Skip to main content

The lies our tech tell us...

Elevation Graphs
Perspective is important, but it can knock the wind out of your sails sometimes.

Last night's run was a fairly gentle 5k involving two laps following a path out to the end of my village, a country path along the perimeter to the other end of the village, and then back to the start. I've done it many times and, it's kind of my "comfort" run when I'm not really feeling it, because it has about half a dozen exit points where if it's not happening I can tell myself "just to the next branch and see how I feel..." It was was an invaluable trick during the early weeks of C25K and I still use it (although I seldom use the exits) from time to time.

Anyway, I am aware that there is a fairly gentle, but constant climb out of the village and along the old railway track followed by an equal downhill stretch back to the starting point.

On completion, I looked at the elevation profile on the Garmin app on my phone, and was presented with the top chart.

This morning, I was looking at it on the web version on my PC and got the bottom chart.

Last night I took a certain justification at feeling a bit "out of puff" at the end of it, today I'm like "Seriously? That's almost flat..."

My legs definitely believe the top chart more than the bottom one, even if they are representing the same run, just using a different scale.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy I ran 5k and in something around my average time, but there's nothing like seeing your efforts reduced to almost a flat line to take some of the sense of achievement away.

Anyway, my legs know what they achieved even if Garmin's website is trying to steal their thunder. From now on, if I have to look, I'm sticking to the mobile version...

Rest day today. See how I feel tomorrow before deciding on whether it's the 4k or 9k run of W6.
Run Graph

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

So, this happened...

Back at the start of March, after an 8 month lay-off, I picked up where I left off on week 2 and restarted my Couch to 5k journey.  I completed the plan on 7 May, running 5k in a time of 39:21. Today, just shy of 4 months later, I ran 10k non-stop for the first time in my life with a time of 1:19:36. It hadn't been my intention to run that far tonight; I wasn't due to make my first attempt at the distance until next week. Tonight I was aiming for 8.5-9k but it just felt right and I kept going and, well, the result is what it is... Feeling dead chuffed with my achievement, but I need to thank everyone on the forum for their encouragement and support at all points along this journey and (I'm sure) for the continued encouragement on what is still to come. I'm off to give my poor legs a well earned rub down...

One run, two more PBs

It's been that kind of week. At the start of the year I set myself the following goals for 2020: See how much lower I could take my 5k PB below 28:38 Get my 10k PB below one hour from 1:03:49 Get my 10 mile PB below 1:45:00 from 1:49:29 Get my Half Marathon PB below 2:30:00 from 2:30:23 I haven't really been doing anything specific towards reducing them, although on Monday , I did a sprint interval session and brought my 5k time down to 28:04. I was meant to be running the Edinburgh Kilomathon tomorrow, which is a 13.1k run through the city, stating at Ocean Terminal and ending in Murrayfield Stadium. Alas, due to CORVID-19, this event, like so many others is currently on hold. Since I wasn't going to be able to do that run, I decided to do my own thing today. Rather than run 13.1k, I decided to push on and go for 13.1 miles. The result; two more of my goals achieved. My 10 mile PB now stands at 1:44:54, and my Half Marathon PB is down to 2:21:21. My 10k PB...
Two years ago, having finally shaken of the tendonitis that had put paid to my first attempt at the Couch to 5k plan, I finally put all the excuses behind me, laced up my shoes that had been gathering dust since I unboxed them at Christmas, and started my running journey in earnest. There were a couple of "training runs" along the way, but I completed the programme in May 2019 and quickly moved on to JuJu's 10k plan which got me to 10k on 1 July that year. Before 2019 was finished, I'd get to 10 miles in October and my first HM in November and, by the time the bells rang in 2020, I'd clocked up over 500 miles. Then, 2020... Well, actually, from a running perspective, it turned out better than anticipated. Yes, OK, so the final parkrun was a year ago this weekend just past, and all the organised events I'd entered were cancelled or postponed until some indeterminate point in the future, but running, it seemed, was an escape and helped my cope with the whole...