Cheston's Running Blog

"Reach and pull?" hmmm sounds painful. Hey look out for the fish. I hear the Big mouth Bass our hungry this time of the year!

Great job. Are you training for a triathlon? One thing has been bugging me though. Some people check the mileage board a lot and I am one of them. And I don't think that it is fair that you keep getting top of the mileage board with your biking. Would you mind changing your blog format to one that has a cross training section? I really admire your training and I know that mileage doesn't mean everything, but I am crazy and I know some other people are like me. Again, I mean no offense and feel free to keep it this way if you like it. But it might help you track your training better as well.

Why are people so concerned about your miles? First pride comes before the fall. blog was made to track your goals and encourage others with simular intrests. Cheston keep up the great training. I think your an awesome athlete.

Wildbull, it was a simple polite request. I'm not trying to pick a fight. I also think that cheston is a great athlete. He is better than me for sure.

Haynes, I may agree with you. I guess everyone is entitled to there opinion. invited or not. Yes your request was a polite Request. I think he should have a blue shirt with white pants for his pic! And the hat? Man take it off! come on Cheston.

What can I say I'm a competitor. If this is the only way I can win on the mileage board, then maybe I had better keep it as is.

To be honest I've never even checked the mileage board. I'm not concerned with it. I rarely look at the other blogs.

I'm not a smart man. I wouldn't have any idea how to change the format. Sorry Haynes. I know your not trying to pick a fight. But thanks for the info anyway.

Cheston--

If you're not concerned with the mileage board and rarely look at other blogs then why not consider taking a moment to change your logging template to accommodate those who are active on the blog and do check the mileage board?

Here's how to change your template:

1) Log into the blog.

2) Click on "Change Logging Template" from the list of menu items in the pink box on the left hand side of the page.

3) Select "Jack Daniels Running Formula with cross training" and click "Make Active."

You will then have the option to list running miles and cross training (ie cycling) miles.

happy training!

Haynes this is the solution I came up with because people seem to have a problem with this. Write you name on a piece of paper and tape it to the top of your computer and you will always be on top of the mileage board.

Cheston-I use biking when I am injured and put them in crosstraining miles which get added into mileage. What I do to convert this to running miles is take my time and do 10 mins. per mile.

But honostly it doesn't matter, and yes I like to see my name high on the list as well. But if someone wants to keep track of all the mileage they do whether it is biking or running don't let it get to you. You know you have ran more.

Josse--

What a practical solution! I like it.

The thing I don't get about this conversation is how it has anything to do with not respecting someone's miles.

I don't think anyone would say that a person shouldn't track all of their miles, whether it's biking, swimming, running or whatever. It's just a matter of putting the miles into the right bucket and the blog allows you that option.

The blog community works best when folks use the tools available in a way that maximizes their own use and allows the greatest benefit to others. For example, there may be other folks on the blog that are cycling big miles and want to see if others are doing the same. They would miss Cheston's entries because those miles are logged as running miles.

All I'm saying is make the best use of what is available and it will have the effect of improving everyone's experience.

Personally, I don't care much about where I am on the mileage board (I can predict where I am at without even looking at it), but I know many who do care about it (ie Haynes) and I see their point.

Haynes went out of his way to be exceptionally polite in his request and was told to pound sand. I just don't get that! If I were driving down a road making nothing but left hand turns for the last hour and someone told me my right hand blinker was flashing the whole time and confusing the other drivers, I would appreciate the correction.

No one means any offense and in no way is anyone trying to undermine the legitimacy of someone else's training. (I just got beat soundly by a triathlete in a 10k this weekend and have much respect for multisport athletes). We're talking about a simple courtesy, aren't we?

I have to agree with Chad here. The point is not to offend. We just want some consistency for the people who do care about these things. Enough people have voiced that they are competitive about the mileage board and do use this as a form of motivation (see related discussions on the discussion board). I don’t change my mileage to affect my standing on the board but I do check where I stack up against those closest in my ability for the week. For the people that do check the mileage board, I would say the vast majority of the 500 plus people on this blog only log their running miles. Right now Cheston is the only person (I know of) on the first page of the mileage board logging his biking miles = to his running miles. Though total mileage is fun, I think that for the purposes of the mileage board on this running blog the easiest is to do what other people in Cheston’s shoes are doing. That is to either log 3 miles biked = 1 mile on your entry or even better use Josse’s 10 min / mile conversion. That way you don’t have to even change your template, you just change the way you enter your miles. This is about as “fair” as I think we can make things for those who want to log their biking miles vs running miles only.

Cheston, Do what you like. it is your Blog! your record! May the force be with you! in the spirit of competition your not playing fair! We run, and run and run 100 plus miles a week to be on top of the mileage board. Blah Blah Blah. I have never seen a runner that has road rage? Josse, Chad, I think your awesome runners by the way!

Sounds like a lot of people are getting worked up over nothing.

Let us all speak kinds words to each other. Let's just try and focus on the training and not worry about the things that don't matter.

Thanks for the support Bill. I appreciate everyone's advise, but I respectfully decline. I'll leave my blog as is.

I tend to disagree and if it was nothing you would make the change.

Oh great, here we go again...

http://fastrunningblog.com/forum/index.php/topic,348.0.html

Don't feel bad, Cheston, this has been a point of discussion several other times. If it makes you feel better, I one time put that I ran 10,000 miles on a single day just to be at the top of the mileage board and see who complained...

Wow, the intransigence is stunning!

I like Josse's solution- I may go do that once I get home.

Chad, did you have to use a thesaurus to look up that word, or did you really know it off the top of your head? I had to look it up and I'm still not sure how to pronounce it...

By the way, just 2 more comments will put this discussion on the Hot Discussions board, and then it will really get some attention.

I'm not quite sure if I want to get in on this discussion or not, but I have something to say from both sides of the issue.

1. I believe this blog started as a way for runners to log their miles and improve their performance in running. So in that regard I assume the cross- training miles should probably be calculated the same way for all people.

I for one don't really care what the mileage board says for anyone but myself. I like to look and see how many miles I ran in a week, a month and a year. I am excited to know for my own benefit.

2. I sometimes wonder if the reason we see so many injured people on this blog is because they are too caught up in "keeping up with the Jones's". Sasha's idea in this blog was to "run, blog, improve, repeat".

With both of those opinions voiced, I hope I don't regret joining in on this discussion. 1., because of the emails it is likely to generate, and 2. one of the things I love about this blog is the goodness and niceness that comes with it. I hate to see anyone being attacked in a "friendly" place. There have been at least two people attacked on this thread alone.

Everyone knows I'm the Mileage Queen no matter how many miles Cheston bikes! ; )

The mileage board motivates me. There aren't runners around here doing my kind of mileage so I look to this to keep me heading in the right direction. Sure, it seems unfair when I get bumped by a biker, but it sure makes for a HOT discussion, doesn't it?

Back to painting the kitchen (I think it converts to 4 running miles per hour of painting)

Chad, thanks for the "word of the day"! I just looked it up - I think it should be a new feature on the blog (and then of course, we will ask Sasha to add a feature board that tracks who has come up with the most "word(s) of the day".

Dave, I think if we do that we need to have a conversion factor for Chad. I think 4 Chad words of the day = 1 word of the day :)

It's all that high and mighty lawyery stuff!

Ok Ok people I don't think anyone is trying to offend anyone here. I is just overly ambitius runners who like to see there name on the front page of something (luckily for me I can look at the top runners list for that few!)

This blog motivates me along with all the differant personalities. I love these deep philosophical conversations. I do think out of respect people should either change there logging templet (if you set up the blog you can change the templet), or covert there mileage to running. But then again we all have freedom to do what ever we please. Even if we are doing it out of shear bullheadedness (I am talking about myself of course.)

I'm going to change my template so it records my runs in feet. No, inches!

Hey man. As a fellow biker I know that when I first started blogging my miles for biking, I put them in x-training miles, but that wasn't enough as x-training miles still count towards your overall mileage. You do some monster rides which is great ! What i do is convert them by multiplying the total distance by .333333 repeating. I find this gives me an accurate approximate to total distance ran. I am recovering from an achilles issue and its been a long, slow 5 months, I just know that I caused a little turmoil amongst certain runners myself by blogging the mileage.

In the end you can choose to do what you want, but I notice you are blogging your running miles and cycling miles together without modifying the cycling miles. Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in there that maybe you want to separate the cycling/biking miles. 50-60 mile cycle rides are sweet deals, but not the same as running 50 miles you know? Just dont want you to have skewed results at end of the year.

Ride on man. You watching the Tour this year?

Oh two more things I think that Josse converts x-training to like 10 min miles so just divide total minutes by 10 for another mode of conversion.

Also, what type of bike do you ride?

Now I understand why some are hesitant to "officially" join the blog. . .

Go Cheston! :)

I take a gander at the top mileage every now and then. The only problem i have with biking/running 1:1 miles is that it is hard to compare unless you decipher each persons individual blog.

Let's say my goal is 90 miles per week, so I compare myself to those in that range on the board. If two or three of those do 30 miles biking per week and run 60, then it would appear as though I was doing the same although I'm working about 2 hours longer for the same mileage.

I suppose you could just interpret each persons blog individually, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a board. The problem only increases with months and years as well.

The mileage board is interesting, but you have to keep in mind that it doesn't tell the whole story. Not all miles are created equal... (even if they are 'running' miles) You would have to dig deeper into any particular persons training logs to find out how their workouts compare to yours anyway.

The only prize for running high mileage is improved fitness.

Cheston - to make the study of your blog more meaningful, you should follow Chad's instructions, and then give yourself a cross-training mile for every 10 minutes of hard biking. Or do the same and put those miles under easy. I do not particularly care if somebody gets displaced from the top of the mileage board because you have too many biking miles logged at face value (I think it is a good motivator for them to put their miles into perspective), but it would make it difficult to figure out what is happening in your training if a large number of biking miles gets counted as running miles.

Congratulations on your longest ride yet, Cheston! That is awesome.

And in other news, you are clearly a scoundrel. You know that it would be simple to change, and that it bugs all these competitive runners that you are blogging bike miles as running miles, and that is why you want to keep doing it. I just think that's funny. It's the diversity of the personalities that makes this blog so great. Runners are stubborn--we have to be to keep at it. Good luck with your training, you scoundrel!

The thing I have loved about this blog since i joined 9 or so months ago is that there isn't the attitude and flippancy that you find on other blogs like LetsRun. I despise LetsRun.

This is a running blog where we do many things like track running miles, talk about running injuries and discuss other running related topics.

Of course, some of the runners also have other athletic talents and pursuits such as swimming, biking, walking and maybe even archery.

No one of these talents or skills is any more important or better than the other.

That said, this is a running blog. It's not a swimming blog. It's not a triathlete blog and it's not an archery blog. That doesn't mean those things can't be discussed and opined on. That's what the discussion forums are for and I believe there are specific "buckets" of conversations where all of these things can be discussed.

But including mileage in one sport, on a mileage board for another sport is not helpful to anyone. It adds confusion to an otherwise simple menas of personal and group accountability.

I use the mileage board for a couple of reasons:

1--It keeps me accountable to myself and others

2-- It helps provide context to the successes, failures and challenges we each face in our training and competition.

3-- It helps draw some conclusions of various training regimens and philosophies.

For others, it's clearly a competitive thing which is perfectly fine. I don't care about that because I'm never going to be a 100-mile per week guy again, but to some it's important that, in part, is what this blgo is for: to push already realtively gifted athletes to greater heights.

When people start putting in mileage that isn't specific to the sport being tracked, then it skews that data and doesn't do anything to help anyone.

Cheston, who appears to be a fantastic athlete, has put in 110 miles this week. 100 of that has been on the bike and ten of it running. It seems weird to me that on fastrunningblog.com this would be the case.

Again, I run the mileage I need to run and can run. I have never looked at the mileage board, seen someone ahead of me, and then gone out for another few miles so I could pass them. That would be silly.

But let's keep this specific to running. Doing otherwise dilutes the value of the blog if it reaches a point where we have to wade through a bunch of other stuff to make use or sense of the running stuff.

maybe i'll start counting car rides on the mileage board too! The point is: there is no point having a mileage board for running if people put whatever cross training activities they do...personally the mileage board motivates me and i gauge myself by how many miles i've done compared to Haynes. I think walking miles are fine but nothing else. Maybe walking is not ok? What if it's up a mountain and you can't run faster than you walk? Any thoughts?

Only if it is a 7% grade and you are carrying a pack with at least 50lbs. in it and going backwards then you can count it on the mileage board.

Some people do not count the mileage unless it is slower than 8:00 pace. Others count walking. We do not have strict rules on what counts as mileage. My personal rule is that if you feel you've trained an equivalent of running a mile at 60% or higher of your max HR, it counts as a running mile. But again, if somebody wants to have different rules for their mileage that is fine with me too. I just need to have an idea of what their rules are if they want me to help them with their training.

We're making this harder than it has to be. Running is running. It isn't walking. It isn't biking. It isn't swimming. And Al Unser Jr., arguably an athlete, doesn't get to count his Indy 500 miles here as well.

This is a running blog. It's not a blog for all athletes. I don't even think cross training miles should be counted. I do a lot of strengthening exercises and stretching that is every bit as important as the miles I run, but I don't get to count them toward mileage because it's not mileage.

There are a lot of things we runners do to train. Running mileage is one of those measurements. Let's not dilute it by trying to convert mowing the lawn, or lifting weights, or walking or hiking into its "equivilent" running mileage.

I think Sean has made the best point here. I have never counted crosstrianing miles as mileage untill I joined the blog and it had a section for my crosstriaing. But I wish it wasn't added into running mileage. I like to see what my exact running miles are without having to go back and minus my crosstraining (but I still like to see what I was doing during an injured time). In fact I don't add them in anymore, but them agian I am not injured.

I have to agree that this is a great blog. The fact that this discussion can go on with such well thought out arguments without resorting to name calling etc. is great. I also have to say that Sean’s arguments are solid and I stand behind him fully.

While I agree with Sean, I have to stand by my conversion of biking miles to .33 running miles. As I am still coming back from this achilles issue, I have found that I can seemingly do endless x-training without aggravation. I think that blogging the bike mileage has helped me stay positive as well as given others an idea of what I'm doing and how I'm going about doing it. Had I not been able to blog cycle miles, I probably would have stopped blogging simply from lack of motivation. In addition I believe it's kept me in shape or rather gotten me back into shape. I don't want to make it on the mileage leader board, but I still think that the 1-2 hrs a day I put in are worth a little bit.

Plus, by blogging, it's given Sasha an idea on possible training program that incorporates running/cycling as I come back. So far so good! (crossing my fingers). I think that as long as we're staying active and getting in our workouts we will all unlock a hidden potential. This blog is amazing and I know it's changed my life.

God bless.

Wow, wow, wow. I don't think I have ever been so popular!! I'm flattered.

It's a good thing I live so far away from everyone, or I think some of you would egg my house and lynch me. I think I had better change my name and take my number out of the phone book.

Congratulations on having one of the hottest conversation topics on the blog! I don't care how you log your miles, I know that I am never going to be at the very top of the mileage board, and I'm OK with that. Good job on the big ride, too. I used to bike myself and know how difficult it can be to put in a really long run. If you are referring to Lybi's calling you a scoundrel, you should know that she has called many on the blog by that name, including Sasha!

Calling someone a "scoudrel" is actually a sign of high regard in my book. Proof:

http://lybi.fastrunningblog.com/blog-05-24-2008.html

(my last comment)

Cheston, don't worry, nobody is mad, I don't think. Everyone respects you as a runner and a person.

Oops that last was from me.

Everyone should check out Burt's blog. His blog is set up to track only miles ran. He has been keeping track of his bicycle mileage too in his comments. Whenever he doesn't run, he puts a zero in total distance and logs the miles in his comments. He understands that it is important to show that he is still training, but that running miles are running miles, and cycling miles are not running miles. Burt really is an awesome and amazing guy. Plus, he's really handsome.

DARN IT!! I FORGOT TO SIGN IN AS A GUEST!!!!!

Way to flatter yourself Burt.

3 letters come to mind. OCD.

What in the heck does OCD mean?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I don't know a distance runner that doesn't have a little. I sure do... hence why I'm still checking back on this thread. I need an intervention.

Cheston there is a big difference between popular and notorious. haha ;)

Why the ha ha I think sugar coating is over now...

Adam - I am delivering the intervention you requested. Stop checking on this thread!

Extra therapy - run, blog, improve, repeat. Skip the mileage board.

Why do the number of comments posted on Cheston's "Most Popular Entry in the last 7 Days" keep going DOWN?

Because some of the comments were made more than 7 days ago. But don't worry, at the moment it's still on the top of the list.

I guess he's getting less popular. Who is this mysterous guest. Is it you Cheston?

No, I'm not scared to put my name to my comments like the mystery guests are.