As an early adapter, I can testify that the prediction has been spot-on for 6 of my half-marathons. It gives me a realistic goal to chase, allows me to adjust my training, and provides good feedback on the training.
Would recommend people to check it out!
Back in the day I had my running PB’s and current times in an Excel (financial ey) comparing them with the line of the world records. Worked pretty spot on. Better 5k leads to a proportional gain on the longer runs. Never beat the 50% slower mark on any of my times. Nowadays with VO2-max, HRV and other measures personal predictions must be getting easier. Although my Garmin watch thinks I’m world class VO2-max, which is a joke.
What did the line represent? It’s always surprising how predictable it is to estimate people’s race times given what you know about their fitness. That said, about 10% of the time someone surprises you with a time you wouldn’t expect.
I was working under the hypothesis that my fitness would generally predict my performance when compared to the world record. Turns out for +50% of the worlds top speeds, this works pretty well. New hypothesis would be that specialization occurs way below +50% of the worlds speediest.
My Garmin times are also a joke, which is why I created getfast! (To be clear though, Garmin makes incredible watches, and their predictions have gotten a lot better in the past year . . .)
Strava is just so horrible to use with all its gamification and social aspects. For me running is a solitary pursuit with significant mental side-benefits, but Strava is trying to tell me about someone I don't know running a particular stretch faster or slower than me, trying to egg me on to go faster or further or out-run someone locally etc. Do not like. RunKeeper is just a simple tracker with none of the bullshit, so I prefer it.
I totally see your point (many competitive runner never posts to Strava, anyway). I'm working on a Garmin integration now, so that should be available soon. It looks like runkeeper only has manual activity exports, so I'd have to provide a way to allow for manual activity uploads, too, which is doable!
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.3 ms ] threadStrava is just so horrible to use with all its gamification and social aspects. For me running is a solitary pursuit with significant mental side-benefits, but Strava is trying to tell me about someone I don't know running a particular stretch faster or slower than me, trying to egg me on to go faster or further or out-run someone locally etc. Do not like. RunKeeper is just a simple tracker with none of the bullshit, so I prefer it.