Miles of Trials

Being a Scroller

Sunday 4th August 2013

That’s right. I’m a scroller.

You might not find the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, nor would a Wikipedia search prove fruitful. So here is the definition, courtesy of Tim who coined the phrase:

“an athlete whose power of 10 profile contains results for so many events that the site puts a scroll bar in so you can see all their PBs.”

This is the kind of thing some of us runners talk about – exciting hey? Basically, according to Tim you’re a scroller if you race over a wide range of distances. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with this; on the other hand Tim thinks it is a disaster and was very upset when the site decided to rank parkruns separately from 5ks thus pushing him over the 9 event threshold and into scrollerhood (scrollerdom? scrollership? scrollery?).

With 14 different distances on my page, I am definitely one. Four of those have been added this summer which distorts things a bit. The new distances I’ve tried this summer have been 800, 1200, 1500 and the mile. Two of these are fairly standard events whereas 1200 and the mile are more novelty events that I may or may not end up doing again. It has been fun though, and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of racing over new distances. One thing I have found useful is the ability to really push myself over a short distance which has translated into better times for 3000 and 5000 which are my main events on the track. Some of those races have been training runs and some have been part of a double or even triple in the same day.

I’m enjoying mixing up my training and experimenting with new things. One is racing a lot over a range of distances (being a scroller), one is training with a group on a Tuesday and Saturday under Bud’s guidance and another is running more doubles now I’ve got a bit of time off work.

It’s fun and I am looking forward to what the next few months hold for me running-wise.

Collecting Places

Wednesday 29th May 2013

The good thing about having a week off work is that you have enough time for the really important things in life. Like browsing your Power of 10 profile and making playlists on Spotify.

Whilst doing this yesterday I noticed a great feature that I wasn’t previously aware of. As well as finding your head-to-head record against any British athlete (0-1 against Mo Farah, 18-0 against my mate Tim) and ranking all your performances by age grading, you can also list your performances by position. This is what my collection looks like:

1st 31 times (mostly at my local parkrun)

2nd 11 times

3rd 10 times

4th 3 times

… and so on. Great though this list is, it bothers me by not being complete. For example, Power of 10 tells me that in the 111 races I have finished I have never come 10th, the only position missing from the top 13. Strangely I have never come 20th, 25th or 30th either. This is annoying.

So I have come up with a plan to fill in the gaps. Next time there are exactly 9 people ahead of me in a race I am going to settle for my position rather than trying to chase a couple of runners down. If you see me in 14th, 15th or 16th in a race, make sure I don’t give chase.

This project shouldn’t take too long. My lowest ever position in a race is only 501st.