Runner's Math

I should start by saying I like math. I enjoy the order and absoluteness of it –
no gray areas – either right or wrong – and you can use it everyday. I wasn’t the best student in the class (that was Betty Martin!!!) but always look forward to it and took Calculus in college as an elective, so at least it rates higher than badminton or underwater basket weaving. I get a rush figuring out formulas and differential equations, yes I am sick. Anyway, as I continue my pursuit of this “running” thing, I am beginning to understand that there is new set of theorems and paradigms that apply to runner’s, I call it Runner’s Math.

The first place to start in this discussion has to be the freakin metric system. Aren’t we done with this already, I grew up in the “progressive” era of ultra liberals who thought we were being bad Americans for not adopting the metric system and they tried to force feed the conversion. I remember baseball stadiums with outfield signs with both feet and meters – how stupid does it sounds to says Manny just crushed a homer 137 meters, or 1376 centimeters or how about .02 leagues. Vin Sully would roll over in his grave – wait he’s not dead. You get my drift, I like the current US system and don’t like the metric system, never have never will. I know everyone else (in the world) uses the metric system and yeah its easier every is divisible by ten’s, blah, blah, but not if you are living in both worlds. Let’s face it, its never happening here so we should just say uncle and move on. O.K. I feel better now.

Unfortunately, the running community didn’t get the memo on this and still embraces the metric system. They seamlessly move between discussions in metric terms and normal terms and don’t even realize it . For example, “I ran a 5K with a pace of 8:00 miles”. Huh? Kilometers, miles, minutes, what’s going on? They do it all the time!!!!! Let’s get real, no one is going to care about how fast you run a 1K, its always the mile, remember the standard used to be breaking the 4 minute mile. That’s another thing, we grow up driving and speed is measured as, you got it, MPH, miles per hour!!!!! Not minutes per mile. Picture this, getting pulled over by a cop and being told, you are getting a ticket for driving 2 minutes miles in 3 minutes zone, huh? I doesn’t work that way, except with runners.

I have an iphone (which I fought for awhile, but am glad I succumb to the temptation) and it comes with several cool applications, including a metric conversion tool. It allows me to effortlessly move among kilometers to miles to furloughs (in the rare horse racing translation!!!), from MPH to minutes per mile – its great!!!!! It even has this great feature that is speech enable, in that, based on user-defined setting it will basically tells you your progress. The key phrase here is “user-defined” and that’s where all this craziness started. I couldn’t seem to get it right. The first time I didn’t pay attention and it was set for km/hr. After hearing I was going between 11 to 13 KM/Hr for 50 minutes –my mind swirled, “was 11 good or bad?” “Is 13 better than 11?” “How many km equal a mile?” “Then try to convert to minutes”, I was mentally drained and ready to go postal. It was sort of like the Chinese water torture with an ipod or should I say iphone – drip, “you are going 11.5 km per hour”, drip, drip, “you are going 11.2km per hour” – you get the idea.

Sorry, I digress, back another aspect of Runner’s Math. I dont know when they learn this, but experienced runners have developed this rap that I call the frictionless environment, it goes something like this. If you can run 3 miles, then you can run 6 and if you can run 6 then you can run 12 and if you can 12 then run to the moon. You get the drift, it never ends – I get it, the point is, push yourself to your limits. However, the first time I ran 5K I thought I was going to die, in fact, I was afraid someone would put me down trying to alleviate my pain. The last thing I was thinking was, "wow I guess Im ready for 6 miles", rather where's the oxygen and maybe I can crawl to the giveaway tents. Don't get me wrong, there is a sliver of truth that you can always do more than you think, thats the rush, but dont let them fool with Runner's Math.