How Far?

Numbers can be very harsh. There is no room for negotiation or special pleading. It is what it is.

Traditionally I have never worried too much about mileage and mainly measured by time and heart rate and have a rough idea of the length of most of my routes. That is not good enough if I want to increase my E number as I have to know my mileage on my longer runs. In the absence of anything else, the Gmap Pedometer is really good but I use it after a run, to measure where I have been. I like to set out with only a vague plan of where I am going, with the option of making changes – either shortening or extending, trying somewhere new or even adding a hill (I can imagine all the serious athletes with their strict schedules shaking their heads with pity at someone who always builds in latitude).

This week’s longer run was a good example: all I knew was that I wanted to run about 11 miles so that I could start to raise my E Number above 10 but I did not know whether I was going to do an out and back along the canal or loop back over a ridge. As I felt quite strong when I reached Berkhamsted I thought a bit of hill work would be OK and so went up to the Common and enjoyed a section running through the trees. All in all it was a good day. Except …

Except that when I measured the distance it was 10.96 miles. Only 0.04 short of 11 but by the rules it still counts as a 10 mile run. Damn, if I had known I could have easily run the extra couple of hundred yards.

A speed/distance device would have sorted me out and I am thinking about buying one. The trouble is I cannot decide what I want: footpod or GPS, Garmin, Polar, Suunto or Timex. It is all so damn confusing. In the grand scheme of things it probably does not matter - choose one, for whatever reason, and go with it. They all have different strengths and weaknesses but will all do a job. However I can be paralysed by choice and spend ages wallying around thinking: Do I need more than the cheapest option i.e. the Garmin 50? I like the Timex as a sports watch and would also wear it all day. The Suunto display is really neat and it looks good but I think Polar have heart rate information really well sorted. There is no functional reason to prefer the more expensive Garmin 405 over the 305 but the 305 does look a bit of a lump. Etc, etc, etc.

So there you have it – the numbers might be clear and absolute but how you arrive at those numbers is far from straightforward.

My E Number

A couple of weeks ago there was a wonderful TV programme on Einstein and Eddington.

Einstein is one of the most famous men of the Twentieth Century, and his image is an icon, but of Eddington I knew nothing. I had no idea that it was his observations, confirming the deflection of light, which caused worldwide headlines about the proof of relativity and made Einstein a celebrity. More to the point I knew nothing about the strength of character that allowed him to pursue a scientific truth in the face of wartime hostility to anything German. He was certainly a great man whose life should be celebrated.

There is though very little scope for astrophysics in a running blog (even if I knew anything about the subject). However Arthur Eddington was also a keen cyclist and kept detailed records of all of his rides and developed the concept of the ‘Eddington Number’. This is the definition from Wikipedia:

The Eddington Number in this context is defined as E, the number of days a cyclist has cycled more than E miles. For example an Eddington Number of 70 would imply that a cyclist has cycled more than 70 miles in a day on 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will probably require more than five new long distance rides since any rides between 70 and 74 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning.

The construct of the Eddington Number for cycling is identical to the h-index that quantifies both the actual scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist.

This can be applied to running. (As I can’t be bothered to get out my old diaries I will only look at the annual number). This year I have run more than 6.5 miles 24 times but my E number is 10.

For someone who prepared for a marathon during the year this is not high enough. I thus have a new challenge: raise my annual E number. I must run longer more often.