Mileage Board and Alternatives

[Jeff]

I vote to have people just convert their cross training miles to running miles by time spent cross training.  If you are cross training it's usually because you are an injured runner and that's all part of running.  If you are solely a cyclist or swimmer then you should either find another blog or convert your miles to running as best you can.

[James Winzenz]

Even though the title of the blog denotes it is for runners, it seems to me that Sasha has gone out of his way to make this blog friendly to other forms of exercise.  I like the idea of being open to allow others to track their "miles" in whatever form they take, and to keep biking and swimming miles separate from running miles.  That way if I want to see myself on the first page of the mileage board, I don't have to worry about someone putting in a 300-mile week from bike riding or something like that.

[Sasha Pachev]

Who cares? The mileage board is just for bragging anyway. The real competition is in the race. If you are having issues with somebody beating you with cross-training miles in the mileage board, challenge him to a race and take him to school if you can.

[Dave Scott]

    I think Craig Green made some very good points in the support forum. I think the key is that people convert their miles in a reasonable way. I try to be very conservative with my conversions. I know for me my cycling miles are definatly my hardest of the week. This morning I went 24 miles on dirt roads and it took an hour and 42 minutes. I counted it for 8 miles. An 8 mile easy run would have been much easier. I think people just have to be trusted to put down what they feel good about. For me thats about 1 mile for every 12 minutes of cycling. After all, people have to be trusted to record their running miles honestly. It's all on the honor system.

If you are looking at the mileage mileage board as Craig said to track somebodys fitness and see what they are doing I think you could miss a big part of the picture. For somebody like me 20% of their training would be missing. Maybe Brents idea of an * would be a good idea.

[Adam R Wende]

Sasha, I’m really surprised by your response. You know that I will go to a race and try and beat anyone above me on the board or not. However, that is NOT the point of this discussion. Obviously some people do care about this topic, otherwise it wouldn’t be discussed. However, the reason why I’m surprised at you is that you of all people like to analyze others training. I would think you would want to optimize your ability to do that on the blog. One way to optimize this is to see a breakdown of how different people train and look how it affects their performance. My main goal with this poll and my comments on the discussion associated with it is that it would be beneficial to see how different training improves the runner. It is impossible to do that unless you have time to check every person’s blog every day if the “mileage” board lumps EVERYTHING together. My ideal blog would have a board for running only, cross-training only, weight lifting only, and combined. This way you could VERY EASILY look at the different boards and see what break downs of the different components of training produce the “best” results. You have frequently commented on how running is all the training you do because you haven’t received benefits from cross-training (i.e. lifting) if the board was broken down the way I suggest you would have an easy to measure way of identifying if lifting helps others, which in my mind is the main goal of a coach and for that matter a training blog. The other benefit of these changes is you would have a record of those who didn’t cross train and then started and be able to see if the change to their training programs produced fruitful race results. Please strongly consider these requests as I think it would strengthen the training aspect of the blog as well as the useful information that would be generated for newcomers and those looking to revamp their personal training programs.

[Sasha Pachev]

I must admit about the only time I look at the mileage board is when somebody reports a bug. When analyzing somebody's training I look closely at their last three months, general training practices, and if they have a year history, look at that as well. You just cannot force people to log a certain way that does not suit them, they will not do it right. I  rarely look at eveb the MP/threshold/VO2 Max volume, to say the least of cross-training miles. Each runner is very individual, he is more than an N-dimenional vector of numbers. Those numbers are important but do not mean much without the context. When I give a Sasha Science prediction it is based on my feel of the runner which is not complete without reading his workouts and race reports. And I always do better if I have raced against that runner recently or paced him in a training run. There is no possible way I could do it nearly as well using numbers alone.

[Jody Hinton]

In my very non expert opinion, I feel that the mileage board should be running only.  I like the idea of being able to track other crosstraining activities but the mileage board should focus on the objective of the  blog - improving runners.

[Katie Aldridge]

Has this issue been dropped?

[Adam R Wende]

I would be lying if I said it doesn’t still bug me. But as Sasha says enforcement is near impossible. I posted a link to this and the related discussion on a couple blogs the other week. This was more of a hint but everyone has free will. Not knowing the specific "culprit" I don't want to cause issues over something that shouldn't be a big issue. Though it continues to bug me I can just ignore one person. The main concern is if we all of a sudden get ten people that are not converting their biking mileage etc. If this happens the mileage board is useless and I say it should be removed from the blog. So if other people want to help me and others who do care about this point help bring the conversion issue to light to some people please feel free. Katie, I think in your case I see why this is particularly bad because you should rightfully be on top of the mileage board right now. You've worked hard to get there, maybe even with that being your driving force and you are having your prize stolen from you. In my mind you are the rightful "champion" this week. 5 gold stars to you!

[Sasha Pachev]

A while ago we had a blogger  that would make up stories about her runs that in truth never happened. If she had been a little smarter, she would have never been caught regardless of the rules of logging.  In fact, for a while I did not catch on myself, and thought she was an exceptionally talented runner with some self-esteem issues. There is absolutely nothing that would keep anybody from setting up an account and randomly entering numbers.

Aside from that, there is no prize for being number one on the mileage board. Consider it a tool for finding bloggers that train like you. The last thing I want happening is people starting to race each other on the mileage board so hard that they start running worse in real races. And this can happen if you focus too much on who is above you on the mileage board. So perhaps it is healthy that a few people who bike get confused and do not adjust their crosstraining miles properly. This will help the Type A in the wrong place personalities adjust their focus.

[Adam R Wende]

I think the funniest part to me about this topic is A) that I’m still focused on it and B) that my mileage doesn’t adjust according to the board anyway. In fact I have all my weekly mileage planned out in a separate format through my next marathon (Oct). The only thing that will adjust my mileage it how my body feels not my place on the mileage board.
I do agree with you, Sasha, that racing in mileage would cause more harm than good. However, your point of finding people who train like you is a great point. That is why I still think you should change and/or add the goal type to include marathon time goals. I would really like to know who else on the blog is shooting for a sub-2:30… I want to know who they are and what they are doing to try and obtain a similar goal. Local Elite doesn't filter in a way to directly assess this. Also, by having faster gropus to filter to you can see what others have done to have already gotten that goal. For the most part I know the local people shooting for these goals however, to open the blog up to the larger public I don't have the time to go through all 500+ blogs looking for this...

Suggestions again:
Finish, sub-6, sub-5:30, sub-5, sub-4:30, sub-4, sub-3:30, sub-3:15, sub-3, sub-2:47 (wOTQ), sub-2:30, sub-2:19 (mOTQ)

[Dawson Hinton]

Since I only run (I really should branch out) I voted for keep it for running only.  Honestly, I only look at it when I am having a decent mileage week to see where I fall.  If my miles are down, it is too depressing to see how far down the list I am.

Can I just say that I do the exact same thing!  When I get into my training for the marathon, I will check it on Mondays because that is when I do my long runs, and most others have to work so they do not get too long of a run in.  I am always excited to be on the first page for at least a day!!!

[Steve Morrin]

While we are talking about mileage, I think that there should be a graph of sorts that you can put on your blog so that you can have a more visual picture of what kind of mileage you are doing.

[Shauna]

I vote to keep the mileage board as it is regarding the conversion of cross-training miles.  But, I do think it would be valuable to have two mileage boards: one for men and one for women.  It's not so much competition as it is a tool to check myself against other female runners.  I can see how other women are doing: if they are improving, staying injury-free, etc. and see how my mileage stacks up.  It would serve as an inspiration to know that if I can, say, increase my weekly mileage to x miles like a particular person already runs, maybe I can meet the goals that person is meeting.  Or maybe someone else's mileage will indicate to me that I need to step it up.  And it's easier to track one's progress against someone of the same sex.

I guess I can do that now and just filter out the men.  My suggestion would benefit the lazy runner (irony, anyone?).

[Steve Morrin]

Going along with the suggestion above, there should also be an option to just see people in different age groups so that you can compare yourself to people that are close in age.