All I Need is a Little Progress

One of the pleasures of winter sun is seeing the tracery of branches against a clear blue sky.

Today was one of those days that remind you why you run - why it can lift your spirits. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the air was sharp but not too cold, the wind was light. In other words the conditions were just about perfect and it would have been hard not to enjoy yourself. 

Again the aim was to run easily and today I tried harder to keep my heart rate down. Still not totally successful but a couple of beats better than yesterday. I can’t make a quantitative comparison with yesterday because it was a different route, slightly more hilly. All I have to go on are observations when it was flat and I seemed to find it a little bit easier. That is good enough for me this year because I am taking a bit of an old school approach - running just by time and heart rate. The distance I post on the blog is done using Gmaps and gives an indication of how things are going but speed and distance are not measurements I need to know on the run. In basic training they can take care of themselves.

The slight sense of progress is one of the things that can keep you going (and something I lost last year). It doesn’t have to be much and it could be anything: you can go a bit faster, a bit easier, or just come back feeling more relaxed. It doesn’t matter, except that you need to know you are getting something back from your effort. You could be someone like Chris Boardman who is fascinated by measuring everything and who was never interested in anything where he couldn’t see a natural progression and found his satisfaction in the challenge of objective improvement and winning (as a thirteen year old he rode his first time trial in 29:43, a week later he rode it in  28 and it was that that hooked him`). You could at the opposite end, like me, and chase feelings and an increased sense of well being. Whatever it is we are all looking for we need to know we are not wasting our time.

Janathon 2012 Day 2: Who needs accuracy?

Janathon 2012 Day 2: Walk - 2.54 miles, Time  - 1hr 3min, Weather - Sunny and bright but a little colder

I mentioned yesterday that I am going back to relying on just two measurements: heart rate and time. They are the most accurate information you have. Watches have obviously been around our wrists for ages and we take for granted their astonishing accuracy (so much so that I don't know anybody who is at all astonished). Heart rate monitors have only been general used since 1983 but since that time they have evolved to resist interference and do a good job of precisely counting your heart beats.

GPSs have only been available since 2003 but I would guess that they are now the dominant training tool and people grow to love them. So much so that some people think going out for a run without one is a form of disloyalty - that it cannot be a proper run if it is not validated by a full set of statistics. Some people give them names and bicker as if it is a proper relationship (I am talking about you Travelling Hopefully). But here's the thing - they are not accurate. They have been getting better but they are still not accurate.

It is undoubtably true that they are wonderful and a marvel of modern technology but it is still a mistake to confuse the precision of their results with accuracy.

This article on the subject from the New York Times amused me, especially the idea that people would contact race organisers to tell them they mis-measured their courses. Although I can shake my head and say "silly billies" it must be very tedious for the organisers. 

Now I would not want to use this article as an argument against GPSs - not at all. As I have said before they are a wonder and a marvel. I would however use it as a an argument for showing that we should know the limitations of our tools and how much we can rely on them.

Today's Janathon was a walk in the park - literally. It was however very muddy and the slow pace shows the effect of trying to pick the less watery, slippery path amid a sea of mud.

(The distance measurement is, of course, as it always has been, an approximation)