers is way more than I'm actually willing to do, and there's a high likelihood that such a high work rate would end in injury instead of success. Instead, I track how each run stacks up against others within some time period - a year, two years, five. A "two-year PR" feels pretty good. A "five-year PR" would be awesome, even if it's short of my all-time PR. I wish Garmin or Strava or whatever would support this kind of thing better.

Re: Running Speeds

#159

Post by yason »

theLiminator wrote: post #156
nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

Such a silly question. Why do people care about improving in anything?

It's well debatable whether it's an improvement per se but merely a choice of competing on an arbitrary metric. It's fine if that's what you want but it's also very much fine to question that.

There's nothing inherent in being faster than others (or your earlier self) that would dictate speed being the obvious primary metric. Sure, it's an easy choice to measure and thus popular but on the other hand if you do want to care about speed it's mostly a losing proposition: there are always people faster than you (so you'll keep losing to them over and over or you'll learn not to care) and you can only ever get up to a certain speed that's physiologically possible with your body.

Speed can be a useful indicator of your fitness, though, much like fuel consumption is a useful indicator for whether your car is mechanically fit. But focusing heavily or primarily on speed is a choice which begs the question "why".

Re: Running Speeds

#160

Post by [deleted] »

nlh wrote: post #68

I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question: Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much? Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday). It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rew…

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