My Two Passions

Data and Running. I've loved numbers at least since I got my first calculator watch in about 2nd or 3rd grade. Running is a more recent thing. We flirted a bit in college, we spent a summer together in St. George, and now we've been together pretty steady for a few years. I'm well aware that running makes up about 50% of my blog any more, but it also makes up about 50% of my discretionary activities (once you remove "the internet" in general). So, I've made some charts - not really even intending to post them here, but once I had them, I figured, I might as well ....



Over the years I've gotten gradually faster. 2010 was the year I was exclusively focused on completing a marathon, which means I was running long and slow. It's easier to run fast when you don't have to go as far, so that explains 2011 and 2012. The next several years were a pretty consistent pace, but with gradually increasing average distance. Then, over the last two years, I've been very pleased with my pace dropping significantly. The next chart shows this even more dramatically, I think.






This shows total mileage and average pace by month. Again you see lots of slow running in 2010, not much in 2011 and then a gradual build up in mileage at reasonably steady paces for the next 3 years. The big dips correspond to either brutally cold weather (winter of 13-14 and 14-15) or injury (probably stress fracture in my foot in April 2014). Or just laziness. The laziness has been happening less lately, and apparently it's paying off. From Jan 2012 to April 2015, my average pace improved by 0.13 seconds per month, or 1.5 seconds per mile per year. That seems to border on the edge of being random noise (no, I will not do any statistical tests for you). Since May 2015, however, my average pace a dropped like a rock. 3.8 seconds per mile per month doesn't sound like all that much, but if you keep that up for the better part of a year, well, you can see it on the graph.

When I go run, I just run. I don't have a fancy watch that calculates my pace as I run, and I don't even look at the stopwatch on my wrist while running; so I'm not consciously trying to run faster - this is just what has happened as I drag myself out of bed in the morning and go running. The lesson here is probably either that it takes a long time for consistent running to lead to speed increases, or perhaps that there is some threshold in mileage where improvement becomes more rapid.