That's it! I'm officially miffed!

[Beads]

Went out for a run on Sunday, plotted it in my head and on the way back from being a taxi for one of the brats I took a detour in the car to check the distance. I figured with the extra bit to get out to the route and home it would be about 3 miles so 5K. I did the route (killing the timer 8 minutes in by mistake), got back, plotted it on mapmyrun, 4.8K. Disappointed.

But, life goes on. So I plotted another route, it needed a bit extra so I plotted up to the next turning, yep 5K, good.

I went out this morning and did it. Managed to not kill the timer this time, was pleasantly surprised on the home stretch that I'd only been running for 30 minutes, I thought I'd been slowing down but it looks like I'm speeding up. Until I've just turned the computer on and plotted it as a route done. It's shrunk!!!! Only 4.5K. Gutted.

Oh well, Saturday is only 2 days away.

[Oldgirl Graduate]

Well done its quite hard to get a route to exactly 5K but you need to remember that a route mapped on paper/computer is always less than the actual as it doesn't take into account the ups and downs also slight curves in the road etc. I now map my 5K routes to 5.20 that way I know I will have run the whole distance and perhaps even a little bit more too. Good luck, keep going your time sounds really good for 4.8K too.

[Beads Graduate in reply to Oldgirl]

Getting faster! My graduation runs were 36 minutes for 5K (or thereabouts) so I reckon as I was about 10% short on distance I was about 10% short on time, so if it had been 5K I should have done it in about 34 minutes. Not too bad, 2 minutes knocked off in 3 weeks or so.

[nickf Graduate]

I've noticed the same. Plot my routes out on Memory Map. Have recently been using Garmin Fit on my phone when running.......and the two of them are quite different as to the supposed distance I've run. But i decided not to fret about it and just run...

[Beads Graduate in reply to nickf]

I don't have a fancy phone so don't have that option. And I'm miles too much of a tight tart to get one even though I keep seeing apps and things that I would love to play with like the Garmin Fit.

[Mitts Graduate]

Now that I've got my Garmin 10 (love it) I do it the other way round - I decide how far I want to go (today only 3K because I haven't been out since last Sunday's post-run fall up the steps and bashed knee...) and then I just jog round the woods until the Garmin says 3K and then I stop...

Done 5K and then 3K this way, just to get the feel of the Garmin. It's not 100% either mind you, according to the satellite pic I was running through the lake on Sunday...

Just make sure you have a good time, Beads, that's the main thing.

[Beads Graduate in reply to Mitts]

Running through the lake? That's nothing, hubby's TomTom said we were driving through a field going when we were going down the A30 or A303 (the main road through Cornwall) back in June! Yes, I am having a good time (another mad person who never though she'd see the day when 'enjoy' and 'running' would be in the same sentence unless they were separated by the word 'stop'), once I've got into my stride that is.

[Oldgirl Graduate in reply to Mitts]

Heavens above walking/running on water now, where will our talents end

[pingle Graduate]

Sometimes the technology just doesn't work. When my brother in law cycled from Land's end to John O'Groats Endomondo had him rowing for about 10 miles up the motorway. We were impressed! I think the car is probably most accurate as it takes into account hills etc Personally I'd love to be able to do 5k in 36 mins

[Beads Graduate in reply to pingle]

You will, you'll get there. As we get fitter our speeds get slowly faster.

[Beads Graduate]

Ha ha! Went out for a walk with Fred (dog), Giulia (friend) and Toby (Giulia's dog) after lunch today. G asked how many calories we'd burned off so i introduced her to MapMyRun. It came to 3.14 miles or 5.06K.

So I was sat there later thinking that would be a nice run (apart from the really really nasty hill at the beginning) and that as I'd already mapped it I knew it would be over the 5K, so I was plotting this as tomorrow's run. Then an hour or so later I had the Doh! moment. With the walk to the bottom of the hill at the beginning (I really don't want to run down it) and then back up again to home at the end I'd be close to half a K short again.

Re-think needed.

[Beads Graduate]

Once again!

I mapped lots of different routes yesterday and headed out to do one this morning. Left out of our road, up then down the hill to the start (rather than right and keep going down to the start), then followed Thursday's route.

Once again it should have been 5K by yesterday's mapping session. 4.94K! Grrrr!

33.15 minutes though, I'm definitely getting faster.