I’ve been going on a treadmill for almost a year now. I took a picture of my results every time, and now I put everything into graphs to see if I improved at all. I’m not a hardcore runner, it’s mostly just to burn calories or get my blood pumped. My best record is 5K in about 27 minutes. Not bad, but not outstanding.
Data was sourced from the treadmill itself. I got a smartwatch halfway through the year, but decided to stick with the treadmill’s measurements for consistency.
Quantitative progress
Each graph has two data sets, shown by blue squares and orange diamonds. Blue squares use the left axis, orange diamonds use the right axis. Blue squares represent absolute data (distance, calories) and orange diamonds represent rates (speed, calories per hour).
- There are two gaps in the graphs. They correspond to when I was on vacation
- My runs before November all had a brief warmup and cooldown phase, which lowers the overall rates of these runs
Distance and speed
Honestly, I thought I would be running longer distances over time. But there’s a lot of days where I didn’t run for very long. It could have been a lack of discipline or stomach cramps, I don’t know. The data from February and March show a generally improving trend, but my distance swings wildly from July to October. After the second gap, I changed strategies from long distance running to aiming for 5K under 25 minutes. That explains the sudden rise in rates.
Calories and caloric rate
The calories graph almost perfectly matches the distance and speed one.
Time
Again, the data is consistent.
Qualitative progress
Here’s a few things I can say qualitatively:
- I’m surprised I actually ran this many times. 32 times in total
- It took a while to break the 7K barrier
- Running an intense 5K is more effective than running a slower 7K
- I can run for over 30 minutes reliably, unless I aim for 5K under 25 minutes
I’m not sure or not if I improved, but at least I showed a bit of discipline through running. I somehow managed to do it over 30 times in a year, which is a new record for me. I hope I continue in 2024 and maybe actually improve. At least their should be a health benefit that I can’t show through numbers.