Quantified Self (QS) is a framework for personal science visualized as a continuous process with five steps: questioning, designing, observing, reasoning, and discovering. QS projects begin with a question about one’s life, move into a design phase, are followed by observations, which leads to both analysis of the project outcomes and the distillation of knowledge through three discovery questions: “What did you do? How did you do it? What did you learn?”
Nine months after buying a smartwatch in Summer 2020, I realized that I had no idea if the increased data I was collecting about my runs was translating into improved performance. I had the nebulous goal of running a sub-3:00:00 marathon in the next year and some assumptions about what healthy training looks like. Using the QS framework, I designed a self-intervention to improve the quality of my running in three ways: increased distance, faster pace, and increased cadence.
With that in mind, I set three goals:
The following descriptions are from my project proposal.
I used my GPS-enabled smartwatch to measure the distance of each run and uploaded the data to Garmin Connect. From there, I downloaded it to a Google Sheet, cleaned it, and compared each week’s total to set a new goal for the following week.
In addition to distance, I measured the time of each individual run using my watch. I summed the distance for each week, summed the time, and divided distance by the time to find the weighted average pace for the project period.
The watch can also measure footfalls per minute and has a built-in metronome function. I uploaded data after runs, imported the average cadence into the Google Sheet, and recorded metronome use as a separate variable.
My data and a basic pivot table can be found on my results sheet.
I was able to successfully increase my mileage by 10% every week. In the first week of the project period I increased my distance from 32.3 miles the previous week to 36.2 miles. The next week I ran 39.9 miles and the week after that I ran 44.0 miles.
I was also successfully able to get faster during the project period. My average pace improved from 7:33 minutes/mile during the baseline period to 7:25 minutes/mile during the project period.
Cadence was the only area of the project where I failed to meet my goal. My subjective explanation is that, as I increased my mileage, I felt more tired and unable to move my feet as quickly. This matches two observations from the data: first, that average cadence rose dramatically at the start of the project period and declined every week after it; and second, that runs with metronome usage tended to have a higher cadence than runs without.
Weeks 1-3 are the baseline data; weeks 4-6 are the project period
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