dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

Week starting May 28, 2017

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Location:

Alpine,UT,USA

Member Since:

Jan 01, 2008

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Olympic Trials Qualifier

Running Accomplishments:

3K: 8:58 Pocatello, ID 2003 (indoors at Idaho State)

5K: 14:55 Salt Lake City, UT 2010 (Law Day 5k)

10K: 29:33 Salt Lake City, UT 2010 (Des News 10k)

1/2 marathon: 1:06:59 Provo, UT 2010 (Utah Valley Half)

marathon: 2:21:59 St. George, UT 2009 (St. George Marathon)

Short-Term Running Goals:

To get running higher mileage more consistently without getting injured

Sub 2:19:00 marathon

Personal:

I used to run competitively, and maybe I will do so again someday.  Right now I am primarily running to try and get in better shape, and to maintain both physical and emotional health, but also for the simple joy that comes when I run.

I am also the proud daddy of five little ones.  I love the opportunity that I have to be a daddy, and my challenge is to balance my family responsibilities with work and running.

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 0.00 Year: 0.00
Asics Speedstar Lifetime Miles: 2020.05
Asics Gel Ohana Racer Lifetime Miles: 2332.20
Adidas Adizero Lifetime Miles: 1375.45
Barefoot Lifetime Miles: 183.10
Nike Free 5.0 Lifetime Miles: 2221.85
Saucony Kinvara Lifetime Miles: 795.92
Puma Faas 200 Lifetime Miles: 381.50
Puma Faas 250 Lifetime Miles: 466.10
Altra Adam Lifetime Miles: 1836.85
Baretrek Lifetime Miles: 290.15
Hoka Conquest Lifetime Miles: 41.00
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
25.400.000.000.0025.40
Altra Adam Miles: 17.40Puma Faas 250 Miles: 4.00Puma Faas 200 Miles: 4.00
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 miles in 28:17.  

The watch again had some lag on starting, but not as bad as yesterday, maybe only 1-2 seconds.  However, it took a long time to find a GPS signal (maybe 15 minutes) and I ended up closing and restarting the app multiple times before it finally decided to find the GPS signal.  The step cadence was again messed up today.  The watch cadence read zero when I checked it during the run, and is recorded as zero online as well (with a giant but brief spike partway through the run), yet somehow the total step count measured by two different apps on the watch (including the built in app that measured the run) seemed to be fairly reasonable.  Who knows what was wrong there.  HR again had issues during the first part of the run, alternating between 90 and 190 bpm, before finally settling in a reasonable range just before the halfway mark.  Total distance was a little better with auto-pause turned off, but still only measured 3.98 miles for a course that measures 4.05 on the course tool.

My initial thoughts are that that there is no way I ever would have paid for this watch.  As a watch it is nice, but as a dedicated sports running watch it is garbage.  The GPS is not bad, but is not as accurate as I would like.  The HR only works about half of the time, and is still a little noisy when it does work, and I can't even trust running cadence to be measured accurately.  I can't help but think that I could have done a better job if I were developing the filtering algorithims myself.

Altra Adam Miles: 4.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 miles in 31:03.  I felt a little tired today, so I just took things easy.

Regarding the watch, I was able to fix the step count problem with a restart of the watch.  I'm still not sure why it bugged out on me to begin with.  HR again was off for the first mile of my run, recording values below 100 bpm, and above 200 bpm, however it gave me reasonable values thereafter, except for a few instances when there was some obvious noise in the signal and there were brief dips or spikes in the recorded HR.  I wish that I could get my hands on the raw data to see what is causing problems as I wonder if I could devise a filtering routine that could fix things.

The distance run is consistently measuring short, as over the past 4 days the watch has given me a total distance run of 4.00, 3.94, 3.98, and 3.96 miles (measured on the course tool at 4.05 miles), while each of the individual runs is showing as 3.9 miles when uploaded online by the watch.  Part of the variation I am seeing in distance is due to some of the inherent limitations of consumer GPS devices, and I can't complain too much about the amount the recorded distance is off, however there are still some issues that I would change if I were in charge.  I would allow for more user control by allowing the user to force the sample rate to increase to 1 Hz.  Currently, data is only collected when movement is noticed, which means that sometimes there is a 1 second gap between data points, and sometimes the gap is 2 or 3 seconds.  That is not adequate when you are shooting for peak accuracy.  I would also try to improve the TTFF (time to first fix) so that it would not be necessary to wait for so long before collecting data, and improve the app start time so that the app started recording immediately when data collection was initialized.  I would also smooth out some of the pace readings.  Currently, pace is recorded on a more absolute level so that any inaccuracies in the GPS show up as large variations in the pace being run and make the pace readout look silly.  I would smooth out these curves so that the absolute pace being run is actually displayed as a running average over multiple data points.  This would tend to smooth out some legitimate brief surges in pace, but would also eliminate the crazy changes of pace where it looks like the running pace has changed by 1:00/mile from one second to the next, and would make this type of data more usable.  Finally, I would allow for data to be collected even without a GPS signal.  Currently, the watch will not save a run if there is no GPS output from the watch.  Sometimes I might want to use a treadmill, etc, and it would be nice if the exercise time could still be saved in these instances.

Altra Adam Miles: 4.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 miles in 31:52.  Feeling a little under the weather.

I'm not going to comment much more about the watch accuracy, unless I see something notable, as the lack of accuracy for the HRM is fairly consistent, as well as the decent but not perfect accuracy for the GPS.  Stride rate is the one sensor where I got bad data randomly, but a restart fixed that problem.

Puma Faas 250 Miles: 4.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 miles in 33:53.  Still feeling under the weather, so I ran super slow in order to get the miles in but not make myself feel worse.  I did have two brief pick-ups during the run.  One because an unaccompanied dog was running towards me, and another to get across the street before the light turned red.

Puma Faas 200 Miles: 4.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
4.000.000.000.004.00

4 miles in 29:40.  I have been feeling sick for the last few days, so I was happy to feel a little better today, although I am still not completely over it.  I ran a little faster as a result.

Altra Adam Miles: 4.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
5.400.000.000.005.40

5.4 miles in 41:56.  Watch measured the course I ran at 5.31, and the course tool on the blog measured it at 5.42.  I trust the accuracy of the course tool more than I trust the accuracy of the watch.  This makes a difference of about 10 seconds per mile for the average running pace during the run.

Altra Adam Miles: 5.40
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
25.400.000.000.0025.40
Altra Adam Miles: 17.40Puma Faas 250 Miles: 4.00Puma Faas 200 Miles: 4.00
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