I have what may be a silly (or even ridiculous) question:
Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?
Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday).
It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rewarding, I lost a ton of weight, got into great cardio shape, and overall, arguably, it changed my life for the better.
But I never once cared about doing any of it quickly, and I still don't. It was always about the distance and the experience for me -- could I successfully run 26 miles? (and then enjoy the rewards of being able to eat a huge high-calorie meal guiltlessly afterwards ;)
It's still about the distance -- I love cycling these days and do it regularly with a lovely group of friends who also care about moving our legs and riding, say, 100 miles in a morning, which is a challenge. But so so many other cyclists on the road as so focused on both doing it and doing it FASTER.
I just don't really fully comprehend why so many people care so much about the clock, beating other people, etc. I know I'm not alone here, but I also know I'm in the minority, so I'd love to hear some perspective.
A lot of cyclists enjoy cycling above Zone 3. One time I went on a ride with just one person and he was max zone 3 while I was flipping between zone 4 & 5. I’ve gone cycling with people slower than me and it’s literally so boring. You either go at your natural pace and wait at a lot of stoplights for them to catch up or you pedal way less.
Speed also changes where you can go. Where I’m at, Cyclists will often meet up at 5am or 5:30 am and go on a 60km ride together before going home and getting ready for work. 25km/h and 30km/hr results in a difference of almost half an hour, which many people can’t afford to wait.
I’ve gone on century rides with a friend where we did 60km ride to the base of the mountain, then 1km elevation over 10km, then back down, and then back home totaling around 150km.
In summary, speed literally changes how long the ride takes by hours and what routes are available. You love the feeling of the wind and the beautiful views, and the longer you go the more interesting routes you can go on. Most probably have a time constraint, so higher speed = more interesting routes and more fun.
There’s also groups of people (mostly 50 and above) who are past their prime but still in the community. It’s nice to join them on bike rides during your rest days where you’re doing active recovery.
Cycling, and other endurance sports, are great in that you can go on group rides with people at different skill levels by pairing your fast days with their slow days and vice versa until you finally are able to catch up to them on their fast days.
> I’ve gone cycling with people slower than me and it’s literally so boring. You either go at your natural pace and wait at a lot of stoplights for them to catch up or you pedal way less.
Depending on the route (and your interest), when you’re way ahead you could perhaps cycle back to them (i.e., ride in the opposite direction), go behind them some, and then turn again and race past them. You wouldn’t have to stop or slow down then.
Some of us also engage in longer distances to find our limits. If you want a mostly chill crowd of runners, start running ultras.
Speaking of finding limits, this past weekend the backyard ultra record was broken again. It now stands at an amazing 108 hours (that's 4.5 days of running) and 450 miles:
Everyone was sure Ihor was going to win. Watching the race it didn't seem possible Harvey could do it again. And then, just like that, Ihor broke and Harvey recovered. And he won himself another Backyard.
People gain a natural satisfaction out of seeing progress in pretty much allof their pursuits, leisure or otherwise. Catching a bigger fish, closing a bigger deal, growing bigger muscles, cooking a more elaborate meal, etc.
I think this is it. It is indeed satisfying to see and feel progress. For me, that progress was being in less misery with each subsequent run (and losing weight). I can see how time improvement would give others that same satisfaction. Thanks!
You would care if you ran faster to begin with. But if you're running mostly recreationally, especially if you took it up without a competitive racing background, then I can appreciate why you wouldn't care about pace.
I was a competitive runner in college and it's actually the reason I won't run a marathon now. I got so burned out from that career that now I just run without a watch for fun, to de-stress. If I were to run a marathon I'd want to "do it properly" and not just finish it, and that would be way too stressful for me. Even now, when I run an annual turkey trot 5k, I can't help but race the people around me and go as fast as I can despite being terribly out of shape...
FWIW, this kind of comparison can become even more discouraging as you age. At 58, I'm pretty sure most of my PRs are behind me. The amount of training I'd have to do to get back down to my peak numbers is way more than I'm actually willing to do, and there's a high likelihood that such a high work rate would end in injury instead of success. Instead, I track how each run stacks up against others within some time period - a year, two years, five. A "two-year PR" feels pretty good. A "five-year PR" would be awesome, even if it's short of my all-time PR. I wish Garmin or Strava or whatever would support this kind of thing better.
I was competitive in a different sport in college and burned out. I couldn't bear to watch it on TV, Olympics etc. It took me nearly 10 years to start enjoying it again but now I love to practice with the muscle memory I still have when I get the chance.
I'm similar and have been struggling with this for a while. I ran a lot when I was younger and competed, recently got back into it and ran a marathon "properly", it went well but I got a bit fixated on the time and the whole experience was kinda stressful tbh.
I can't seem to just enjoy activities for what they are in the moment. I quickly start setting goals and being competitive. I'm also into bouldering, been doing that years but when I go to the gym I often find myself competing with others in my head (perhaps sub-consciously seeing them as a threat), I do my best not to show it but it's quite frustrating.
Currently trying to get my 10km time down running 40 mpw and here's my perspective:
general performance: I love the idea that if I pick up a random sport to play with friends or am in some emergency situation I know I can move faster
personal achievement: it feels great to break a new personal best
time constraints: I can hit my distance goals with less time spent during training if I'm moving faster, I only have about an hour to run on week days and getting more miles into that time is helpful
For me, time (and therefore speed) is a measure of fitness. I don’t care about beating others. I like to see that I am getting more fit than I previously was.
The notion of “could I run 26 miles?” is the same to me as “could I run 26 miles in 4 hours?”
Watching my running time get lower was probably 25% of the fun for me. Knowing the measurement and having a concrete goal, and surpassing it, is a joyous process.
To be clear, it wasn't much about beating other people except where I knew I was within reach of beating them. The ultimate goal was continuously getting my personal best.
> Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?
Qualifying times and cutoffs are a thing, so that's it for some people. For others, it's about having goals, or even just measuring progress. You might find the running "satisfying" and "rewarding" in itself, but for many that's not the case. For them, the satisfaction is not in running but in having run, and part of that is in the numbers. Times go down, heart rates go down, weights go down, whatever. Without goals and metrics, there's nothing but the grind.
And yeah, some people are just competitive. But there's nothing wrong with that either. People are just motivated different ways.
Running fast and with high intensity is fun.
But getting faster over a same distance is a lot harder than just improving endurance to run longer distances, hence why most amateurs progress toward longer distances rather than better 5 or 10k PRs.
Years and years ago I saw a TV show about the Boston Marathon.
One of the people they interviewed was the last runner to finish. A physician, I would guess around 45 to 50. It was already dark out! So he was not fast, maybe not much more than a walking pace, but he seemed happy so nothing to complain about.
The original book on Aerobics, the author emphasized you can get all the aerobic exercise you need at an ordinary walking pace if you take enough time. Especially important for older people and the overweight.
The obsession with "20 minutes of vigorous exercise" may well do more harm than good.
Why did you care about your distance? What's so special about going farther and farther every time until you hit some arbitrary goal like 26.2 miles? Beating your last time is fine and rewarding, and you can choose your next goal to be whatever you want.
This was my thought too. It's just a matter of picking an arbitrary metric and shooting for it, given constraints that probably don't matter.
I like hiking, and enjoy challenging myself. Sometimes I shoot for my longest distance ever, sometimes I shoot for more technicality, sometimes it's just raw elevation gain over a shorter distance, sometimes it's all of them. I rarely shoot for time, my constraint at that level is typically getting the thing done without having to camp out for the night, but I could just as well do that. I often shoot for time over elevation and distance with road cycling though.
I should probably clarify -- I don't really care about distance that much. I care about the experience, the joy of being outside, and the benefits of getting cardio exercise. In general, I find that decent distance at a reasonable pace is a great way to spend a few hours. I just don't care about how long it takes or doing it faster.
The people who care about speed talk about going faster, while the people who don't care about speed don't talk about it, rather than talking about not caring about it.
That would not be out of place in a Monty Python sketch. Forums full of people endlessly debating the latest gadgets and techniques for not getting faster.
Why run if you don’t care about the speed? If I don’t care about the speed and just want to cover a certain distance to enjoy myself outdoors, I’ll walk.
I have been sitting on this for a couple of days because I didn't want to react too quickly.
One word: Craft.
People like their craft. People wish to hone and refine. Become better. Find themselves with some level of mastery.
Speed is inherently a part of the craft of running over any distance. It's the sign you're doing it well. Your diet is working. Your stride and gait are optimal.
(Almost) anyone can run. Our ancestors were selected for it. The amount of time you do it in is the only reasonable discriminant of performance when the distance is fixed.
Why learn to paint a painting? Why learn to play a musical instrument in time, in tune, and in key? Why learn to write formal mathematical proofs? Why learn to tell a joke?
People who run faster are better at running. Why not want to be as good at running as you can be?
You can only increase distance so much before something breaks. I think it's weird that you have such a strong opinion about this. Clearly you care about distance more but speed is another performance measure that is just as important.
Also if we are purely talking about health, doing 26 mile runs regularly is not healthy.
I don't know that I have a strong opinion on this. I'm just curious why such a large majority of people are so focused on speed. I don't generally care about increasing distance either -- I'm just focused on general health and the enjoyment of the experience more than how fast I do the thing. A long bike ride with friends at a fast-enough-to-get-exercise pace is delightful. I never care about how long it takes us to do it.
Absolutely nothing beats the feeling of being in a sprint race and reeling someone in and then overtaking.
I used to do a lot of 200m and the second leg of the 4x100 relay as a late teenager and I still get goosebumps decades later thinking back to some overtakes. Being faster than someone when you are both going at full clip is absolutely exhilarating. I genuinely have goose bumps now just writing this - your body doing what it was supposed to do, no thinking just doing something physically primal, the drama of the race itself, and then just blasting past someone and putting clear air between you and them. What a buzz. Watching the video in the article brought a lot of that feeling back.
These days I don't do much sprinting but it is still fun to overtake people when out on a casual 5 or 10k, even if the other person doesn't know you are racing them! :)
Distance makes little sense to me as a challenge, at least not without also a speed requirement. Once you get beyond a certain point of fitness running a marathon is trivial unless you care about your pace. To challenge myself in distance I would need to run more hours than I think is fun (12+ hours), and honestly that is more of a time challenge than a distance challenge.
So the reason I go for speed is that it is a good way to challenge myself. Plus running fast is fun.
> Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?
People want to know their health and measure its improvement.
Speed is a proxy measurement for fitness. If there is another way to measure the health improvements of exercise directly comparable among groups, I'm not aware of it. Once a runner accomplishes the feat of running a certain distance, and doing it repeatably, the runner can either go longer distance or faster over the same distance.
Yes, you can go get a VO2 max test, RMR analysis, or body comp assessment, but those are specialty services costing money and requiring professional evaluation. Not something most people can have done every weekend.
As a recreational runner I suppose my primary goals are to maximize health benefits and minimize injury and long term wear-and-tare. My absolute pace doesn't really matter, I just want to see it improve over time.
I know I have terrible running form, but I kind of view it as not owning a fancy road bike. Sure, I'm slower on my old mtn bike, but I'm burning more calories. Now I'm wondering if that's a bad philosophy for running, after watching videos of good runners I'm amazed how smooth they are. All my bouncing up and down has got to be hard on my suspension, and new struts are expensive.
Well, some people are competitive about distance and some people are competitive about speed. Also there are theories about slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers that lead some people to do better with endurance sports and some to do better with sprinting, so there may be a natural bias involved.
However, as an ex-competitive swimmer who specialized in the sprint events, going fast is just fun, and training so you can go faster increases the fun. This can be a little dangerous on a bicycle however, caution is advised, especially as one grows older and injuries take longer to heal.
> I just don't really fully comprehend why so many people care so much about the clock, beating other people, etc.
If the only reason for progression you can think of is to beat other people, and you have no desire to beat other people, how did you progress to running marathon distances while other people haven't? Presumably the was a time when you couldn't run a complete marathon, no?
I’m currently running 25mpw, and have maxed out my free time available per week (3 children). The only way I can do more distance
And experience more woods is by running faster :)
If I weren’t time constrained I’d def be happy continuing to jog, I feel like slower speeds are less injury prone for myself
Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?
I’m a so-so runner - I can place in AG at local races, but will never be an elite runner. But the challenge of placing, going faster than friends, or faster than previous times, is part of the fun.
As people have said, once you know that you can run the distance, why not see whether you can run it faster? Having said that, I never timed the runs I did by myself or with friends.
It's well debatable whether it's an improvement per se but merely a choice of competing on an arbitrary metric. It's fine if that's what you want but it's also very much fine to question that.
There's nothing inherent in being faster than others (or your earlier self) that would dictate speed being the obvious primary metric. Sure, it's an easy choice to measure and thus popular but on the other hand if you do want to care about speed it's mostly a losing proposition: there are always people faster than you (so you'll keep losing to them over and over or you'll learn not to care) and you can only ever get up to a certain speed that's physiologically possible with your body.
Speed can be a useful indicator of your fitness, though, much like fuel consumption is a useful indicator for whether your car is mechanically fit. But focusing heavily or primarily on speed is a choice which begs the question "why".
I love having an honest measure of performance. Of course I'm slowly declining, but seeing it in hard numbers is somehow reassuring. In every other part of life, success is bound up in stories and memories and political measures of position. On the track, I know exactly where I stand. It's also a lot of fun. There's a tactical element to middle-distance running and it's very fulfilling to pull of a (relatively) good race. And always an incredibly friendly sport that brings together people from all walks of life. Millionaires racing high school kids, lawyers vs labourers - none of the usual markers of status matter on the track. I'm sure other sports are similar but this is the one I do.
Other than track (where times are very important), I absolutely love cross country. Not sure about elsewhere, but in the UK it's still a big deal. The leagues are 100% amateur, no flashy medals or goody bags, just pure competitive running. Running is usually an individual sport but cross-country is very much a team thing. The time doesn't matter, the distance doesn't matter (it's usually not more than about 10k), but it's incredibly competitive and the camaraderie is great. The fact that it takes an enormous effort and is generally cold, wet and uncomfortable makes it all the more satisfying.
We all compare ourselves upwards. Related, you might wonder why a strong cyclist bothers buying a $10k bike. After all, they'd be faster than most people on even the cheapest bike! But they start riding with others, and their peers are faster than them. Their peers have nicer bikes which they come to appreciate / desire. They spend lots of time USING the bicycle, so the "investment" makes more sense. And so on.
I’m not a fit person but when I see someone running like that (the Freeze in the video) it just looks so beautiful to me. Seeing a human body functioning at such a high performance, thinking about how many hours and how much effort that guy went through to get to where he is, I just feel like tapping him on the back and saying “great job dude”. It’s a bit like when I see some great feat of engineering, like a big bridge or a massive building or a nuclear reactor or something like that. It just makes me wonder how awesome and amazing humanity is.
Conversely, this is also why I get so annoyed when I hear people say things like “I like dogs more than humans.” I mean come on just look around you at the wonder that is modern society. Sure there are problems sometimes but to think that we can keep this extremely complex system, entirely in parallel and distributed, from degrading into total caos is just incredible.
> I get so annoyed when I hear people say things like “I like dogs more than humans.”
Perhaps focusing on dogs awesome qualities may help you not getting annoyed. You seems to value a lot complex systems, imagination and willpower and yeah some humans are great at that. Most dogs beat us flat on group cohesion, kindness and perseverance. People value that, too.
I love dogs; the “one or the other” attitude comes from them, not me. The comparison is absurd in my opinion.
And by the way you could replace it with cats, or pets in general, the point is the same. I just think it is a very shallow perspective to look down on humanity like that. To me it signals that the person is not really looking very deep into things.
The really obvious thing, if you watch the Freeze "best of" clip, is that most people have terrible running form. In most cases, I suspect I could tell who has a chance and who doesn't simply by looking at one stride from each competitor.
There are so many factors that go into biomechanics--I struggle to improve my own running form--but it's interesting to me that it comes together in such an obvious-at-a-glance factor as "looks fast."
In the Freeze video clip from TFA, the guy he's racing looks over his shoulder towards the end too. Its pretty hard to run forward with any velocity when looking backwards. That maneuver alone probably cost him a second, maybe more.
>height and weight, fast- and slow-twitch muscle mass, cardiovascular conditioning, flexibility and elasticity, and probably more.
When we try to figure out how to measure someones speed (say to compare Usain Bolt to another high quality sprinter) we will look at factors like height, stride length and strength. But in terms of all the factors that need to be measured to describe the function of someones running speed we also have to think of things like the speed of gravity, how many legs they have, the viscosity of air etc. Usain Bolt can't change any of these features of course so if he wants to run 3% faster he might need to be 3x as strong as another runner - since that is one of the few parameters in the equation he can influence.
I think this explains the distribution of the top speed runners performances. The olympic 100m champion won in 2021 with a time of 9.80 and a good teenager might run a time of 10.70. If you saw this on a running track as the olympic champion would cross the line when the amateur was about 93 meters into the race. That's pretty close when you consider that one runner is a professional that might be able to lift weights 3x as heavy as the teenager, they have been training for years and years with professional help and they execute the race with superior form.
This is something that I like to remember when we try to compare and measure peoples skills and how they are likely distributed in society.
Considering that 10.71 seconds is the all time Scottish national under-17 male record, I would say 10.70 would be a very good time. A one-in-a-million level of sprinting ability.
It is a good time and I gave the example of a teenager since they will likely be less physically developed, weaker and less experienced than a pro. In a place where sprinting is popular like in the US 10.70 is a pretty achievable for someone who spends time at the sport.
After a quick google, the men's Scottish 100m record was set in 1980 and has not been broken since so I would think that they do not devote a lot of attention to sprinting, and in 2022 only 4 runners broke 11 seconds in the 100m championships final.
That seems, at least to me, a pretty egalitarian and optimistic view. I mean, the teenager is basically as good as the Olympian in your example, qualitatively. If the peak of skill is only 10% higher than a talented amateur with some training, we should probably have a more equal income distribution.
My take is that the author is focusing too much on "all factors", and the reason for the distribution is that the people who 1) realize they are "good" and 2) want to improve, end up putting in more training time to get even better, which leads to a natural gap in measured ability.
Consistency may be the largest factor in peak performance, whether physical or mental. Sure, consistency alone won't get you to the Olympics sprints if you're 4'11" or your neurons don't fire as fast as the next person's or you are prone to injury, but you certainly won't be setting the 100m world record (in the modern era) if you didn't already put in years of training, day after day, whether you were feeling 100% or not.
At the professional level, you get paired up with coaches, you get compensated (maybe), you are definitely obsessed enough to be training so hard. Of course there's a gap, and it makes me wonder just how linear the distribution would be if every able-bodied person trained maximally and effectively.
i think the "all factors" comes into play at a higher level than the consistency factor. you need the consistency to become _really good_ and with consistency you could probably become _rather good_ (lacking any blockers), but to become the very best in a competitive environment you need "all factors" to line up after consistency has already been applied.
"all factors" lining up without the consistency makes you a natural talent that's quick to pick up the basics but then doesn't go anywhere.
I've often wondered how exactly I might increase my sprint speed, in terms of form. I've never met a sprint trainer, so all I can do is just try to naturally sprint, but I'm clearly not very fast and never was. But somehow I don't even know what the fundamentals are. What do you need to do to be fast?
The other amazing thing is that marathon runners seem to be faster than I can sprint, and I really don't get how they maintain it. If I could just sprint that speed, I would be going pretty fast.
I was a coach once. There are two mistakes where most people can benefit a lot if they fix them. They are somewhat connected.
1) Foot strike to far in the front as in [1] and [2]. This mostly happens because people want to run fast, and therefore take longer steps. It is very counterproductive though. A longer steps lowers your center of gravity, and because the foot strikes the ground very far in front of the COG, you need to lift your COG before you can do the next step. This is visible in the video of the article as well. The amateurs have a much larger vertical movement of their heads and torsos than the Freeze.
2) Insufficient leg extension at the end of the ground contact as in [3] and [4]. There are two reasons for that. The first one is connected to the point above. If you keep the COG very low, you are forced to bend the hip and the knee while you move your torso over your foot. It's very hard to extend hip and knee after that, so many people just lift the leg instead of pushing all the way through. The second reason is mobility. Sitting all day shortens the hip flexor muscles (M. iliopsoas). Stretching them helps a lot.
Many of the people in the video are also starting quite fast and get considerably slower over the course of those 160m. Tiredness might be an important factor there.
1 rings super true to me - the most counter-intuitive thing to me in distance running was to take more steps to go faster. 180-190rpm is usually where I’m at for 2:55ish marathon times, whereas when I started, I thought I needed to be at like, 160, but with a longer stride distance.
It’s more interesting because I sprint “properly”, but my brain just flipped when I started going further.
As someone else mentioned, there’s plenty on YouTube to help re form. That said, I’m helping my elementary aged kids improve their middle distance running (I’m no sprinter, so I can’t help there) and the two basic tips I’ve been using to help them:
- practice barefoot occasionally, and pay attention to how your form changes. You’re more likely to just naturally land on your forefoot when you’ve no shoes on. Now try and maintain that when you put shoes on.
- move your legs faster. Seems simple and obvious, but most people when they try to run faster don’t actually move their legs faster. They extend their stride (more likely to increase heel strike) and try to drive more acceleration off each push. You’re training for power, not speed. Focus on a higher cadence, which will probably mean you need to make a conscious effort to take what feel like _smaller_ steps.
I would add that “barefoot” means, literally “barefoot”. I had convinced myself that “barefoot shoes” would be sufficiently the same because I was running outdoors and didn’t have the guts to do actual barefoot. I recently bought a new Assault AirRunner (curved motorless / manual treadmill) and run on it actually barefoot. The difference in my running form and sudden introduction of new muscle soreness makes clear how even barefoot shoes affect form.
Off-topic side note/rant: it is incredibly annoying how the Apple Watch becomes wildly inaccurate when on treadmills. GymKit has been out for years and has no - zero! - uptake among home treadmills and even shockingly low among commercial treadmills. And shame on Assault Fitness for creating an expensive, commercial level manual treadmills with an app that can see the data via Bluetooth from the treadmill, and failed to integrate HealthKit to sync the data. Wild decisions.
As they say on other forums, DYEL bro? [do you even lift :)]
Squats, deadlifts, and cleans will help your explosive power a lot; for this, your probably want low reps, high weight, and long recoveries. If you can periodically go to a track and run 6-10x100m ‘all out’ w/ 4-5 mins rest, that would be good too.
Best advice -- find a local running club that does track workouts. The group dynamics will be incredibly helpful as a baseline. Sprinting is big on strength low on endurance, that's why you see muscular sprinters and lean 5k+ runners.
IMHO the biggest factor at being fast is training fast and understanding this is a multi-year effort not a quick fix. Odds are you will need to change slightly your foot strike pattern, this is a long term project, not something that's done in a month.
Some good advice here. The marathon runner question is a potential enlightening one. Distance running, done well, is not about continuously producing thrust like some kind of human rocketship. It's just as much about learning to leak as little energy as possible, using techniques like those Lukas_Skywalker outlined. So you get up to speed and then just lose as little of it as possible for 26.2 miles.
You need a sprint specific coach. Most coaches and clubs you’ll find start at middle distance and go up in distances they train. While you’ll learn basic drills that sprinters also do, the details, cues, form etc will be different, and the training program will be very different. It will involve a lot more plyometrics, more drills, and shorter distances. So you’ll see improvements if you’ve never run before training for mid distance+, but to eke out maximal sprint performance from form, you’ll plateau and also have poor sprinting mechanics. Also, I see some advice about lifting weights. Great adjunct to sprinting, but you need to learn proper sprint mechanics and training to see carryover (see: the number of big number lifters who can’t sprint worth crap v. 14 y/os who can dust them and have never seen a weight but have trained formally).
I'm probably overthinking this, but the article makes me think about the infamous 10x programmer. If, as seems reasonable, the ability to program successfully depends on a number of factors (raw brain power, spacial reasoning, education, ability to concentrate for long periods, etc) and these factors follow a similar gaussian distribution, then 10x doesn't really seem that out of line for the best vs average programmers.
I don't know what point this article is trying to make, but I guess the author doesn't know much about running since he conflates sprinting and long distance running.
Long distance running is an endurance sport, sprinting is more aking to a very specific application of power/strength training. The stride isn't event the same.
Before doing any kind of data analysis, it's worth considering if your datapoints are even refering to the same thing.
Readit News
Why do recreational distance runners care about speed so much?
Background: I went through a phase of long-distance recreational running - I ran lots of half-marathons, marathons, and even the Disney Goofy Challenge for a few years (half marathon on Saturday, full marathon on Sunday).
It was all fun! Training was satisfying, the running itself was tough but rewarding, I lost a ton of weight, got into great cardio shape, and overall, arguably, it changed my life for the better.
But I never once cared about doing any of it quickly, and I still don't. It was always about the distance and the experience for me -- could I successfully run 26 miles? (and then enjoy the rewards of being able to eat a huge high-calorie meal guiltlessly afterwards ;)
It's still about the distance -- I love cycling these days and do it regularly with a lovely group of friends who also care about moving our legs and riding, say, 100 miles in a morning, which is a challenge. But so so many other cyclists on the road as so focused on both doing it and doing it FASTER.
I just don't really fully comprehend why so many people care so much about the clock, beating other people, etc. I know I'm not alone here, but I also know I'm in the minority, so I'd love to hear some perspective.
Speed also changes where you can go. Where I’m at, Cyclists will often meet up at 5am or 5:30 am and go on a 60km ride together before going home and getting ready for work. 25km/h and 30km/hr results in a difference of almost half an hour, which many people can’t afford to wait.
I’ve gone on century rides with a friend where we did 60km ride to the base of the mountain, then 1km elevation over 10km, then back down, and then back home totaling around 150km.
In summary, speed literally changes how long the ride takes by hours and what routes are available. You love the feeling of the wind and the beautiful views, and the longer you go the more interesting routes you can go on. Most probably have a time constraint, so higher speed = more interesting routes and more fun.
There’s also groups of people (mostly 50 and above) who are past their prime but still in the community. It’s nice to join them on bike rides during your rest days where you’re doing active recovery.
Cycling, and other endurance sports, are great in that you can go on group rides with people at different skill levels by pairing your fast days with their slow days and vice versa until you finally are able to catch up to them on their fast days.
Depending on the route (and your interest), when you’re way ahead you could perhaps cycle back to them (i.e., ride in the opposite direction), go behind them some, and then turn again and race past them. You wouldn’t have to stop or slow down then.
Some of us to achieve our PB. Others to BQ:
https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify
Some of us also engage in longer distances to find our limits. If you want a mostly chill crowd of runners, start running ultras.
Speaking of finding limits, this past weekend the backyard ultra record was broken again. It now stands at an amazing 108 hours (that's 4.5 days of running) and 450 miles:
https://backyardultra.com/
Read Laz'[1] updates for the final 5 laps:
https://backyardultra.com/hours-103-108/
Everyone was sure Ihor was going to win. Watching the race it didn't seem possible Harvey could do it again. And then, just like that, Ihor broke and Harvey recovered. And he won himself another Backyard.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Lake
BQ = something qualify?
ultra = ultramarathons, races longer than 42.195 km / 26 mi
I was a competitive runner in college and it's actually the reason I won't run a marathon now. I got so burned out from that career that now I just run without a watch for fun, to de-stress. If I were to run a marathon I'd want to "do it properly" and not just finish it, and that would be way too stressful for me. Even now, when I run an annual turkey trot 5k, I can't help but race the people around me and go as fast as I can despite being terribly out of shape...
I can't seem to just enjoy activities for what they are in the moment. I quickly start setting goals and being competitive. I'm also into bouldering, been doing that years but when I go to the gym I often find myself competing with others in my head (perhaps sub-consciously seeing them as a threat), I do my best not to show it but it's quite frustrating.
general performance: I love the idea that if I pick up a random sport to play with friends or am in some emergency situation I know I can move faster
personal achievement: it feels great to break a new personal best
time constraints: I can hit my distance goals with less time spent during training if I'm moving faster, I only have about an hour to run on week days and getting more miles into that time is helpful
The notion of “could I run 26 miles?” is the same to me as “could I run 26 miles in 4 hours?”
To be clear, it wasn't much about beating other people except where I knew I was within reach of beating them. The ultimate goal was continuously getting my personal best.
Qualifying times and cutoffs are a thing, so that's it for some people. For others, it's about having goals, or even just measuring progress. You might find the running "satisfying" and "rewarding" in itself, but for many that's not the case. For them, the satisfaction is not in running but in having run, and part of that is in the numbers. Times go down, heart rates go down, weights go down, whatever. Without goals and metrics, there's nothing but the grind.
And yeah, some people are just competitive. But there's nothing wrong with that either. People are just motivated different ways.
edit: missing word
One of the people they interviewed was the last runner to finish. A physician, I would guess around 45 to 50. It was already dark out! So he was not fast, maybe not much more than a walking pace, but he seemed happy so nothing to complain about.
The original book on Aerobics, the author emphasized you can get all the aerobic exercise you need at an ordinary walking pace if you take enough time. Especially important for older people and the overweight.
The obsession with "20 minutes of vigorous exercise" may well do more harm than good.
I like hiking, and enjoy challenging myself. Sometimes I shoot for my longest distance ever, sometimes I shoot for more technicality, sometimes it's just raw elevation gain over a shorter distance, sometimes it's all of them. I rarely shoot for time, my constraint at that level is typically getting the thing done without having to camp out for the night, but I could just as well do that. I often shoot for time over elevation and distance with road cycling though.
The people who care about speed talk about going faster, while the people who don't care about speed don't talk about it, rather than talking about not caring about it.
(Edit: typo)
One word: Craft.
People like their craft. People wish to hone and refine. Become better. Find themselves with some level of mastery.
Speed is inherently a part of the craft of running over any distance. It's the sign you're doing it well. Your diet is working. Your stride and gait are optimal.
(Almost) anyone can run. Our ancestors were selected for it. The amount of time you do it in is the only reasonable discriminant of performance when the distance is fixed.
Why learn to paint a painting? Why learn to play a musical instrument in time, in tune, and in key? Why learn to write formal mathematical proofs? Why learn to tell a joke?
People who run faster are better at running. Why not want to be as good at running as you can be?
Also if we are purely talking about health, doing 26 mile runs regularly is not healthy.
I used to do a lot of 200m and the second leg of the 4x100 relay as a late teenager and I still get goosebumps decades later thinking back to some overtakes. Being faster than someone when you are both going at full clip is absolutely exhilarating. I genuinely have goose bumps now just writing this - your body doing what it was supposed to do, no thinking just doing something physically primal, the drama of the race itself, and then just blasting past someone and putting clear air between you and them. What a buzz. Watching the video in the article brought a lot of that feeling back.
These days I don't do much sprinting but it is still fun to overtake people when out on a casual 5 or 10k, even if the other person doesn't know you are racing them! :)
So the reason I go for speed is that it is a good way to challenge myself. Plus running fast is fun.
People want to know their health and measure its improvement.
Speed is a proxy measurement for fitness. If there is another way to measure the health improvements of exercise directly comparable among groups, I'm not aware of it. Once a runner accomplishes the feat of running a certain distance, and doing it repeatably, the runner can either go longer distance or faster over the same distance.
Yes, you can go get a VO2 max test, RMR analysis, or body comp assessment, but those are specialty services costing money and requiring professional evaluation. Not something most people can have done every weekend.
I know I have terrible running form, but I kind of view it as not owning a fancy road bike. Sure, I'm slower on my old mtn bike, but I'm burning more calories. Now I'm wondering if that's a bad philosophy for running, after watching videos of good runners I'm amazed how smooth they are. All my bouncing up and down has got to be hard on my suspension, and new struts are expensive.
However, as an ex-competitive swimmer who specialized in the sprint events, going fast is just fun, and training so you can go faster increases the fun. This can be a little dangerous on a bicycle however, caution is advised, especially as one grows older and injuries take longer to heal.
If the only reason for progression you can think of is to beat other people, and you have no desire to beat other people, how did you progress to running marathon distances while other people haven't? Presumably the was a time when you couldn't run a complete marathon, no?
If I weren’t time constrained I’d def be happy continuing to jog, I feel like slower speeds are less injury prone for myself
I’m a so-so runner - I can place in AG at local races, but will never be an elite runner. But the challenge of placing, going faster than friends, or faster than previous times, is part of the fun.
There's nothing inherent in being faster than others (or your earlier self) that would dictate speed being the obvious primary metric. Sure, it's an easy choice to measure and thus popular but on the other hand if you do want to care about speed it's mostly a losing proposition: there are always people faster than you (so you'll keep losing to them over and over or you'll learn not to care) and you can only ever get up to a certain speed that's physiologically possible with your body.
Speed can be a useful indicator of your fitness, though, much like fuel consumption is a useful indicator for whether your car is mechanically fit. But focusing heavily or primarily on speed is a choice which begs the question "why".
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Other than track (where times are very important), I absolutely love cross country. Not sure about elsewhere, but in the UK it's still a big deal. The leagues are 100% amateur, no flashy medals or goody bags, just pure competitive running. Running is usually an individual sport but cross-country is very much a team thing. The time doesn't matter, the distance doesn't matter (it's usually not more than about 10k), but it's incredibly competitive and the camaraderie is great. The fact that it takes an enormous effort and is generally cold, wet and uncomfortable makes it all the more satisfying.
Conversely, this is also why I get so annoyed when I hear people say things like “I like dogs more than humans.” I mean come on just look around you at the wonder that is modern society. Sure there are problems sometimes but to think that we can keep this extremely complex system, entirely in parallel and distributed, from degrading into total caos is just incredible.
Perhaps focusing on dogs awesome qualities may help you not getting annoyed. You seems to value a lot complex systems, imagination and willpower and yeah some humans are great at that. Most dogs beat us flat on group cohesion, kindness and perseverance. People value that, too.
And by the way you could replace it with cats, or pets in general, the point is the same. I just think it is a very shallow perspective to look down on humanity like that. To me it signals that the person is not really looking very deep into things.
There are so many factors that go into biomechanics--I struggle to improve my own running form--but it's interesting to me that it comes together in such an obvious-at-a-glance factor as "looks fast."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09MiWO8uDfc
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ZpCjEn_lc>
When we try to figure out how to measure someones speed (say to compare Usain Bolt to another high quality sprinter) we will look at factors like height, stride length and strength. But in terms of all the factors that need to be measured to describe the function of someones running speed we also have to think of things like the speed of gravity, how many legs they have, the viscosity of air etc. Usain Bolt can't change any of these features of course so if he wants to run 3% faster he might need to be 3x as strong as another runner - since that is one of the few parameters in the equation he can influence.
I think this explains the distribution of the top speed runners performances. The olympic 100m champion won in 2021 with a time of 9.80 and a good teenager might run a time of 10.70. If you saw this on a running track as the olympic champion would cross the line when the amateur was about 93 meters into the race. That's pretty close when you consider that one runner is a professional that might be able to lift weights 3x as heavy as the teenager, they have been training for years and years with professional help and they execute the race with superior form.
This is something that I like to remember when we try to compare and measure peoples skills and how they are likely distributed in society.
Considering that 10.71 seconds is the all time Scottish national under-17 male record, I would say 10.70 would be a very good time. A one-in-a-million level of sprinting ability.
After a quick google, the men's Scottish 100m record was set in 1980 and has not been broken since so I would think that they do not devote a lot of attention to sprinting, and in 2022 only 4 runners broke 11 seconds in the 100m championships final.
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Consistency may be the largest factor in peak performance, whether physical or mental. Sure, consistency alone won't get you to the Olympics sprints if you're 4'11" or your neurons don't fire as fast as the next person's or you are prone to injury, but you certainly won't be setting the 100m world record (in the modern era) if you didn't already put in years of training, day after day, whether you were feeling 100% or not.
At the professional level, you get paired up with coaches, you get compensated (maybe), you are definitely obsessed enough to be training so hard. Of course there's a gap, and it makes me wonder just how linear the distribution would be if every able-bodied person trained maximally and effectively.
"all factors" lining up without the consistency makes you a natural talent that's quick to pick up the basics but then doesn't go anywhere.
The other amazing thing is that marathon runners seem to be faster than I can sprint, and I really don't get how they maintain it. If I could just sprint that speed, I would be going pretty fast.
1) Foot strike to far in the front as in [1] and [2]. This mostly happens because people want to run fast, and therefore take longer steps. It is very counterproductive though. A longer steps lowers your center of gravity, and because the foot strikes the ground very far in front of the COG, you need to lift your COG before you can do the next step. This is visible in the video of the article as well. The amateurs have a much larger vertical movement of their heads and torsos than the Freeze.
2) Insufficient leg extension at the end of the ground contact as in [3] and [4]. There are two reasons for that. The first one is connected to the point above. If you keep the COG very low, you are forced to bend the hip and the knee while you move your torso over your foot. It's very hard to extend hip and knee after that, so many people just lift the leg instead of pushing all the way through. The second reason is mobility. Sitting all day shortens the hip flexor muscles (M. iliopsoas). Stretching them helps a lot.
Many of the people in the video are also starting quite fast and get considerably slower over the course of those 160m. Tiredness might be an important factor there.
[1] Bolt, foot strike: https://imgur.com/a/QOQaEX2
[2] Amateur, foot strike: https://imgur.com/a/Pmiijgx
[3] Bolt, leg extension: https://imgur.com/a/mRCq7uc
[4] Amateur, leg extension: https://imgur.com/a/cxzMkEi
It’s more interesting because I sprint “properly”, but my brain just flipped when I started going further.
it seems link [3] with Bolt's extension is broken
- practice barefoot occasionally, and pay attention to how your form changes. You’re more likely to just naturally land on your forefoot when you’ve no shoes on. Now try and maintain that when you put shoes on.
- move your legs faster. Seems simple and obvious, but most people when they try to run faster don’t actually move their legs faster. They extend their stride (more likely to increase heel strike) and try to drive more acceleration off each push. You’re training for power, not speed. Focus on a higher cadence, which will probably mean you need to make a conscious effort to take what feel like _smaller_ steps.
I would add that “barefoot” means, literally “barefoot”. I had convinced myself that “barefoot shoes” would be sufficiently the same because I was running outdoors and didn’t have the guts to do actual barefoot. I recently bought a new Assault AirRunner (curved motorless / manual treadmill) and run on it actually barefoot. The difference in my running form and sudden introduction of new muscle soreness makes clear how even barefoot shoes affect form.
Off-topic side note/rant: it is incredibly annoying how the Apple Watch becomes wildly inaccurate when on treadmills. GymKit has been out for years and has no - zero! - uptake among home treadmills and even shockingly low among commercial treadmills. And shame on Assault Fitness for creating an expensive, commercial level manual treadmills with an app that can see the data via Bluetooth from the treadmill, and failed to integrate HealthKit to sync the data. Wild decisions.
And make sure to ease yourself into it gradually. Easy to go into it full-pelt and do lasting damage to things like your Achilles and knees.
Squats, deadlifts, and cleans will help your explosive power a lot; for this, your probably want low reps, high weight, and long recoveries. If you can periodically go to a track and run 6-10x100m ‘all out’ w/ 4-5 mins rest, that would be good too.
For an example lifting plan: https://www.stack.com/a/sprinter-workout-program/
IMHO the biggest factor at being fast is training fast and understanding this is a multi-year effort not a quick fix. Odds are you will need to change slightly your foot strike pattern, this is a long term project, not something that's done in a month.
Good luck.
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Before doing any kind of data analysis, it's worth considering if your datapoints are even refering to the same thing.