What do you consider a PR?
JamesAztec
Posts: 523 Member
This is kind of a subjective topic I think. My first question is, do you consider it a PR only if done in a race or can you do on your own? Also what about races that are measured short but you end up PR?
I keep a board with all my PRs displayed (5k 10k Half Full) But two are short distances. But I also know if they were true distances I still would have PRed. Just wondering what everyone's opinion is? I know there's no one "right" answer.
I keep a board with all my PRs displayed (5k 10k Half Full) But two are short distances. But I also know if they were true distances I still would have PRed. Just wondering what everyone's opinion is? I know there's no one "right" answer.
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I consider an "official PR" to be an official time at an officially measured race, disregarding what my watch says. But I also have had an "unofficial PR", which I did on my own. The unofficial ones don't tend to stand long for me though, because there's just something about being in a race that gets me to push harder than in a training run, and I apparently like to sign up for races.
So a non-certified race that's known to be short? Ehhh, I'd probably use my watch data, or figure in distance to start line and use gun time, maybe, maybe not... and just call it unofficial. But it doesn't actually even matter all that much - my PRs are only for me to measure my progress.
So for your display board - it's yours, so as long as you feel good about it (like you are being honest with yourself), keep those numbers up there! If you need an * next to the short courses, so be it. It's there to encourage and motivate YOU!3 -
polskagirl01 wrote: »I consider an "official PR" to be an official time at an officially measured race, disregarding what my watch says. But I also have had an "unofficial PR", which I did on my own. The unofficial ones don't tend to stand long for me though, because there's just something about being in a race that gets me to push harder than in a training run, and I apparently like to sign up for races.
So a non-certified race that's known to be short? Ehhh, I'd probably use my watch data, or figure in distance to start line and use gun time, maybe, maybe not... and just call it unofficial. But it doesn't actually even matter all that much - my PRs are only for me to measure my progress.
So for your display board - it's yours, so as long as you feel good about it (like you are being honest with yourself), keep those numbers up there! If you need an * next to the short courses, so be it. It's there to encourage and motivate YOU!
This is my way of considering a PR too. Having said that... I ran a 5k race last year which was definitely short. It was an out and back on a straight road, so pretty difficult to run any tangents, and my watch said it was 2.96 miles. The record books say it was a PR (26:22), but I feel a bit guilty and there's always a mental asterisk next to the time, and I count a different race as my 'official' PR (26:26).2 -
Has to be at a race for it to be an "official" PR to me. Unofficial are nice, to gauge how I'm doing, but official is only when someone else does the course measurement and time recording.2
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PRs are for races. I can track a PR 5K, a PR half marathon, a PR on a specific race course if I run it multiple times. A non-certified race course may generate a PR for that specific race, but not for all races of the same nominal length. I've seen non-certified courses that have been clearly shorter or clearly longer than their nominally stated distances.
Philosophically, I wouldn't regard a fast 10K in training to be a PR because it wouldn't be on a certified course. In practice, if I run a 10K in training faster than my PR 10K race, I'm training too hard. This has room for measurement error in training distance; if I run a fairly measured 6 miles in training faster than my PR 10K race, I'm training too hard.2 -
I only pay attention to PRs in races. I don't think I've ever run a short race, at least not since I started wearing a Garmin. If I knew the race was short, I wouldn't count it as a PR, even if I would have PRed based on my pace.1
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Whatever makes you feel good about yourself and your effort. It's not like there is any other reward for a "PR/PB". If a non race PR floats you boat, sail on. If you need it to be in a certified race, so be it. Race PB/PR are subjective as courses are different. Some flat, some hilly. It's kinda silly to count the PB on a flat track and ignore the greater effort in the mountains.4 -
This is so interesting, never considered this before...always just counted anytime I beat a time regardless of race... guess I need to start racing more!!3
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WickAndArtoo wrote: »This is so interesting, never considered this before...always just counted anytime I beat a time regardless of race... guess I need to start racing more!!
I fall into this camp too - although as someone else stated, race conditions do seem good for 10s per km!
I'd contend that a PR is specific to the course. Unless you are going around a track, every race has a different profile and differing difficulty. If I get a PB half mara time at the upcoming (and very flat) Shakespeare half marathon, I won't automatically consider that a better performance than the hillier Warwick half that's coming in a couple weeks time.
For me, as WickAndArtoo says, a PR is when I run one of my regular routes better than ever before.3 -
I don't race nor do I want to. PR's are whenever I run one of my courses faster than I have in the past, a faster mile, 5K, 10K, neighbor hood course, etc. I think the P in PR says it best.
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I don't race nor do I want to. PR's are whenever I run one of my courses faster than I have in the past, a faster mile, 5K, 10K, neighbor hood course, etc. I think the P in PR says it best.
If you are keeping your PR's for you (the P you mentioned), I totally agree with you! Some people go around talking about their 5k PB, and later you find out they measured it themselves or estimated it somehow. Unless you are claiming some sort of record or trying to beat someone else's time though, it really doesn't matter how you count it. For me, the whole point of a PR is track my progress and get an accurate snapshot of how I'm doing, so I only count officially timed/measured races.2 -
I call it a PR when I run it twice. Running it twice really confirms it for me.0
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I had to come back to this because my recent 5k was both a PR, and about 100 meters short. It would've been a PR either way, but not by as much. So in my mind it's not official, and I feel like I need to beat it so I don't have any doubt about it... in the meantime I have a PR "somewhere between such and such a time".
Just for fun... Is that a race bib in your profile picture?I don't race nor do I want to.
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I have a GPS watch and use an app on my phone as well. I don't think they have ever been exactly the same (2-3 times per week). To be fair, I wear my phone on the right arm and watch on the left wrist, so maybe that explain it. Either way, I take it with a grain of salt when the watch GPS comes up short on a race.
Having said all of that, I only track PR's for races; though Garmin has some non-race PR's that are even better and I never look at. Then again, Garmin says I've never done a marathon (I did 1) and I know I didn't get the watch started right away... was not too far past the start. It wasn't an officially measured course, but I'm sure it would have reached the full distance if I hadn't been fiddling with the watch still as I was getting started.1 -
I have race PRs, and some workout PRs for specific named workouts (The Michigan, Deeks quarters, etc).0
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Personally my view is unless you are running all your races on a track then PBs are pointless unless counted just against the same route.
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midwesterner85 wrote: »I have a GPS watch and use an app on my phone as well. I don't think they have ever been exactly the same (2-3 times per week). To be fair, I wear my phone on the right arm and watch on the left wrist, so maybe that explain it. Either way, I take it with a grain of salt when the watch GPS comes up short on a race.
Having said all of that, I only track PR's for races; though Garmin has some non-race PR's that are even better and I never look at. Then again, Garmin says I've never done a marathon (I did 1) and I know I didn't get the watch started right away... was not too far past the start. It wasn't an officially measured course, but I'm sure it would have reached the full distance if I hadn't been fiddling with the watch still as I was getting started.
I've recently considered that perhaps the differences in distance are due to ping rate. I'm not sure how frequently my Garmin pings nor am I sure how frequently my watch pings GPS satellites. Also, the same ping rate but syncing differently (for example, if each pings every 10s, but they are not started the same time and therefore watch pings 2s earlier than GPS).0 -
Personally my view is unless you are running all your races on a track then PBs are pointless unless counted just against the same route.
I see your point, although some of us rarely or never race on a track. Theoretically, track times ought to be faster (maybe!), but I still find it useful for my own motivation and progress tracking to count "the fastest I've ever run 5k on a certified course" as my PB, as it will be close enough for my purposes. That does mean that I might actually perform better on a difficult course but it won't be reflected in my PB stats. In that case it would be similar to those "non-scale victories" people on MFP talk about. My recent trail half marathon is a good example of that. Took me 26 minutes longer than my road PB, but may have actually been my best HM effort.2 -
@polskagirl01 Your trail half marathon may have been significantly longer than 13.1 miles. Trail races are notoriously inaccurately measured. (They generally cannot be certified distances because measuring a course, accurately, requires a controllable course and special hardware.)1
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You're right, I hadn't factored that in. They advertised it as 22k and my watch registered even more than that. So now I feel even better about itVladimirnapkin wrote: »@polskagirl01 Your trail half marathon may have been significantly longer than 13.1 miles. Trail races are notoriously inaccurately measured. (They generally cannot be certified distances because measuring a course, accurately, requires a controllable course and special hardware.)
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To me, PRs are only from races on certified courses, or uncertified courses whose distance is confirmed by Garmin.
Keeping PRs for workouts is counter-productive to proper distance training. Training paces should be based on race performances and "beating" your training paces defeats the purpose of the workouts. If my race results dictate that I should do mile repeats at 6:50 pace, it does me no good to try to PR those workouts by running 6:40 pace. As the goal of those workouts is to exercise my lactate threshold, running 6:40 would put me past that and the workout wouldn't provide the stimulus that it was designed for.2 -
I have 3 different types of PRs...Official PRs are the same as noted by @polskagirl01. I then have social PRs, which includes stuff like Strava and Garmin segments, time trials with the local running or tri group, etc. Finally, I have training PRs, which I note as consistent performance above my training goals (I use this as an additional gauge as to whether my goals are too conservative or if I should be pushing myself more).1
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In most cases I would only get PR's in a race because that's the only time I'd run hard enough to get a PR. There are exceptions though. For instance, my last 10K was 3 years ago and it was less than 3 months after I started running. My time was 1:03:42, for a pace of 10:16 per mile.
10 months after that I ran my first marathon, with an average pace of 9:26, which is quite a bit faster than my 10K pace, and for a much longer distance. (ETA: 3 months after that 10K I ran my first half marathon with an average pace of 8:50, so I guess I would have been able to get a new 10K PR sooner than I thought)
In that case, while 1:03:42 is my "official" PR, it clearly is not representative of my best effort and I'll blow it out of the water whenever I run my next 10K.
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