Tuesday, April 18, 2006

How good are the race equivalency charts for you?

You probably know about the various race predictor charts. For example, Jack Daniels has the whole VDOT tables which you can find here. And another one that I like is the calculator from Greg McMillan's site. Galloway has one that's less ambitious (that's soooo Galloway ;) ).

So how good are they to predict your times? If they are off, do you believe that if you were in top shape, they would hold true?

And, if you're wondering, I ran 4 miles this morning.

Shake it like a salt shaker.
Keith.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.harra.org/predict.asp

Unknown said...

don't know if you're interested but this guy in these articles explains how relationship between race performance at various distance relates to lactate threshold and overal aerobic fitenss. It's pretty interesting although long. Hadd's Approach to Distance training

Unknown said...

Thanks anon person. That's a good one too.

And thanks Vic. I read that thread a long time ago, and then was looking for it recently and couldn't find it. It's an interesting article. I've done that 2400m test a few times.

Keith.

Crosstrain said...

Typically, I run faster at shorter distances than my longer distances would predict and, of course, vice versa. I have not looked at some of the more complex predictor charts that attempt to factor in more variables. Like weight, age, and maximum heart rate, for example. Too bad one can not qualify for Boston based on a 5k predictor table. One can, however get seeded for the Bolder Boulder 10k based on shorter distance results.

Sarah said...

The McMillan calculator is very accurate for me for 5K, 5-mile, half marathon (based on my 5K PR). The 10K and marathon times are both faster than anything I've ever run though. The 10K is the one that gets me. It says I should be able to do a 1:00 10K, but my PR is 1:03. That 10K PR was accomplished a month after setting my 5K, 5-mile, and half marathon PRs (the ones that are consistent). Weird, eh?