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Personal Records - Official or Personal

With local races, it's quite difficult to actually record personal records (PRs) because of two reasons
  • inaccurate race distances
  • inaccurate race results
The first is because most races are not certified by a governing body and the second is because most races still don't use timing devices like timing chips or RFID.

For most runners like me who really don't expect podium finishes in their races, we compete with ourselves or try to set new PRs. Personal records is also a useful tool to gauge improving or deteriorating health and fitness.

So, should I use the official race results for my personal records? For my purposes of using PRs to see if I'm improving or not, until there is a body that requires local races to be up to a certain standard - including accurate race distances and results, I will be using personal measurements. That is, I'll use my Garmin's data. I know that GPS is not 100% accurate but at least I'll be using a "standard" measurement of distance and time.

For example, in last August's Run to Read's 10K, my official time was 1:25. Comparing with my Takbo.ph RunFest official time of 1:25 last July, I didn't improve. But, I really felt that I ran harder and faster in Run to Read. Based on my Garmin, Takbo.ph RunFest was 9.97km at 1:26 and Run to Read was 10.32km at 1:25 and 1:22 at 10km. Also, before these races, was June's Rock and Run where my official time was 1:17 but my stop watch said 1:19. I didn't have a Garmin then but in some forums and blogs, there were mentions that the course was just around 9.5km.

So, what's my PR for the 10K then? I'm going to use 1:22 - the Garmin time at 10km at Run to Read.

What's stopping me from setting PRs on my own outside of races then? I guess, technically, nothing. Except that for some reason, I run faster at races. I tried to beat my 5K and 10K PRs outside of a race but I can't. I call this the "Race Day Magic Energy Boost."

So there, I just re-defined Personal Record to be more "Personal."

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