Arbitrary numbers play a factor in all of our lives in many ways. Our ‘Big’ Birthdays for example, our 1st, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 40th and 60th years, or Wedding Anniversaries that inform friends and family as to the expense of the gift, be it paper or diamond!
They are also apparent in other areas of our lives.The age we can legally have a drink, learn to drive, vote, or even retire, although these often coincide with the aforementioned birthdays.
As runners, we are generally obsessed with numbers. Race numbers, race times, number of miles, number of races, split times, average pace, elevation gain, the list goes on, but it is the arbitrary numbers involved in running which I feel are worthy of discussion here.
Take the number of parkruns we’ve completed, be it 50, 100, 250, or 500. Yes we get a free T-shirt, but other than that, what really makes 50, better than 49 or 51? Why are 150 or 200 completions not deemed worthy of a mention? I understand that these milestones are there to motivate us, to encourage us to return week in week out, but is it the promise of a t-shirt that really drives us to keep returning? Is that really what parkrun was hoping to achieve?
For me, and I’m sure for many others, I would be there week in week out regardless of the t-shirts (I’ve completed 65 parkruns to date and still haven’t received a t-shirt anyway!). Whilst it’s true that I often need prising out of bed on a Saturday morning, I love the social side of parkrun, meeting friends and family for a run and a coffee and getting my Saturday off to a great start, but what really makes me keep returning are the kind of arbitrary numbers that I want to focus on here – race time milestones!
Like the birthdays and anniversaries we celebrate, I have no idea who decided these milestones should exist, but as I see it, the basic arbitrary numbers in race times (relevant to my ability level anyway) are as follows:
5km – sub 20 minutes
10km – sub 40 minutes
Half Marathon – sub 1 hour 30 minutes
Marathon – sub 3 hours
Targets (or goals) are set as we strive to reach these times, take the 5km parkrun as an example, we might first strive to break 30 minutes, then 25, then the magic 20 minutes. We then look to get below 19, then below 18 and so on. Striving for these goals may not have too much of a detrimental effect on our performance, in fact it might benefit us, but what about over the Marathon distance of 26.2 miles?
With London now just under 9 weeks away, I’m in a position to start considering target times. Having achieved the sub 3 hour time in October last year, I now need to decide on a time that will hopefully take me further under that magical mark. With the marathon though, we don’t tend to deal in single minutes, but could this actually hinder our performance.
Some time ago, I listened to a ‘Runner Academy’ podcast on this very subject. The guests on the show had been involved in studying race times across a number of different marathons and found that the number of finishes within these races grouped around certain times. You won’t be surprised to hear that these times were 4 hours, 3 hours 45 minutes, 3 hours 30 minutes, 3 hours 15 minutes and 3 hours; although smaller groups also formed around 3 hours 10 and 3 hours 5 minutes. The discussion then developed into how these arbitrary times could affect our performance, for the better and the worse.
Take as an example, my time of 2:57:09 at the Yorkshire Marathon last year. I had been highly motivated from the start of the year to attain a sub 3 hour time, and this was my third and final attempt for 2014. In the end, I attained it reasonably easily, but the question has to be asked, “Could I have gone faster without the existence of these arbitrary target times?” Your first sub 3 hour marathon is a massive achievement for mere mortal runners like me, and in all honesty, I probably ran more easily in the latter stages of that race than I may have done if I wasn’t so worried about something going wrong, and subsequently not attaining my sub 3 hour target.
Those people grouping around 3:05:00 and 3:10:00 were probably either pushing hard to get under these times, or running a little easier realising that the faster target was no longer attainable. To our friends (especially non-runners), there isn’t much difference between a 3:05:01 and a 3:09:59 – they are both over the arbitrary number of 5 minutes past the hour and under the arbitrary 10 minutes past the hour. They don’t know if you pushed hard to get yourself into this time bracket, or eased off to comfortably stay there!
The faster the time, the more I feel that this is important, and so although my first thought for London was to strive for a sub 2 hour 50 time, I’m not sure if it is really sensible? Would I not be wiser aiming for a sub 2 hour 55 time? Or, and this is the whole point of this waffle, should I be aiming for something more specific like a sub 2:53:00.
Listening to the latest podcast episode of ‘Cloud 259’ today, American elite runner Nate Jenkins talks of looking at a 2:15:00 in Boston this April, but states that if training progresses well, he might aim for 2:13:00. Thirteen. Not ten.
It seems to me that aiming for a sub 2:55:00, could result in me ‘taking it easy’ in the latter stages if I am comfortably attaining my target. Similarly, if I strive to break 2:50:00 and struggle with the pace, could I fail to even achieve a PB? As I alluded to earlier, going out too fast in a 5km will not do you too much harm (within reason), but in the marathon, you WILL pay for it later!
The margins appear small, the average pace for a sub 2:55:00 is 06:39 m/m, whilst for a sub 2:50:00 it’s 06:28 m/m pace, a swing of only 11 seconds. It doesn’t seem like much, but try telling that to the guy at the front of the field trying to take the world record from 02:02:57 to below 2 hours (yet another arbitrary number!). That would be 4:41 m/m pace down to 4:33 m/m pace – only 8 seconds per mile faster!
The sad fact is that if somebody were to run something like 2:00:15 in London, it would probably be seen as a relative failure due to the arbitrary 2:00:00 barrier!!!
Incidentally, 2:53:00 pace is a nice round arbitrary 6:35 m/m pace #justsaying
When it comes to weekly mileage, I’ll put my hand up and admit to doing unnecessary miles just to reach arbitrary numbers. Nobody wants to do 47.5 miles in a week when they could do another pointless 2.5 miles and make it a 50 mile week! Do we gain anything from this, I’m going to say no, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with setting weekly targets.
The point I wanted to raise regarding weekly mileage is the ‘week’ itself. I’m not suggesting anything radical like changing the calendar to a 5 day week, but I am going to question the way we track our miles over a 7 day period. I, like most fellow runners, count my week from Monday to Sunday. However, recently, even on lower mileage weeks, I’ve taken to struggling on a Thursday club session and then subsequently having to take Friday as a rest day. I couldn’t work out why this fatigue was so bad until I remembered something addressed on a blog previously by good friend and Scottish international Ultra runner, Thomas Loehndorf. Thomas moved the 7 day week goalposts to change the way he looked at his mileage and by doing so, realised that he was often running greater weekly mileage than he realised.
This might sound ridiculous, but let me explain. Most of us do our long runs on a Sunday, the last day of our ‘usual’ training week, so, when we start again on Monday, this is forgotten about. However, especially early in a training block when we are increasing our mileage, we can’t afford to forget that long run. I set out this week to do 50 miles, an easier week, the lower end of my weekly mileage when marathon training. By Thursday I headed to the club for the session and I was really tired, I’d only done 22 miles in the 3 days previous and the 6 miles the night before had been very slow as I had been tired and without energy. Moving the goal posts showed that I had actually done 42 miles in the four days previous, starting with a very tough 20 mile effort, that’s why I was tired! Adding that evening’s session which totalled 15 miles, and I was already on 57 miles on a week I was aiming to do just 50. No wonder I was ready for my Friday rest day!
I know that we would then have to subsequently move each other week back a day too, and it would just balance out, but the point is this, and it’s a good one. Next time you start a session tired, don’t question what you’ve done since Monday, question what you have done over the last 6 days, imagine a rolling week in which everyday is your Sunday training day. Now do you see why you’re more tired than you think you should be?
So, whatever your target, whatever arbitrary time or mileage you strive for, even if your t-shirt still hasn’t arrived in the post, in the words of the Spencer Davis Group, “Keep On Running”
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