How to Track Running Progress?
I’m quite happy with my chart for tracking progress towards my 2007 target of 3,000 cycle miles.
But now I want to draw up something similar for my running. The problem is that my running target is more speed related - I want to achieve a personal best of 40 minutes for 10k. This is going to take a lot of work, as it represents around an 8% improvement.
The best technique I know for improving run times (especially over such intermediate distances) is interval training. In the past, I’ve done one interval training session a week with 4-6 one-mile circuits, and one longer run of 6-12 miles, where the longer the distance, the less concerned I am about splits & overall time. This combination REALLY seems to improve fitness, speed and endurance.
HOWEVER . . . before I was just working up to achieve a level of fitness that would measure up to a simpler challenge - just completing my first sprint triathlon. This year my target’s more focused, and I have a definite pass / fail line.
So how do I track & measure progress in training to hit that 10k in 40 mins target?
Wow, this is a really interesting question. I am intrigued by this. I mean this is very similar to what I want to do… (take 1 hour off my Ironman run split)… and I have a similar training plan (base + intervals + long runs).
But the idea of tracking toward that goal.
Did you read GaryD’s article about fitness testing? It certainly touches on the big concept of measuring whether your training program is working to achieve the goals you want.
But the chart twist is definitely… well… a twist.
One idea that pops into my mind (maybe because I’m a software guy) is that you might be able to adapt a defect find/fixed ratio style chart to this… the idea being that you know you’re going to have runs that are slower than your goal, but the idea is to track how close to the goal you are getting at what rate, and to extrapolate an time when you should achieve your goal. (In software a Zero-Bug-Release, in your case, your target pace/distance.)