Doing Paced Distance Intervals on Strava
June 3, 2020 1:29 PM   Subscribe

I'm doing an "Improve your 10K speed" plan on Strava, and I'm trying to figure out if it has a feature that would make tomorrow's planned workout easier. The workout is to do 8 repeats of 1km at a 'Cruise' pace (which for me is between a 9:32 and a 9:13 minute mile) with two minutes of jogging slow inbetween. I have no hope of accurately hitting a pace without something telling me how fast I'm going, and as a default Strava will tell me my average speed for my current distance unit, which can be set to either miles or kilometers.

The problem is that given that default, I'll be able to see my average speed for the first speed interval, but not for the subsequent intervals, if you see what I mean. For the first km, the display will show that I'm averaging, say, a 9:40 mile, so I'll know to speed up, or a 9:10 mile so I'll know to slow down. But then I take the 2 minute slow jog, and all the subsequent averages are screwed up because they include some of the slow jogging bits.

Are there any Strava users who know if there's a way to, within a longer workout, hit a button to start a distance unit for the purpose of pace display? This question was oddly hard to state clearly -- I'm going to threadsit in case I haven't gotten it across clearly. I'm using the Strava app on an iPhone, if that matters.
posted by LizardBreath to Health & Fitness (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: It looks like you can't- there's no lap button for the strava app, which is what you'd want See here:

How do I get lap data for my run activity?
At this time, the Strava does not have a lap button. If you record with a GPS device that's capable of recording laps, you can upload your activities to Strava. Laps can be created for any distance but some devices will automatically record a lap every mile or km.


If you can swing it, a basic GPS watch can be gotten for around $100 if you can find an old model like so. You'd get both lap functionality and real time pace display in a more convenient form.
posted by damayanti at 1:46 PM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


Best answer: No, but a Garmin or other GPS watch will make this very easy.
posted by mcgsa at 2:30 PM on June 3, 2020


Best answer: If you want get real serious about this, Training Peaks and a Garmin is about the best way to do it.

I did heart rate based interval marathon training the year before last, and after trying a million apps on my phone/watch and various services, Training Peaks was the best for preplanning a workout, and the Garmin was the best place to actually get what I needed from the intervals I had preplanned in TP.

I'm even an Apple engineer, so I spent probably 300% longer than any normal person to get my Apple Watch/iPhone to make it happen, it's just no one had built the app that will do everything I (and sounds like, you) needed, and my employment agreement forbids me from building my own app, otherwise I would have just done that lol.
posted by sideshow at 2:31 PM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


Best answer: It's true a Garmin can do this very easily. However! You don't need to overthink intervals (which is easy to do). Do 1-4 minutes of moderately hard effort, followed by roughly half or less that time at a slower pace (don't stop, if you have to stop you are running too fast/hard; it's a recipe for injury and also makes intervals less effective for running).

Repeat that 4-8 times, and you're done. You should always have enough gas left in the tank that you could pop out another 1-2 intervals; if you're totally wrecked at the end, you're doing them too hard (fight the temptation, it feels great to go all out, but you risk hurting yourself, esp if you're older).

Going at the exactly the same speed etc, doesn't really matter; all that matters is exertion levels which should be higher-but-not-high if that makes sense. And you will still see improvement doing this even if speed etc varies (Surprising, even staggering, improvement if this is your first time training with intervals).

GPS watches are super fun - I run with one myself and have done for years. But much as it pains me to admit, you don't really need them to be an effective runner. If you aren't in a place where you can get one, don't worry about it. People ran for years without Garmins, including complicated training plans.

Here's a great little breakdown of various types of intervals and what kind of benefits they deliver.
posted by smoke at 5:26 PM on June 3, 2020 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks, everyone — I’ll think about getting myself a watch. (I’ve never been a serious runner, I’ve just been doing these training plans while I can’t lift weights during the pandemic, so I’m kind of unfamiliar with how all the cool tools available work.)
posted by LizardBreath at 4:07 AM on June 4, 2020


Another option: use a different app along with Strava. I use Runkeeper and it announces my average pace and current pace at intervals that I can control. You can set it to announce your current pace every km, which I think would solve your problem.

For a low tech way of monitoring your pace, you could run on a track. When I do intervals on a track, I can get fairly consistent lap times because I have a good idea of what a particular pace feels like and I can check my time for a lap (or half-lap or quarter-lap) to double-check. It does require a little math, which gets harder as I get tired. The downside, of course, is that running on a track isn't very fun.
posted by Drab_Parts at 8:07 AM on June 5, 2020


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