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15 Jun
10:15pm, 15 Jun 2024
44,702 posts
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SPR
Or one person could eat the coffee beans and the other drinks the water which is what this experiment is akin to.
Principles of running are fairly well known, it just doesn't have a equation of A + B = X.
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15 Jun
10:24pm, 15 Jun 2024
24,600 posts
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larkim
LOL! But still, you'd learn which tasted better. And then refine.
I 100% unarguably agree that running isn't a nice neat and tidy science. I'm not trying to be obtuse.
But somewhere in the middle there's a study with 1000 participants which finds that, say, for a 15 min 5k runner that running all your miles at 7min/mile vs 9min/mile is better or worse, on average, which then is useful. The LetsRun thing is v extreme, but if it was 6min/mile vs 9min/mile would we "know" the outcome?
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16 Jun
11:31am, 16 Jun 2024
44,703 posts
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SPR
We might not know the answer in that A or B scenario, but we would know that C (the type of training that has come from decades of experimenting) is better. In terms of the mix, people play around with the mix of C all the time.
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19 Jun
12:05pm, 19 Jun 2024
24,634 posts
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larkim
There's no good forum for this thought, so I thought I'd drop it in here anyway!
I was cruising along a single track footpath last night alongside the canal. I'd intended it to be a pan flat part of the run, expecting a nice solid level path, but in fact it was very uneven, to the extent that I'd say that for every two steps forward I'd climb maybe 5-10cm, and then lose that "height" again on the next two steps.
Assuming my stride was about 1m, that would mean that over a mile would climb (and fall) 5cm 400 times. So 40m of elevation gain? That would be like running up a 2.5% slope.
But it doesn't feel like that. Now, maybe I'm over-egging things, but if someone presented you with a piece of tarmac that did vary by 5cm top to bottom every 2m, would you expect to find the impact on pace to be as significant as it would be if you were running up a 2.5% slope? And if not, why not?
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19 Jun
12:38pm, 19 Jun 2024
50,252 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
None. That's flat!  G
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19 Jun
12:41pm, 19 Jun 2024
24,637 posts
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larkim
But the physics of it would say it isn't? Is it the fact that a constant gradient of 2.5% would continually raise effort levels (if pace was maintained), whereas a wobbly surface would be a constant raise / lower / raise / lower pattern in the effort level?
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19 Jun
1:18pm, 19 Jun 2024
17,314 posts
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jda
No because you can convert between kinetic (speed) and potential (height) energy. Consider a bicycle rolling along a hump-backed road. Of course your efficiency of conversion isn't 100% but it's not 0 either.
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19 Jun
1:31pm, 19 Jun 2024
24,639 posts
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larkim
Ok, so a wobbly road is like going both up and down a long 2.5% climb so by the end of it I should feel like I've done both.
I guess as a runner I tend to find I do not gain as much on a descent as I lose on an ascent, which is the efficiency thing. So 8min mile flat, 8:30 ascent, 7:45 descent maybe. So translating that to trail, I should expect to be a bit slower on the trail lumpy routes even if no net elevation gain. Makes sense, not accounting for other confounding factors like foot placement, terrain, etc etc
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19 Jun
6:18pm, 19 Jun 2024
3,808 posts
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Bowman 🇸🇪
I thought about something related the other day.
I have a 10km route I do at work, it’s kinda hilly, definitely not flat, from 2 to 5 km mostly up. And it’s like 45m of ascent. So not massively step but still.
A few days ago I ran a 10k race and that had almost exactly the same ascent actually a few meters more of ascent. But the feeling was that it was completely flat more or less.
Ascent meters are really hard to get a feeling for.
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