running: the dawn

If you have been around for very long you’ll already know 1.) I am a math teacher, 2.) I strongly dislike statistics, and 3.) I am teaching statistics this semester.  Needless to say I’ve been slightly stressed with this class looming on the horizon for the past few months.  Well the week has finally come and my challenge to teach something that I don’t enjoy is upon me.

So, what’s a teacher to do?  Make it work!

Yesterday, I finally got around to running my long run from last weekend.  On the schedule I was supposed to run 15 miles with 12 at marathon pace (sub 8:27).  Since I was running this on a Wednesday and therefore would not have the same kind of mental fortitude that I muster on a weekend long run, I didn’t hold out high hopes.  I figured, I’ll start out easy and see what happens.  It was a glorious 63 degrees when I started the run and there was NO humidity.  It felt so amazing!  My long runs usually follow the same rhythm: I start out slow and gradually speed up through the miles.  So I was surprised that my first couple miles were sub-9.  I didn’t let it spook me, I just kept plugging away figuring that I’d probably get down to marathon pace and I’d see how long it would last.

That’s when I started throwing down!  Like whoa.  There were a lot of 8:20′s and a couple of 8:10′s.  I was super surprised by how strong I was feeling and how great I was running.  I thought that I would probably be pretty close to having at least 12 miles average to marathon pace.

Imagine my surprise and delight when, upon finishing the last mile, I checked my stats and my overall average pace was 8:26!  Say What?  15 miles at marathon pace?  Last training cycle I don’t think I even ran 10 miles at my goal pace!  And my training plan only calls for the 12-mile pace workout.  Oh man, does it feel good!

So, how does this relate to my statistics class?  Well we’re currently learning about descriptive statistics.  Today I decided that I would put the question up to them: Did I complete my workout goal?  You see, when you look at the mile splits, there aren’t 12 miles that were clocked under 8:27.  But when you take the average over the entire run, it is lower.  I listed out all my split time (not including the total time or average pace) and asked them to figure out the best way to answer the question.  They had to work with the other people at their table to decide what the best way to figure out the answer based on the data they were given.

Two out of the three groups decided yes, I did meet my goal, but the third could not overlook the lack of 12 sub-goal pace miles.  It ended up being an interesting conversation about how data can be interpreted and what questions are important to ask when analyzing information.

See?  This is how I’m going to survive teaching this class!  Making it about something I care about.  Hmmm, maybe I should make it about something the students will care about….there’s a novel idea!