I’d like to think I spent the last 2+ years hibernating from serious training, briefly coming out of the cave for some hard, extended training here and there, but eventually finding my way back to the cave for a while.
First, I had to change careers again in late 2019 after deciding to move back to Vegas.
Then, all that COVID mess started in March 2020, and there wasn’t any practical need to train for most of the year.
Then there was no Vancouver Marathon in 2021, so I just ran a lot on work breaks after starting my new job.
Then I actually got to train for a marathon in summer 2021, but then my lower body decided to implode about midway through, and I never quite got back on track before deciding to abandon ship on that in mid-October.
Now, after a couple years of sustained regular cross training, progress in mostly regular strength training, after having to learn a few more things about running to help stay injury-free and avoid past burnout mistakes… here we are at the doorstep to 2022, and just in time for that I discovered a neat run-data-tracking website called Runalyze.
After porting all my Garmin data over and seeing what they showed me, I was suitably impressed and paid for a Premium membership.
When I first got my Fitbit tracker, back when I first began seriously training as an endurance runner, it initially showed my resting heart rate’s (RHR) beats per minute (BPM) in the high 60’s.
As I continued training, my resting heart rate came down and settled around the high 50’s. Sometimes it would drift up, but often it came back down to around that number.
I noticed that generally it would increase during times of substantial stress, and that it would decrease with proper rest and exercise.
Suddenly, during the late summer and early fall, my resting heart rate started slowly climbing. Suddenly it settled into the mid 60’s and nothing I thought to do could bring it down. Resting more didn’t help. Eating more or less or better didn’t help. Exercising more or less didn’t seem to help.
At some point, not at the same time as last year, it began to come down again and settled around the high 50’s, low 60’s.
And then it came back up again. It was in exploring a variety of factors that finally taught me what elevates an athlete’s heart rate, and it turns out often times there’s nothing random about it.
There’s all sorts of general reasons experts and amateurs alike will give for elevated heart rates that are so tone deaf that their advice might as well have come out of an old library book.
From experience, myself and others who also seriously train, from the track records of all involved… here are the likely reasons your resting heart rate is going up, in an arguable but roughly accurate order of importance:
Virtually all reasonable running apps track the same essential information free of charge:
Run distance
Run time
Pace
An estimate of calories burned
Net elevation increase
A weekly total of all of the above
A map of the route you took, whether manually mapped or tracked via your watch/phone’s GPS
Functionality to post viewable data from your runs on social media
All seek to upsell you more features to get you to pay for an advanced version of their free service… which usually offers more detailed reporting on tracked data, and access to specific training programs.
Strava is the Beyonce of running apps: It has a large, somewhat manufactured and evangelical fanbase, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best app to use. One free feature Strava does provide that other apps don’t is a Foursquare-like geocached comparison of your performance along a given route versus other runners who have taken that same route. This can turn running a particular route into a competition with other runners… if that’s your thing.
Many other running apps are perfectly suitable for tracking your runs. MapMyRun, Runkeeper, Nike+, TrainingPeaks and so on allow you to suitably track this information.
While I use a Fitbit, its run tracking leaves a lot to be desired. While it does monitor run time and hear rate in conjunction with your tracker, you’re not able to map runs manually, leaving you completely at the mercy of your enabled GPS tracking to map any runs.
As I’ve said before, GPS is often inaccurate as a run tracker due to location-drift, regardless of your location. You’re tracked by a satellite in space periodically pinging your device. Even if a GPS tracker doesn’t screw up your tracked route, the tracked route often drifts off-path into buildings and other surrounding terrain, screwing up your tracked mileage by as much as half a mile on a 60 minute run. This can make tracked stats like pace per mile a completely inaccurate number, much like trying to use an abacus on a wobble board.
Thus any stats based off of my Fitbit, like pacing, mileage or stride length stats, are too inaccurate to be useful. I have noticed that other people’s mapped data from other trackers like Garmin have similar issues.
I still use my tracker to time runs and get heart rate data plus step count, but I map runs manually elsewhere to get the remaining stats.
Personally, I track all my runs on Runkeeper and have since I seriously got back into running years ago. I wouldn’t call it the *best* app, but it’s suited my tracking needs just fine. I have yet to discover through research any app that will allow me to port my historical data without losing valuable information (this always seems to be met with a subjective counterargument that said information isn’t valuable).
One free feature on Runkeeper I find useful is the ability to track mileage on your different pairs of running shoes. I like to know how many miles I’ve put on every pair of shoes and where they are in their respective lifespans. Other apps likely do this, but I appreciate that Runkeeper has the feature.
All this said, I still utilize a Google Doc (pictured below) on top of this to track my runs as well as my planned training schedule. The doc easily allows me to view my training progress over longer-term periods, as well as see how future training may impact my development. And one key value over Excel is that by being stored in the cloud, I can access it anywhere regardless of device.
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The key to finding a useful app for anyone is to figure out what data you want to accurately track, and then utilize a combination of tools that will allow you to accurately track that data.
Some just want to know approximately how many miles they run. If you have a Garmin GPS tracker, then that tracker’s app is probably fine by itself, even if the results are a bit inaccurate. Some couldn’t care less if they ran 4.15 miles and the app only says they went 4.00. As long as they know that weekly total of, say, 35 miles is pretty close to what they did, that’s enough for them.
To a lesser extent, this is true of Fitbit, though I will say a built-in GPS will be much more useful than GPS tracking that relies on your phone. The transmission between devices can lead to highly inaccurate results. Ditto simply using an app and your phone. I will note that at first I used Runkeeper’s GPS tracking, but at times I would get wildly inaccurate maps that ended up useless. I finally just decided to enter runs manually afterward and that’s worked better for me.
Some may want to track their pace, and most won’t want to put in the amount of effort I do to verify that pace. If you can accept some degree of inaccuracy from your tracker, and the tracker tends to be mostly consistent in how it tracks (and how inaccurate it is with) your route, then you may be fine with the GPS tracking.
Just don’t take the pace readings as gospel: If it says you ran an 8:00 mile, and it’s important to you that you know that you ran exactly an 8:00 mile or better, you may want to double check your distance on a map of your route, and calculate it out.
If you can see that your tracker tends to be consistently inaccurate (say, it always measures your pace about 10 seconds fast), then that can make your readings useful provided you know to make that adjustment afterward.
For speedwork, it’s often a lot easier, especially if on a track. If you know exactly how far an interval is, your measured time is enough data to figure out your pace with a calculator. I would go off charts and the math rather than your tracker’s pace reading. Your tracker may give you a pace that’s inaccurate, but 400 meters is always 400 meters.
In any case, the best app for running honestly depends more on your needs and equipment, more than on the quality of the app itself.
Thanks to my mother, I’ve owned a Fitbit Blaze since Christmas of 2016. Previously I had already been tracking data like my runs, my meals and other exercise on a Google Doc. So getting a tracker that easily kept track of all that and more was a huge deal.
I still map my runs manually (for accuracy, as the GPS utilization isn’t accurate in Chicago), while using the timer, step counter and heart rate monitor to track those items.
Along with those items, I have set a series of daily activity and diet goals based on my activity, training and weight loss that I feel has gotten me to where I need to be.
My Fitbit Physical Benchmarks:
16,000 steps
As someone who lives in a big city and does a lot of traveling on foot, I’ve always found that 10,000 is a bit too easy for me to reach (rare is the day where I don’t log at least 10K-12K steps), while 20,000 requires quite a bit of work (if I go on a fairly long run I can get there).
The bar that requires just enough effort in a day to reach has been 16,000. That’s around 7 miles of walking or running.
10 floors
This is the standard Fitbit benchmark, and that works just fine for me. On an easy day, I may get to sunset well short and need to take a hike up the stairs at my apartment building. Often, the elevation changes in my running are more than enough to account for well over 10 floors.
Right now I’m working at an assignment that requires some stair climbing between the train stations and the building itself. I often sit down at work having already climbed 6-8 floors.
That’s probably all I’m looking for with that.
90 minutes of activity
The standard benchmark was 60 minutes, but again I commute on foot, and I found this a bit too easy to reach most days. Asking 90 minutes usually requires a lot of walking or some sort of serious workout, whether a run or a lot of time in the gym or similar.
On some lazier days I may get to sunset with less than 15-30 minutes, but usually I hit 90 minutes almost by accident, often in the middle of a run.
3000 calories burned
Given my diet, I find 3000 calories to be the sweet spot for a required daily burn. And sure enough, given my daily activity it seems to be a consistent benchmark. On lazier days I can finish at 2200-2500 calories, but often with a workout and any amount of extended activity I can get to 3000 without a problem.
My record calorie burn in a day right now is 5400, which of course was on the last day I attempted to log a 20 miler (after which I logged a recovery run in the evening, making it a Bulls**t 20).
6.0 miles
I barely track this, since if I hit the other benchmarks I almost certainly traveled six miles between walking, running and anything else I was doing during the day.
But it’s a fine barometer later in the day if I find myself short on most goals. If I’m short X miles, then traveling the needed miles to get to 6 will likely get me to the other goals.
Afternoon activity: 250 steps every hour 3pm-8pm
I find Fitbit’s forced tracking of hourly 250 step goals annoying, but also in some way helpful. I set it to a tolerable minimum: 5 hours during the afternoon and early evening.
At least here it asks me to find 250 steps during a time when energy and attention span tends to flag. Getting up and walking a bit to meet the silly machine-demanded goal can help clear my head and keep me moving.
Other notes:
If my resting heart rate goes up by more than 1 bpm over 24 hours, or goes up on consecutive days, I usually take preventative action: Get to bed earlier, drink more water, eat more protein, relax, or change up training in light of recent activity. Often I’m well aware of likely causes for this (short sleep the night prior, tough workout the day before, etc).
I try to avoid consecutive days with a calorie surplus, unless I’m about to go on a massive workout or race, like a 20 miler, a hardcore interval session, or a marathon.
If I gain weight day over day, I often look to either run a calorie deficit, intermittent fast for the next day, or both (which is fairly easy). If planning to do more than a recovery run, I will definitely avoid going short on calories and instead just intermittent fast during the morning.
I make sure to consume no less than 130g protein, and aim for at least 140g. Busy as I am, I need the protein to re-build muscle and other key tissue etc. If I miss both benchmarks I at least get as close as I can with protein intake, and aim to exceed both the following day.
