Presto Pete's Proofed Pudding

Welcome back to part 3 of the Presto Pete's Personal Training Program for Plateaued Performers. In case you are just tuning in to this broadcast, here are some quick links to Parts 1 and 2 of the Presto Pete Program to help get you up to speed:

http://www.lisabondphotography.com/blog/free-personal-training-with-presto-pete

http://www.lisabondphotography.com/blog/presto-petes-program-for-increasing-workout-speeds


It's time to find out if this program works and if so, is it worth it?  I rely on an iPod and the Nike program that was installed on it to track my progress.  This is not new technology and has been around for several years. Most likely, there is something much better than this app, but it has worked well for me since I've been using it.

The only nuance to the Nike app is that I do not get reliable results as far as distance is concerned. I generally always run the same route every time, so one would expect the same distance to be covered time and again. The iPod is picky about movement and if you stand still for too long it will pause the workout.  That's fine but it can very + or - 1/2 of a mile depending on how bouncy the ride is for the iPod.  That would include what I'm wearing and how loose the iPod is. So, without discussing this any more, suffice it to say that we are not going to look at the distance covered because it is always the same.  We're just going to focus on the time it takes to do this run.

I know from driving the route that it should be about 6.7 miles.  I recalibrated the iPod awhile back and every once in awhile, I recalibrate it by accident, throwing everything regarding distance and miles per hour off kilter.  These are some of the finer details that separate the wheat from the chaff in the science department.

To be fair, we need to compare the same days of the week. Traffic is much worse and can cost considerable time to cross intersections during the week and is much less of an issue on the weekend. If you notice big dips in the curves, it's most likely because I was waiting to cross the road.

Having laid the groundwork, let's look at the actual statistics.
​
Here is a weekday run before Presto Pete's program:

and after:

All right, so that's a little hard to read but the "before training" clocks the run in at 1:31:16 and using the new program the clock says 1:22:27.  That is really awesome.

Now let's look at the weekends.
​
Before the training program:

and after:

Before the program I ran it in 1:32:10 and after it looks like 1:24:03.

Now I can hear some of you out there saying "That's really cute Lisa but I don't see any difference between the times of your weekday and weekend runs so what kind of reliable personal trainer are you?" and the answer is I don't have an answer. It's almost like I stopped off and had a doughnut or something on Sunday except I didn't.  I'll see if I can drum up a better explanation for you soon.

It's early in the experiment to see how this will impact my speed overall, but so far utilizing Presto Pete's Program has shaved 8-9 minutes off my run. I have definitely impressed myself and I hope you too.

Of course there are lots of sub-tests that could be done such as alternating sprints with slower activity. And maybe I will do something like that, but for now, this program will return to it's regularly scheduled broadcast of photography, music, food and Minnesota.
​
As always, thanks for stopping by and for those of you in the States, I hope you are enjoying the Fall weather.