Marathon Survey
Revision as of 14:29, 23 December 2015 by User:Fellrnr (User talk:Fellrnr | contribs) (Created page with "To better understand the various Marathon Training Plans, I have created a survey that is currently accepting responses. =The Sur...")
Revision as of 14:29, 23 December 2015 by User:Fellrnr (User talk:Fellrnr | contribs) (Created page with "To better understand the various Marathon Training Plans, I have created a survey that is currently accepting responses. =The Sur...")
To better understand the various Marathon Training Plans, I have created a survey that is currently accepting responses.
1 The Survey
To respond to the survey, please go to Google Forms Marathon Survey.
- Most of the questions are optional, so leave blank those that don't apply. For instance, if this is your first marathon, leave the Personal Best blank.
- For marathon times, please use H:MM rather than H:MM:SS or "X Hours". (I have code to parse the data, but the less ambiguity the better.
- For long run distances, you can enter just the distance in miles, or put "N Km" if you're used to Kilometers.
2 The Results
We need a lot more data, but here are some initial results.
| Row Labels | Count | % Responses | Average of Longest Run | Average of
Improvement Over Expected (negative is better) |
Average of
Improvement over Personal Best |
Injured? | Overtrained? | HitTheWall? | DNF? | Average Rating (out of 5) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daniels | 15 | 7.4% | 21.6 | 8 | -18 | 20% | 7% | 13% | 0% | 4.13 |
| FIRST | 23 | 11.4% | 20.7 | 10 | -21 | 30% | 17% | 35% | 4% | 3.61 |
| Galloway | 5 | 2.5% | 24.0 | 2 | 13 | 20% | 0% | 20% | 0% | 3.60 |
| Hanson | 14 | 6.9% | 19.1 | 9 | -4 | 29% | 14% | 29% | 0% | 3.77 |
| Higdon | 36 | 17.8% | 20.3 | 6 | 20 | 33% | 11% | 28% | 0% | 4.09 |
| Lydiard | 2 | 1.0% | 22.0 | -1 | 0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 4.00 |
| Other | 38 | 18.8% | 20.7 | 2 | -4 | 21% | 16% | 18% | 0% | 4.08 |
| Personal | 25 | 12.4% | 22.7 | 3 | 25 | 12% | 8% | 20% | 0% | 4.36 |
| Pfitzinger | 38 | 18.8% | 22.3 | 0 | -14 | 8% | 16% | 16% | 0% | 4.13 |
| Runners World | 2 | 1.0% | -16 | 50% | 50% | 0% | 0% | 3.50 | ||
| Web Site | 4 | 2.0% | 21.7 | -1 | -3 | 50% | 0% | 50% | 0% | 4.00 |
| Grand Total | 202 | 100.0% | 21.3 | 4 | -2 | 22% | 13% | 22% | 0% | 4.04 |
Some observations and notes:
- We have too few responses to draw firm conclusions, so apply caution to these results.
- My analysis is in the early stages, so results may change as I iron out bugs.
- Long runs are capped at 31 miles, so a runner that does a 100-mile long run does not skew the results too much.
- Hanson has the shortest Long Runs, but the average is still quite a bit longer than the 16 miles they recommend.
- A lot of respondents do their own plan ("Personal") and there are a good number where there are only a few responses for a plan, so they've been put under "other".
- The number of runners that hit the wall is quit high.
- The low number of DNFs suggests runners who DNF are not responding.
- Almost everyone likes there plan; there are 10 responders who put 1 star against their plan.