I'm a slow jogger. How to log 16-minute mile?

abberwocky
abberwocky Posts: 19
in Fitness and Exercise
For the past couple of months I've been on a modified C25K program that I designed for myself to teach myself how to jog. It's a slower program of more gradual increases than most C25Ks I've found online, and it's working well for me so far

Until today I'd been logging my total jogging times in the exercise tracker under "Running (jogging) 5mph (12 minute mile)." Though my endurance is increasing, I am still a very slow jogger, and since this is the slowest option MFP offers for jogging, I figured it was probably accurate. However, today I used mapmyrun.com to see how far I've been jogging, then used an online calculator to figure out my actual speed. Apparently I've only been doing 16-minute miles! Womp.

The pace is challenging for me (I'm still very much a beginner), and I am only 5'3", so I can only go so fast. I'm confident that I'm pushing myself as hard as I can on every jog. Still, I'm worried that I may not be burning as many calories as MFP's calculator says I should be, since there isn't an option for logging a slower jog than 5mph.

I'd love to get a HRM to find out my actual calorie burn once and for all, but for now it's not in the budget.

Does anyone know how I should be logging my jogs so they'll be accurate? Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks. :)

Replies

  • ecw3780
    ecw3780 Posts: 608 Member
    If 5mph is a 12 minute mile, you need to log it at a slower Mph.
  • themyriadthings
    themyriadthings Posts: 225 Member
    Hello there from another slow runner! It looks like 16 minute miles is the equivalent to 3.75 miles per hour (I googled, didn't calculate it myself so I hope that's right!), which means you could just enter your activity as walking at that speed. That might be a bit of an underestimate, but that's better than an overestimate at least. Keep going, you will get faster and even if you don't, so what! It's the moving forward that counts, and a mile is a mile no matter what :)
  • jordanlell
    jordanlell Posts: 340 Member
    You could try to take a couple 10 second heart rates. If you wear a watch or carry your phone, just find your pulse (on the throat or wrist) and count how many beats in that 10 seconds. Do this a couple times, so you can average them out. Multiply by 6 and you've got your beats per minute, and there are a couple calculators online where you can enter in your info, your beats per minute, and how long you kept up that rate and it'll give you a calorie burn.
  • SoDamnHungry
    SoDamnHungry Posts: 6,998 Member
    You can use the walking at 4 mph on here. Maybe average between that and 5mph running since you're actually doing the running motion?

    Correct me if I'm totally off the mark here, peanut gallery.
  • GiGiBeans
    GiGiBeans Posts: 1,062 Member
    3.75mph? Are you sure?
  • caly_man
    caly_man Posts: 281 Member
    this is a nice pace table

    http://www.aprioriathletics.com/fitnessmath//pace/

    you might just have to log that you are walking
  • FATJAKE5
    FATJAKE5 Posts: 162

    Does anyone know how I should be logging my jogs so they'll be accurate? Any advice is appreciated!

    Thanks. :)

    That is 3.75 mph. I would log walking @ 4.0 mph for 16 minutes. It will be slightly optimistic but close enough. It will only make a slight difference in calories burned
  • likitisplit
    likitisplit Posts: 9,420 Member
    I'm always logging mine as "walks" because I add in my warm up / cool down time. Four miles: two at 10:33 and two at 13 and it's still a "walk". Oh, well.

    However, if you're logging your runs at 5mph and you're losing at the rate you want, then continue what you're doing.
  • likitisplit
    likitisplit Posts: 9,420 Member
    3.75mph? Are you sure?

    I can run a lot slower.
  • TAMayorga
    TAMayorga Posts: 341 Member
    I'm always logging mine as "walks" because I add in my warm up / cool down time. Four miles: two at 10:33 and two at 13 and it's still a "walk". Oh, well.

    However, if you're logging your runs at 5mph and you're losing at the rate you want, then continue what you're doing.

    Yeah, I do this ^^^ too.
  • aakaakaak
    aakaakaak Posts: 1,240 Member
    I'm always logging mine as "walks" because I add in my warm up / cool down time. Four miles: two at 10:33 and two at 13 and it's still a "walk". Oh, well.

    However, if you're logging your runs at 5mph and you're losing at the rate you want, then continue what you're doing.

    Yeah, I do this ^^^ too.

    I do this three. :happy:
  • omma_to_3
    omma_to_3 Posts: 3,265 Member
    Do you have a smart phone? If so, run outside (are you doing that already?) and use something like RunKeeper (it's free). It will give you an estimated calorie burn (make sure its set to running not walking). It's fairly accurate for me against my HRM. Especially for running. I find it doesn't work well for cycling though, calorie wise.
  • Eatkansasbeef
    Eatkansasbeef Posts: 71 Member
    Agree. ^^. I use Endomondo on my smart phone. It syncs with MFP and its free too. It gives average pace and mile times as well as calories burnt. You can find the area to sync it in the upper right corner of your home page where it has a box saying learn more, devices that sync.

    As for your speed, onward ho my friend. You're doing great! Speed will come with time (or not, as in my case) and remember going slow is the key to success in finishing c25k. As long as you're still propelling forward you're doing a good job AND lapping everyone still on the couch!
  • abberwocky
    abberwocky Posts: 19
    Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. :)

    I unfortunately don't have a smartphone (I want one!) but it is also out of the budget for me at this time. To give you an idea of my financial situation, my boyfriend and I currently SHARE a used flip-phone (remember those? lol) which we can only sometimes afford to put minutes on. Ah, the life of a struggling musician! ;-)

    Anyway, I have been losing weight at a decent rate anyway, even logging my jogging as 5mph. I'll try tweaking the way I log it this week and see if I see better results on the scale.

    I guess what really bugs me about the way we log jogging is that when you use mph as a measurement, you're not taking into account the height of the person. As a shorter woman, I may have to move my legs faster than someone who is, say, 5'9", to keep up the same 5-mph speed. In theory, if we weighed the same, MFP would tell us we burned the same calories. But aren't I burning more calories if I have to move my legs more to go the same distance in the same time?
  • TAsunder
    TAsunder Posts: 423 Member
    If you are doing c25k you are only jogging a portion of the time. Are you talking about 16-min average including both walking and jogging intervals? I think I was at 14 for most of c25k so this seems reasonable to me. I generally would just log 20 min mile / 3mph for part of the time and 12 min mile / 5mph for part of the time and figured it was pretty close.

    If you are talking about actual jogging speed, roughly speaking, there is not a HUGE difference if you go the same distance at different speeds of jogging. And some folks here believe there is effectively NONE at all if you look over time at what happens in the workout + 24 hours.

    So, that said, one alternative to the suggestion of logging it as walking when you are jogging would be to do the math. If you run 30 min at 16 min/mile, that's 1.875 miles, which would take about 22.5 minutes at 5mph. So you could log 22.5 minutes of 5mph if you prefer and it should be fairly close (assuming MPF is somewhat accurate which is questionable). Or, even easier, just multiply how long you ran by 0.75 and log that.
  • abberwocky
    abberwocky Posts: 19
    I'm doing something similar to C25K, but I modified it for my own needs. I'm currently doing intervals of 5.5 minutes of jogging interspersed with 2-min intervals of brisk walking. I do this 3 times, so my jogging ends up totaling 16.5 minutes, and my walking (including warmup) totals around 10-11 minutes by the time I get back to my house. I log the jogging time as jogging and the walking time as walking.

    I live in a circular neighborhood, and the circumference of the circle is .55 miles around at the outer sidewalk, according to mapmyrun.com. When I do the 5.5-min jogging portions of my workout, I travel roughly 85% of the distance around the circle, which is about .47 miles. The website I used to calculate my running speed based on this data told me that, essentially, if I continued at this speed, I would be running a 16-minute mile. I suck at math, so I just went by the data I was given. Someone correct me if I'm wrong!


    EDIT: By the way, this is the site I used for calculations: http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/rws-training-pace-calculator/1676.html
  • TheWiseCat
    TheWiseCat Posts: 297
    You can use the walking at 4 mph on here. Maybe average between that and 5mph running since you're actually doing the running motion?

    Correct me if I'm totally off the mark here, peanut gallery.

    6a00e54f10a0988834017ee499513f970d-500wi
  • abberwocky
    abberwocky Posts: 19
    If you are talking about actual jogging speed, roughly speaking, there is not a HUGE difference if you go the same distance at different speeds of jogging. And some folks here believe there is effectively NONE at all if you look over time at what happens in the workout + 24 hours.

    I'm curious about this because I created a playlist for my jogs with songs in the 155-160 BPM range so my feet would move perfectly to the music, and according to http://jog.fm/workout-playlists/for/running, the songs I'm choosing are consistent with 9-minute-mile jogging times. I know I can't be going that fast, but if my feet are going that speed, I feel like I've got to be burning more calories than I would at a 16-minute-mile pace. It's so confusing! Haha. :smile:
  • TAsunder
    TAsunder Posts: 423 Member
    I'm doing something similar to C25K, but I modified it for my own needs. I'm currently doing intervals of 5.5 minutes of jogging interspersed with 2-min intervals of brisk walking. I do this 3 times, so my jogging ends up totaling 16.5 minutes, and my walking (including warmup) totals around 10-11 minutes by the time I get back to my house. I log the jogging time as jogging and the walking time as walking.

    I live in a circular neighborhood, and the circumference of the circle is .55 miles around at the outer sidewalk, according to mapmyrun.com. When I do the 5.5-min jogging portions of my workout, I travel roughly 85% of the distance around the circle, which is about .47 miles. The website I used to calculate my running speed based on this data told me that, essentially, if I continued at this speed, I would be running a 16-minute mile. I suck at math, so I just went by the data I was given. Someone correct me if I'm wrong!


    EDIT: By the way, this is the site I used for calculations: http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/rws-training-pace-calculator/1676.html

    That calculator is not doing quite what you think. Most people "race" at a noticeably faster pace than their standard daily running pace. The calculator is thus showing various suggestions for your standard training pace given the pace you had during a recent race. If you are doing 5.5 min for 0.47 miles that is roughly 11.7 minute miles.
  • abberwocky
    abberwocky Posts: 19
    I'm doing something similar to C25K, but I modified it for my own needs. I'm currently doing intervals of 5.5 minutes of jogging interspersed with 2-min intervals of brisk walking. I do this 3 times, so my jogging ends up totaling 16.5 minutes, and my walking (including warmup) totals around 10-11 minutes by the time I get back to my house. I log the jogging time as jogging and the walking time as walking.

    I live in a circular neighborhood, and the circumference of the circle is .55 miles around at the outer sidewalk, according to mapmyrun.com. When I do the 5.5-min jogging portions of my workout, I travel roughly 85% of the distance around the circle, which is about .47 miles. The website I used to calculate my running speed based on this data told me that, essentially, if I continued at this speed, I would be running a 16-minute mile. I suck at math, so I just went by the data I was given. Someone correct me if I'm wrong!


    EDIT: By the way, this is the site I used for calculations: http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/rws-training-pace-calculator/1676.html

    That calculator is not doing quite what you think. Most people "race" at a noticeably faster pace than their standard daily running pace. The calculator is thus showing various suggestions for your standard training pace given the pace you had during a recent race. If you are doing 5.5 min for 0.47 miles that is roughly 11.7 minute miles.

    Oh snap! That clears up a lot of confusion. I feel kind of silly now. :-P
    Thank you!

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