my running life in a graph

Rickshaw · Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 5:05 pm

I geeked-out with Excel this evening, and made a graph of PIH versus time for the races of my running career. PIH is a performance measure used by the runlog Excel log, and is conceptually similar to Daniels' VDOT. Higher numbers are better.

There are three main cycles in the graph:

1. rapid improvement from my first race up to the Austin Marathon, followed by about 10 months of decline where I didn't run much
2. another period of rapid improvement and then semi-plateau, peaking at Des Moines and the San Francisco Half Marathon, followed by about 8 months of decline
3. a third period of rapid improvement and semi-plateau

http://www.runworks.com/templates/runworksClean/images/photos/pih.jpg

The portion from the most recent SF Half up to today's date looks a little worse than it is, since it includes one very hilly race and the two stinky 5K's I ran shortly after Boston.

Some interesting observations:

- Fitness is gained faster than it's lost. Even when I practically stopped running entirely during spring/summer 2005, the rate of decline was less steep than the rate of improvement during retraining.
- Most of the improvement is achieved after about 3-4 months of retraining following a layoff. After that, performance improves more slowly, or hits a plateau.
- After each layoff, the height of the next plateau is higher than the last. (Tough to say for certain-- we'll see where the current cycle ends up!)