Fast Running Blog

After seeing the "Goal Type" added to our profiles I was surprised to see a lot of people select "Other".  Is there something missing from the categories or are you just too shy to put your true type out there? 

Here are the current options:
Unknown
5 K Finish
Half Marathon Finish
Marathon Finish
Boston Qualifier
Local Elite
Olympic Trials Qualifier
Highschool Champ
NCAA Champ
Age Division Winner
World Class
Other

I didn't do the programming, but my guess is the default is other, until the blogger goes in and manually modifies their blog profile.  I bet most don't know that new profile selection is there.  I just happened to see it when changing my blog name today (again!).

When I signed in this morning I had to make a selection to continue.  It is listed as a required field in the user options.

No, default is Unknown, and you cannot continue until you fix it.

I assume these are ranked in ascending order.  I chose Age Division winner (locally) but it appears to be a national age division winner if it's listed after NCAA champ and before world class.  Maybe I should be local elite.

I made the same assumption that you did.  Maybe I need to change mine to other.

They are not ranked in any particular order other than the order I've thought them up. Still way too many Other types. Which means I missed something. Will please all the Others state why they are Other. Sarah already told me I missed "Fitness".

This is a hard thing to categorize because I think a lot of people fall between the category of marathon finish and local elite.  High school participation, junior varsity, varsity, district, region and state champ but how do you put that in road running vernacular?  Recreational runner, Serious runner, Age division winner, Local race winner, City race winner, State race winner, National race winner, just some thoughts.

I think that with the addition of fitness runner that the categories are good.  Adding too many would defeat the purpose.

I wasn't really sure what to put.  I assume this is what your goal is, so if you have not finished a marathon and your goal is to do so you would put marathon finish right?

I chose "Other" because there was no appropriate category. All the choices assumed competitive running, which I cannot really do at this point. So, fitness sounds like a good one to add. I would normally pick "Age group winner", but my health doesn't allow me that goal now, so I had to pick Other. I will change it to fitness when it becomes available.

I picked 'other' because the categories didn't seem to fit my current goals exactly.  The closest ones would perhaps be 'local elite' or 'age division winner'.  But I'm really looking for 'continual improvement', and more specifically at the full marathon distance.

Cal I think I'm in the same boat as you. I think I put "Age division winner" for now but like you I'm really just looking to continually improve with particular focus on marathon distance. Not sure how to sum that up in a short/concise goal statement. I suppose we could lists goals as PR type goals (i.e. 5K PR, Marathon PR, etc...)

One of the purposes of this feature is to help you easily find training partners in your area (when the blog gets big enough). You are supposed to put the next closest goal above your current level of fitness. One concern I have about Fitness is that everybody has a different idea of what fitness means. For some it is 6:00 mile pace, while for others it is 13:00 pace. Think about what most people you race against or close to would have put for the goal type or would have wanted to put for the goal type if it was available.

Tom - for you it could be Masters Elite. Which I will add once I've collected other ideas. Another one - Heal From Injury.

Cool!  I'm married to a  master's elite!  And I'm trying to learn how to use the quote button.  =)

Kim I'm glad you think it's cool but don't get too excited. Notice Sasha said the goal we put should be the next closest goal ABOVE our current level of fitness.

With master speedsters Darin, Carl, and JohnA all within a few blocks of our house, I don't know that I even qualify as a master's elite in my neighborhood! But it is nice to know that I can beat John if the distance is long enough, and I'm getting closer all the time to Darin (at least I can take him during the winter when he slacks off on the training). Carl on the other hand...that's a tough one. May have to wait until he gets really lazy or hurt :)

Just what exactly is an 'elite' anyway?  At St. George they let me in the Elite Chute (with several hundred others, of course).  But in these classifications I'm not sure...

From what I've gathered from numerous other bloggers, 'Sub-3' would be a large and worthy category. 

It's funny. Be careful what you ask for. Initially I thought this would be a great idea but I see the technical difficulty of making it truly usable. Also, when I really think about it I do it for all the above and none of the above if that makes sense... I was thinking more like marathon target times. Like who are the people shooting for sub-6, sub-5, sub-4:30, sub-4, sub-3:30, sub-3:15, sub-3, sub-2:45, sub-2:30, sub-2:19. This isn't the reason why I run, it would be a filter to look for evenly paced training partners. Then again this is also my marathon centric view of the world...

I actually enjoyed sorting the blog by goal type to see who set what goal.  My initial reaction was "Local Elite" for myself, and it appears most of the people I run with had the same thought.

Jon, Dido but Chad is holding out...

"Local Elite" sounds too ... well, elitist.  The designation makes some sense, but I like the goal time thing better.

Time designation would take too much space. Consider all the possibilities: marathon, half-marathon, 10 K, 5 K and all reasonable ranges on those.

Sasha, that is a good excuse. Except for the fact that the home page of the blog only talks about the marathon... So it probably isn't necessary to have all the time goals for all distances. Also, you can have people convert their goals. The idea is getting a filter that will help you find people that train at the same pace and even "Boston Qualifier" or "OTQ" don't cut it because there are both men and women on the blog as well many different ages. So maybe having just the time ranges mentioned could be a start. Does it hurt to have an extra filter? We could keep what you've already done but also add this on... Just a thought.

In reality, I would gladly settle for being an "Age Division Winner" at most races.  This 35-39 division is brutal!

Just wait till you hit Masters!

Chad, That is why I picked local elite. I know I don't want to have to beat Sasha to make the "Age Division Winner" goal ;D

I think it would be nice to have "Recover From Injury" as a goal type.  This will alert us to who has been injured lately, and injured people can check out how other people are cross training.     

If the goal here is to establish some sort of categorical means of finding other runners similar to you ... then why not break it down into 2 sortable categories based upon mileage and average pace. Instead of some sort of subjective title you could simply have those 2 questions. Mileage/week could be based upon 10 mile spans and average pace would be the pace at which the majority of your miles are run at. This I suppose could be established at either 30 second or 1 minute increments. I would suspect that the categories could be something like sub 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, do you go 10+ or is it necessary to continue to break it down after that? What is the average pace at which you are no longer running, but walking? 15s?

Jeff, I think it is tough to find any way to group runners. I like and will continue to press for my goal time. My reason for that over your suggestion is that many runners take there "easy" runs to mean different things. For example compare Kory and I. We both have similar race times but are average training pace is VERY different. So even though we should be grouped in the same goal category your system would have us in different places. I like the suggestion though and hope that Sasha adds in another level of sorting. "Local Elite" just doesn't really mean anything...

Adam, does that mean that while you and Kory might race together, you wouldn't train together?   ;)

Touché...
At least on our easy days. Track workouts and pace runs we'd still probably do together.

Recover From Injury is now one of the options.

Many thanks, Sasha and someone else if they suggested this goal. At least it puts my goal into perspective for someone that just happens on to my blog and doesn't know my predicament.