January Running Challenge

shotgunmcos · 07-01-2021 3:12pm #1

Happy January all Running Boardsies

Seeing how good, fun and important for the forum the TT threads were last year, and we are looking so far at a grim start to 2021 with no events on the horizon. (who is doing the first TT thread this year?

)

So for January, a simple challenge

How well do you know you own effort, pace? How in tune are you with your body, rhythm?

Run a route and finish it bang on an hour without looking at your watch! Post your effort on this thread.

Or in other words, start the watch, just run and guess when its an hour, stop the watch and see what it actually is. ReeGee and Dudda below brought clarity to this!

Save your run and post the link to your strava or screen shot or whatever. How close can you get?!!

Multiple attempts allowed
Run any speed you like, open to all.
Closest to 1:00:00 wins
If we have multiple perfect or 59:59 efforts, I'll do a pole to select a winner.

If you have just started running and an hour is a bit far, try 30 minutes.

Just a bit of fun!
Shotgun

Murph_D · 07-01-2021 3:49pm

Why the kudos for progression? Is that one of the goals?

shotgunmcos · 07-01-2021 3:56pm

Murph_D wrote: »

Why the kudos for progression? Is that one of the goals?

Well some people took a couple of attempts on the 5k last year :P

Lets say you made an attempt and arrived back at your starting point in 56 minutes. Happy enough with that, but you felt you could get closer so you try again and get 58 mins. I'd be interested in what you did differently the next time..

I'll compile results but if we have 10 people all with a 59:59 then a poll and some context may give us a winner.

ReeReeG · 07-01-2021 4:29pm

So you have to run and guess when its been an hour?? (Sorry, I'm a bit slow...in more ways than one

)

shotgunmcos · 07-01-2021 4:35pm

ReeReeG wrote: »

So you have to run and guess when its been an hour?? (Sorry, I'm a bit slow...in more ways than one )

You are certainly not slow! Sort of. Go for an hour total run.
Start the watch and cover it. Run your "hour run route" and stop your watch.

So if you generally run 10km in an hour, pick a 10km route or your regular route that takes you an hour ish. Start the watch and resits looking at it for teh whole run. Stop it when you finish and see what you got.

ReeReeG · 07-01-2021 4:40pm

Gotcha. Eventually!

Murph_D · 07-01-2021 5:12pm

ReeReeG wrote: »

So you have to run and guess when its been an hour?? (Sorry, I'm a bit slow...in more ways than one )

I didn’t pick up on it that way either so I’m slow too! Good idea - get it now.

Dudda · 07-01-2021 5:28pm

I understand now too. Didn't after the first post. Below is one route I run from strava 'matched runs'. The goal (for me) would be to run this and try and finish it bang on the hour without looking at the watch. That's going to be very hard. If I got within a minute I'd be happy as generally when you overthink things in a challenge like this you speed up or slow down to much.

Annie get your Run · 07-01-2021 5:29pm

shotgunmcos wrote: »

You are certainly not slow! Sort of. Go for an hour total run.
Start the watch and cover it. Run your "hour run route" and stop your watch.

So if you generally run 10km in an hour, pick a 10km route or your regular route that takes you an hour ish. Start the watch and resits looking at it for teh whole run. Stop it when you finish and see what you got.

What do you mean see what you got? Is the goal here to run for as close to 60 minutes as you can purely by going on feel for pace? So plan a 10k (or 9K if that's what an hours running gets me) route and go and run it but try not to come back in 55 or 65 minutes?

Sounds good to me!

Edit: Dudda's post above explains it perfectly, this is gonna be fun!

Is there a date/date range to do this in?

shotgunmcos · 07-01-2021 5:55pm

Annie get your Run wrote: »

Is there a date/date range to do this in?

End of January! So Jan 31 Hopefully another idea will pop up by then for Feb.

Apologies to all if my rambling opening post was confusing

Thank you Dudda!!

Dudda · 07-01-2021 6:02pm

shotgunmcos wrote: »

End of January! So Jan 31 Hopefully another idea will pop up by then for Feb.

Apologies to all if my rambling opening post was confusing

Thank you Dudda!!

Your welcome. Good idea.

So we can have multiple attempts then?

BeginnerRunner · 07-01-2021 6:17pm

So see how far you can run in an hour?

��

...that works a lot better when you can see the emoji as a troll face.

shotgunmcos · 07-01-2021 6:29pm

Dudda wrote: »

Your welcome. Good idea.

So we can have multiple attempts then?

Yes multiple attempts

BeginnerRunner wrote: »

So see how far you can run in an hour?

��

...that works a lot better when you can see the emoji as a troll face.

No need for that kind of pain

:eek:

shotgunmcos · 08-01-2021 2:41pm

Just occurred to me. If you get pace alerts on your earphones when you run, you will need to leave them at home for this challenge!

Dubh Geannain · 08-01-2021 2:57pm

I'll set the bar low with my 01:03:00 last night.

I don't exactly have an actual hour run route but gave it a go. It mostly involved laps of a half frozen field with my headtorch on. Still safer than the paths which I had to run on a little getting there. I'd an idea I'd end up around 13 km in an hour so was counting the laps which I don't have an exact measurement for but are a little over 1 km each. 13.3 km was what I covered so I wasn't far off my distance estimate. More normal conditions I might be closer to the hour for the same effort level.

shotgunmcos · 08-01-2021 3:18pm

Dubh Geannain wrote: »

I'll set the bar low with my 01:03:00 last night.

I don't exactly have an actual hour run route but gave it a go. It mostly involved laps of a half frozen field with my headtorch on. Still safer than the paths which I had to run on a little getting there. I'd an idea I'd end up around 13 km in an hour so was counting the laps which I don't have an exact measurement for but are a little over 1 km each. 13.3 km was what I covered so I wasn't far off my distance estimate. More normal conditions I might be closer to the hour for the same effort level.

Do you often run on feel? Pretty decent pace to be running around a field in the dark! Thanks for kicking off the challenge.

Unthought Known · 08-01-2021 3:38pm

Can I start with my 59:50 from last night? Current plan has a few more 7m easy runs this month so I'll see how close I can get.

Dubh Geannain · 08-01-2021 4:02pm

shotgunmcos wrote: »

Do you often run on feel? Pretty decent pace to be running around a field in the dark! Thanks for kicking off the challenge.

It was all I did until I finally got a smartwatch for Christmas last year (2019). I still do on easy runs.

spc78 · 08-01-2021 4:33pm

Starting and finishing underneath the local Clock Tower would seem to be the equivalent of selecting a downhill route for the TT?

shotgunmcos · 08-01-2021 4:42pm

Unthought Known wrote: »

Can I start with my 59:50 from last night? Current plan has a few more 7m easy runs this month so I'll see how close I can get.

:eek: Thats DAMN close already!! Almost unbelievably so..

So you didn't look at the watch at all, no alerts.. nothing? 59:50 purely on feel :eek:

Unthought Known · 08-01-2021 8:27pm

shotgunmcos wrote: »

:eek: Thats DAMN close already!! Almost unbelievably so..

So you didn't look at the watch at all, no alerts.. nothing? 59:50 purely on feel :eek:

Didn't look at all until I stopped the watch. Wasn't really a constant pace either, I just went with the hills etc.
It was pure luck as I was just running the route. I probably won't get that close again.

BeginnerRunner · 09-01-2021 1:44pm

There's absolutely no way you'll believe this.

But today, on my run, I opened my strava app at EXACTLY 30m 00s Like exactly...

...HOWEVER...

It was on my phone in a freetrain vest and it got stuck on the way out, so I spent a good 6-8 seconds longer than I anticipated getting it checked.

So I guess I lucked my way to 30m 00s and the actual intended time was probably closer to 29m 54s. But I'll take it regardless &#55358;&#56611;

Murph_D · 09-01-2021 5:28pm

https://www.strava.com/activities/4593090544

Had a stab at this today. I know from marathon training that the middle of the easy range, which is more or less my default easy pace, is about 5:41/km (9:09/mi). So I set out to hit this pace - main question was where to turn. After some some quick (and unfortunately wrong) mental arithmetic, I decided I had to do turn after about 5.4 kms. I had a fair idea where this would leave me but the maths were a bit off. Even though my run was bang on 5:41/km it was a bit long at 10.82 kms and came in at 1:01:25.

Had a feeling towards the end it was going to be long. In my defence it was a bit of a stressful run with the amount of walkers to avoid so I wasn't quite able to get into the zone (hence the bad maths).

shotgunmcos · 09-01-2021 9:53pm

http://strava.app.link/PXB8OaTMUcb

Gave this challenge a go tonight. Dark freezing fog and icy paths. Took ages just to warmup and settle into a mis aerobic effort. Figured it was around 5min kms give or take. Thing is, last time I did this route I used miles. I knew where 3 and 4 miles were so it was a decision where to turn. 3 miles too short, 4 too long.

Was going over the maths, when I had to step off a path after the bridge out of town. Nearly fell on my ass. Onto a grassy trail that felt like sharp stone. Decided to hop out onto the road altogether. Settled back to math. About 12k was probably it. No alerts so I had to figure it out.

More math. I know my stride length. After 5k tried to divide 1,000 by it and count steps! Before I had it figured out, realised I probably went too far. Picked up a little on the way home. 59:07 by Strava or 59:05 by Garmin. Brain fried!

skyblue46 · 09-01-2021 11:35pm

shotgunmcos wrote: »

http://strava.app.link/PXB8OaTMUcb

Gave this challenge a go tonight. Dark freezing fog and icy paths. Took ages just to warmup and settle into a mis aerobic effort. Figured it was around 5min kms give or take. Thing is, last time I did this route I used miles. I knew where 3 and 4 miles were so it was a decision where to turn. 3 miles too short, 4 too long.

Was going over the maths, when I had to step off a path after the bridge out of town. Nearly fell on my ass. Onto a grassy trail that felt like sharp stone. Decided to hop out onto the road altogether. Settled back to math. About 12k was probably it. No alerts so I had to figure it out.

More math. I know my stride length. After 5k tried to divide 1,000 by it and count steps! Before I had it figured out, realised I probably went too far. Picked up a little on the way home. 59:07 by Strava or 59:05 by Garmin. Brain fried!

That thing of stride counting is interesting but so difficult to get right. I did a run today with a sride length of 1m, cadence 175. 2 days ago a run with a stride length of 99cm and a cadence of 172. They sound quite close together but one is 9.11 pace, the other 9.26. That's 90 seconds over the hour...

Dudda · 10-01-2021 12:43pm

Dudda wrote: »

I understand now too. Didn't after the first post. Below is one route I run from strava 'matched runs'. The goal (for me) would be to run this and try and finish it bang on the hour without looking at the watch. That's going to be very hard. If I got within a minute I'd be happy as generally when you overthink things in a challenge like this you speed up or slow down to much.

So I gave this a go yesterday. The previous run which was under an hour back in October I had stopped to talk to a friend so knew I had to push it a tiny bit based on the last few runs just over the hour. When starting I set the watch to Heart Rate so couldn't see the time and pulled the long sleeve top over the watch. It's crazy how used to looking at the watch I am as I glanced at it so often but then remembered when it was covered. When I was stopping and pulled back the sleeve I couldn't see the time either as it was still on the Heart Rate screen so didn't see the time until I pressed stop. I was delighted. No way did I think I'd get within 17 seconds and Garmin says 16. I think it's pure luck as I had ice in areas and a bit of a headwind for 2km. I intend to do it over the next few Saturdays (need daylight for route so no chance midweek) to see how close they are but can't see myself getting closer than this.

Huzzah! · 10-01-2021 3:41pm

Tried this today. I didn't need to do any great mental arithmetic - I have a route that's approx 5 miles that takes me approximately an hour (yep, I'm very slow) at my easy pace.

It's the two "approximates" that caught me out. I can change the route up ever so slightly by changing the left turn I take off the North Road IN the PP. I think I actually knew when to stop, but pushed it on little bit further and ended up a good bit over. I did it in 1.01.10.

Plenty of January left to get it right

Thanks, Shotgun, for setting up the challenge.

shotgunmcos · 10-01-2021 4:20pm

Folks don't forget to include links for validation! Just a bit of fun but I'll do a 1-10 or more if we have them at the end of the month. Let's say if you link, you are in. If no link or evidence, you are not competing? What is competing anyway? Dive over to the other thread for that chat lol ðŸ˜†

A poll perhaps to sort positions if needed.

IF the appetite is there for a Feb challenge and beyond perhaps I'll suggest a points system and a league for a December double points challenge.

Won't make it any more complex than it needs to be. If its good and there are more than 1 suggestion for a Feb Challenge, a poll or most likes to do it. Ill keep all suggestions for other months. I already have a couple of ideas up my sleeve.

Only if the appetite is there. Happy to do the work.

shotgunmcos · 10-01-2021 4:59pm

Huzzah! wrote: »

Tried this today. I didn't need to do any great mental arithmetic - I have a route that's approx 5 miles that takes me approximately an hour (yep, I'm very slow) at my easy pace.

It's the two "approximates" that caught me out. I can change the route up ever so slightly by changing the left turn I take off the North Road IN the PP. I think I actually knew when to stop, but pushed it on little bit further and ended up a good bit over. I did it in 1.01.10.

Plenty of January left to get it right Thanks, Shotgun, for setting up the challenge.

Good first attempt. Just 70sec off and plenty of Jan left. As I said I'll keep it casual. As many attempts as you like and best effort for the finish.

Every time you rerun that route you now have a little challenge for yourself. That was the point.

Thanks for participating!

shotgunmcos · 10-01-2021 5:05pm

skyblue46 wrote: »

That thing of stride counting is interesting but so difficult to get right. I did a run today with a sride length of 1m, cadence 175. 2 days ago a run with a stride length of 99cm and a cadence of 172. They sound quite close together but one is 9.11 pace, the other 9.26. That's 90 seconds over the hour...

So instead of counting strides for long, you just need to figure out what cadence you are at. Try count that and 60 sec simultaneously to figure that out though!!

dna_leri · 10-01-2021 6:29pm

Had a go at this on my long run today.
I have a "30 min trail run" I regularly do, so it was well suited.
Did 2 laps yesterday in the ice in around 32 mins each but conditions were better today - not much ice but sloppy.
I did a calibration lap first - did not check the watch until the lap was done and hit 6.1K in 30:43 - not bad.
Picked it up a little on the next lap and clicked the watch as I went round but avoided the temptation to look - felt about right.
First half of the lap is fairly flat so picked it up again here as I knew I would fade on the hillier 2nd half.
Pushed a little on the final stretch as I thought I slowed too much.
Then checked the watch - 30:12 + 29:53 = 60:05 - better than I expected
I have not uploaded to Strava so I'll try again next week.
Helps to keep the solo long runs interesting.

January Running Challenge

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