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12 Months to Marathon - Episode 13 - Data over Drama · 12 Months to Marathon

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the 12 Months to Marathon Podcast with me, John Hill, the running podcast for the Over 35s with Marathon Dreams, episode 13, Data Over Drama.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So today we're going to be talking about data collection and the pros and cons of doing it.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on with me at the moment?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so I did a 10K on Sunday, the Bourneville Leafy 10K, which is where I live here in sunny Birmingham, and it's a good run.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a the running joke is that it's got a very good goodie bag with some Cabries products in there because I live around the corner from the Cabry factory here in Birmingham.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a good run actually.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hamstring held well, got a little bit excited, I'll have to be honest.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Did get a little bit excited and came out a little bit fast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then it held up actually.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I did 44.59, which is decent, finished 40th.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there was no, I could feel the hamstring, particularly down the hills, because obviously, as I mentioned before, about what did it, but it felt okay actually, and it held up quite well.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been training quite hard as well for high rocks.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a really good week of training this week on that.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming up on the 26th of October here in Birmingham.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, confident about that, feeling good.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it just shows the benefit, like I said, on the on last week's uh podcast of going to get yourself some help from a professional so you can work around certain things and still stay on track and get the results you want.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get into this week then.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to be talking about data over drama.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the data over drama is something my coach said to me, so I'd drop him a follow.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's Chris Brown.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Chris Brown, it's Chris Brown on Instagram.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Worth a follow, particularly if you're a guy who does a lot of men's work, he's been through a journey, um, and he's inspired me a lot to change a few things in my life, which I will touch on on this podcast because I want to share the love.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he used the expression data over drama, which basically means that if you're not using data, you're using drama, and that's in any context.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, business, running, fitness, anything.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, data allows us to look at the facts and it allows us to take emotion away.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're making decisions based on emotions all the time, all the time, you're not always likely to make the best decisions you can.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to running, we are in an age now where we can record everything, we've got all the tools we need to record everything.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've got watchies, we've got Strava, we've got apps, we've got everything.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got all these tools available to us, and like anything in life, I think they need to be used correctly because the expression comparison is the thief of joy, which I've talked about before, really rings true here.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it should be the incorrect comparison is the thief of joy, because if you're comparing yourself to the wrong people, then you're always going to feel inferior.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you feel inferior, you hide your gifts from the world, yes, and you don't know your true essence as a human being and what you can offer.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about being grandiose or narcissistic, it's about saying actually there's only one of you, and you can offer the world something, and if you feel inferior because you're comparing yourself all the time to people that aren't you, you are hiding your gift from the world, okay.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that's another pod that's a podcaster of the day.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, firstly, data over drama is true.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're recording data and measuring data, you can look at your performance and your performance alone, okay?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you know exactly where you're going wrong and where you're going right.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not making decisions based on how you feel, yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're going actually, you know, if you I had a bad day today, for example, what's that based on?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you might do, you might just feel not as good as usual.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And these things do happen if we're honest, but you've always got to have some, I think, have some kind of measure to assess how you're getting on because then you can make improvements.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't measure things and you want to get better, that's where you need data.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is the positive side of data.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're recording runs and recording things on Strava, for example, let's just use Strava for today's purposes because most people use it, I use it, we're just going to use Strava.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't use Strava, you can farm me out of a can.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say we use Strava.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I look down my Strava, the average pace on my Strava is probably about 10 minute miles of all the people that I'm connected to.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that I heard is the average pace for a runner in the UK.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that tells you that actually we think we're going to be comparing ourselves to loads of fast people, quote unquote, whatever that means.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, we're not.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Most people are running at quite a relative pace of 10 minute miles.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if that's that's fast for you, then that's fine, but that's the average, yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that shows you the sort of levels that we're talking here.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're not saying that most people are running seven minute miles, for example, which is fast, so which is really fast, should I say, so it's all contextual, isn't it?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is the problem.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you've got your data, you can say, right, in September, I ran this many miles, here's my average pace, and that's it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you can look at it as cold, hard data instead of just emotion, yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the flip side to that, of course, is what I've just really kind of mentioned that you can sometimes lose the love of running because you're obsessed with data and you're obsessed with numbers, and this is where I've found myself because I have got a tendency to compare myself to others based on you know certain beliefs that I hold around myself and certain things that I certainly a certain way that I view the world, okay?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had to fix that, and I'm having to fix that, and it is almost like an addiction, it's quite bizarre, and I have to I have to fix it and I have to change it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So data is really useful, but it can be a problem if you're obsessed with it and you're a slave to it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've mentioned this before because when I was doing a session with our running community about sleep, I said that it's funny that you could have a good night's sleep, but check your app that records your sleep, and it could tell you you didn't have a good night's sleep, and then you'd convince yourself that you didn't actually have one, which is the problem which is where the problem with data comes in.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have a fine balance between recording data so you can measure your performance and also not attaching too much to it, so that's the only thing that matters.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was having a conversation with somebody the other day who doesn't use technology, they just run brilliant.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: How awesome's that?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people would get the jitters, they go, How'd you run without a watch or whatever?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think we did this for years, we would have run without apps and phones and stuff for years.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, running with phones is quite recent phenomenon, really, if you think about it, because up until you know, uh not that long ago, we'd we wouldn't have had a phone, we'd have used an iPod or something like that because our phones didn't play music, so the taking the phone with you thing is quite a modern phenomenon, really, in context of how long people have been running for.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at obviously a lot of athletes, they don't take the phone with them when they're running because they're focused on running.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you have got to have a strong disposition when it comes to the data, and you've got to look at it as as it is.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I'm gonna say: one of the first things I learned when I became a coach and started to get better at coaching and getting a bit more skilled at it was there's a difference between the person and the performance, and you need to be you can be critical of the performance but not critical of the person, and that's why data sometimes is important because it allows you to look at your performance versus you as a person, because if you had a quote unquote which I don't like the expression, a bad run, well, what are you basing that on?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's the judgment of that?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you've got data to say that you haven't run for two weeks and this is your first run in two weeks, well, that's progress, no matter how bad the run was, that's progress.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to be really careful with it, and this is what I'm trying to say, because I don't what I don't want to do is sit here and say you must log everything and you must track everything, because you can get obsessed with it, and it can become a problem because then you get into comparison and then you get into obsession, and that's not good.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Obsession with exercise is as bad as being obsessed with not exercising, in my opinion.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen both sides of the coin, and the problem with exercise obsession is there's no leeway, and the the problem is you push yourself that hard that if you get hurt, you then have an existential crisis because you can't move like you used to.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to be really careful with data.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I do believe if you want to get better at running, you should be tracking something because you need to know that you're improving and you need to be able to track performance over time, but you've got to be able to apply context to it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, my Garmin, because I'm not running as much at the moment, because I'm not training while I'm training for high rocks, it is a running event, but it's more of a short burst running event, and I know I can run endurance, as in, I know I can run distance, I don't need to work on that particular discipline because I know I can do it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can like like the 10k on Sunday, you know, I ran comfortably at that pace.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know I can do that, I've got it in the locker.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I still need to keep myself sharp, but I've got it in the locker.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've not been running that much, so my garment is telling me I'm either in recovery or maintaining because it's basing it on my running.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if I look at my Strava, it's telling me that my fitness has decreased by a certain percentage over the last year because I'm not marathon training anymore.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basing that on that particular style of training.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, well, because you're not marathon training, you're not performing at your optimum level, which isn't accurate because I am.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this week's been a fantastic week of training, but just because it hasn't been pure mileage, certain apps are uh are basing their assessment of me on that, if that makes sense, which is sometimes the problem with this data because it's basing it on just running, not everything else.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: You could go and do four or five strength sessions a week and feel absolutely phenomenal, but because your heart rate doesn't elevate that much, because some people's doesn't when they're lifting weights versus cardio, you could think that you're not performing that well because certain apps and data class your heart rate as the most important metric when you're exercising.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just see the problem here that you can get into.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do want to get better at running and you want to go faster or further, then yes, I think you do need to have some level of data just for your own peace of mind, so you can you can actually easily track your progress, but you have got to be careful and you have got to have some kind of pressure cooker type thing to say, right, this is creating too much pressure, I need to take a step back and chill out a little bit because it's making me stressed.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's so the key messages are to take away here are if you're not using data, you're using drama, and if you're trying to improve, you don't want to be using drama, so you need some kind of data.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're obsessing with data and you're obsessing with comparison and it's affecting your mood and your performance, that's not a good thing because what you're gonna do is you're gonna outrun your love of running, like I've said before, and you don't want that, you don't want to hate the experience, so you have got to take it with a pinch of salt sometimes and say, Well, okay, how much data do I need?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like then, I can't judge my performance solely on my running metrics because I'm not running as much at the moment, but it doesn't mean my fitness has dropped, it doesn't mean my performance has dropped, it means I'm applying myself in different ways, yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when you've got a good baseline, you can still perform even if you're not doing all those miles, and eventually you're gonna have to uh rest and recover, which is something I'm focusing on, which I'll do a different podcast on.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, it is a balancing act so there's no, and this is the thing you see, there's no right and wrong because people a lot of times people ask me for advice on stuff where you've got to test it and you've got to see what works for you.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are looking to get better and you are looking to improve, and particularly if you're looking to next level you're running by by means of going faster, or you're looking to add real distance onto it, like you're looking to go for a half marathon or a marathon or the big bigger distances, uh, then yes, I do think perhaps you need to track your data because you need to know that you're making improvements, and also, like I've said on previous runs, uh previous podcasts, sorry, if you are looking to run distance and you want to get better at distance, distance running is about control for me, and control is about analysing things like your splits because your splits will tell you how much of how much control you you are, how much control you have over a run, yeah, is in your splits.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your splits are all over the place, you're not in control of a run, in my opinion.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why having that data is important.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if you just want to go and run without a watch and without your phone, naked running, they call it, um, then knock yourself out because that's ultimately what we want to do.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to ever take away our love of running and the thing that we love to do.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully that helps.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I try I try I try not to sit on the fence too much and I try not to commit too much because I don't want people going away thinking that I am saying you must track everything, or on the flip side that you mustn't track everything.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is you have to find what works for you and what's going to help you achieve your potential and achieve your goals.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your goals are yours, and that's where comparison is a problem because you need to base your results on your metrics and what you want for your life and your life alone.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've got to move away from things like, oh, like if somebody says that was a slow run for me and it's a fast run for you, they're not saying that you're slow, they're just saying that that's slow for them.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you you you if you've got a problem with somebody saying that, the problem sits with you, if that makes sense, and that's your inferiority.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because sometimes we do people do that because of bravado, they'll go, oh yeah, that was an easy run for me.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um now I did a run on Sunday, I was comfortable at that pace, I just was.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie to you.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't lie to people, I don't go, oh I better not say that uh that was easy or that was manageable because someone might get offended.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's up to the person, and that's where you've got to look at your own security and your own inner strength.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're if you've got a good inner place, if you're good inside and you've got you value yourself, nothing, none of this stuff will affect you what other people are doing, it's only about you.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that's uh again, probably another podcast from the X and Conscious time.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's data over drama.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that's useful.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if you do want any more support or coaching, feel free to reach out to Holmts Tomorathon on Instagram.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I do appreciate the follows as well.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to hop over there and drop me a follow, I do appreciate it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if you want to reach out, feel free to drop a message.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: We can have a chat.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I always appreciate you listening.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The support you give me, it means a lot.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm I'm planning my next year calendar as we speak, so let's see what's coming up in the future and I'll let you know.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, don't forget to like and share the podcast wherever you get your podcast from, drop a love heart on it or whatever you do on the platform and share it as well.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be really, I'd really appreciate that between your running friends.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: That'll help me out a lot.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and remember, enjoy your running, keep doing it, keep being consistent, and you'll get everything you want at the other end of consistency.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most important thing.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Consistency is the most important thing.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do that first, worry about everything else later.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, episode 13 Data of Drama.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much, and I'll catch you all very soon indeed.