Run-Down Forums

[Olga Sarti]

Hi everyone! I was wondering if you could help me better understand your needs and runners. I am an MBA student taking a New Product Development class and I currently working on a project. I'd really appreciate it if you could help me out with answers to the following questions:
1.What is important to you in your training?
2.What do you currently use to track your performance?
3.What types of information do you look for?
4.If you could envision an ideal way to track your performance, what would it be?

Thanks!

[Micah Ward]

Some thoughts on your questions:
1. I am looking for how much progress I am making toward my racing goals. The better my training is going the better my racing times should be.

2. I use a written running log where I record the distance and pace of a run and how external factors such as weather and course will affect the runs.

3. I look for improvement of times on the same training course. I look for patterns in how I progress at different times of the year and how my race times respond to different types of training.

4. I don't know how I would do any different than I am now. I have been using the same types of logs for 22 years.

I hope that helps. If you have any more specific questions just ask.
Micah

[training2run]

As a long-distance runner, one of my favorite ways of checking improvement is "recovery time."

After training, let say an hour, at a heart rate of 165 beats per minute (bpm), I measure how long it takes my heart rate to drop to 100 bpm.

The shorter the recovery time, the better my aerobic condition.

Another way, is to measure resting pulse rate first thing in the morning: the lower the better. For me, 50 is okay, 55 is something to be concerned about. At various times, in past years, it's been as low as 36 / 38 bpm. Now, 42 is about as low as it gets. Mike www.training2run.com

[Paul]

This probably doesn't pertain much to Product Development, but many runners gauge their fitness on a certain bench mark training session they might accomplish. See some of the posts under the topic "Favorite Workout".
Paul

[training2run]

By always taking a resting pulse reading first thing in the morning, you have a somewhat invironmentally psysiologically consistent condition under which to measure changes in fitness.

Sharp changes in morning resting pulse can also warn you against lurking injury or impending illness.

Measuring performance in an activity can certainly give you an idea of changes in fitness, but you put yourself at the mercy of the varagies of weather, competition, emotion, time of day, 'n schtuff like dat dere. Mad Dog Mike www.training2run.com