Greg's Running Blog

I’m not much of a rebel but today I did something naughty. I drew graffiti all over my neighborhood. Well don’t think for a second that I suddenly turned into a right brain artist overnight because I didn’t! I just simply had enough of the inconsistent distance measurements and estimating paces that could be off by 7-10 seconds per mile because of GPS and/or footpod discrepancies. So I went and bought a totally basic bike speedometer and some orange spray paint.

The speedometer is basic but it does everything I needed which is to measure distance accurately. I set it up initially so one revolution was 1 meter and set it in metric mode this way every 0.001 km was one revolution exactly. This way I could use it as a simple revolution counter. I rolled on my bike 50 revolutions then took a 100 ft tape measure and measured the distance. It was 329.5 ft. So I knew that each revolution of the wheel was actually 2.008 meter which is more accurate than the 2.030 meter the manual of the speedometer indicated for my wheel size. This method is actually very similar to the method that is used to certify running courses. Once I calibrated my speedometer I rode to the hardware store to pick up some bright orange paint.

With the paint in hand, helmet on head, speedometer calibrated and reset I took off from my house and marked every quarter mile on my running route. My route generally involves 1 mile running out then do a mile loop around another neighborhood then do a 0.5 mile out and 0.5 mile back leg and keep repeating the 1 mile loop and the 0.5 mile out and back until I rack up enough miles to finish off with the last mile to run home. The problem was that the 1 mile out segment wasn’t quite 1 mile and the loop was only 0.95 miles so I never knew just how much I had to lengthen my run on the 0.5 mile out and back segment to make up for the shortage.

Now I know since I measured everything out down to the thousandth of mile and my new route marking is just perfect. I can run any distance with 0.5 mile resolution from the house and get perfect mile splits. I already ran 3 miles on my new measured route tonight and ironically my footpod measured 2.998 miles with the calibration value loaded in it and my GPS measured 3.01 miles. I might have went a bit OCD and should have just used my trusty tools instead of spending an hour and a half in the scorching sun painting numbers on the road.

I forgot to put on sunscreen so my arms and neck are pretty burned right now and I rode a total of 11 miles for all the painting and verifying of the distances. I still think it was time well spent .