Gaming My Way to a BQ

In a previous post I described using some game mechanics to motivate myself to reduce my marathon PR by 40 minutes. I ended with a bold goal to drop nearly 20 more minutes off my marathon time in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon. This post is a description of the successes, failures, foolishness, and triumph of my 14 week quest to qualify for Boston, or as marathoners term it, to BQ.

First, none of this would be possible without an understanding wife and family. After some subtle hints and discussions I was able to persuade my angel of a wife to get on board with my plan to BQ and to even get excited about. I don't know if she had any idea of what she was in for.

Next, I needed a race to BQ at. Using the data at marathonguide.com I identified that a relatively close marathon, the Victoria Marathon on October 7 that had a reputation for qualifying runners for Boston. After a week of decompressing from the 2012 Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon I had 14 weeks to prepare.

As a true nerd I started my plans to BQ with a spreadsheet. I knew that to BQ I was going to have to run faster, longer, and stronger. After reading some articles and finding some training plans from Pete Pfitzinger I put together a simple table with milage targets to run each day for the 14 weeks leading up to the race. I also identified significant events and vacations that would impact my training plans and tried to schedule my lower milage weeks when I was going to be out of town or had a demanding week at work. This is the first training plan that I put together that included track work and tempo runs as a significant component of the training and both components were helpful in building speed and endurance.

Milage Plan with speed work and pace targets

I am blessed to live on a rather large hill that tops out at about 1,100 ft in Bellevue, WA and running the hills has definitely made me a lot faster as well. Plus the best views and trails are on the hills and keeping your runs interesting is core to ensuring the game stays fun.

In terms of game mechanics I had a grand plan that was on the second tab of my planning spreadsheet that was basically my training scoreboard. In it I had a countdown to the race with a row for each day. Each day I had several things to score myself on.

 

Scoreboard

The first was planned vs actual milage - I knew it was essential that I get the milage I needed into my runs.

The second was an effort score. One of the key things I learned about getting faster is that to do it you can't just take a leisurely morning jog. You have to run at the limits of your capabilities in order to increase them. The effort score is how I captured how hard I felt I ran that day. A 10 was pushing myself to the limit. A 9 was a very hard run. I gave myself a green if I got to a 8 and a red if I was 5 or below. I think this was the most important score for me in terms of getting faster.

I also had two other scores I tracked. Sleep points were based on if I was getting enough sleep. Basically I gave myself 10 points if I got 7 hours and took off points for less. Pit time is all about getting out the door in the morning. I gave myself some bonus points if I got out of bed quickly and out on the road.

I added a few more things to keep it fun. One was a list of achievements with a few prizes. I was tracking some of my times for common distances and for a trail loop around my neighborhood that I like to run. If I lowered my PR on the achievement I had some prizes. For example, on my trail loop I would get some new trail running shoes if I could lower my PR (which I did and got some sweet Solomon Wings). The ultimate achievement was the BQ which had a prize of an all expenses paid trip to Boston.

The other fun column is titled soundtrack. I would log the most inspiring song I listened to while running that day here. I had a plan to tweet all this stuff and build a massive following but life happened and I didn't get around to tweeting anything.

In fact, life got in the way of a lot of my game mechanic tracking. In reality I only kept up my spreadsheet for about five weeks before it just got to be too much work to fill in each day. I just got too ambitious with the amount of detail in the model and it became more of a chore than a game.

However, those five weeks were instrumental in getting my habits set for the rest of the long weeks of training.

One other tracking tool I did use religiously was my GPS run tracking app on my smartphone, RunKeeper. I have become totally dependent on it and can't start a run anymore without getting a GPS fix. It's a bit of a problem for me but I'm obsessed with collecting the data.

Where did all this lead? Well, I did meet my goal. I ran a Boston Qualifying time on October 7, 2012 at the Victoria Marathon in 3:09:38. You can see me in 84th place here. You can also watch a video of me finishing. I ran faster than I ever had before. It was touch and go at the end and I am still freaked out about finishing with only a 20 second margin of error. I was definitely at the limits of my capabilities though and the body would not go any faster during the last mile. At the finish line I was a jumble of emotions. I was screaming in triumph, crying, and laughing uncontrollably. It was a day I will always remember.

Did the gamification matter? As I've studied gamification trends I am convinced more and more that it only works in cases where the activity you are gamifying has intrinsic value. I wanted to do all the things in my training plan. They had intrinsic and personal value to me. However, they were also very hard. A lot of days I didn't want to wake up and run at 5:00 AM. In those cases I feel like gamification gave me the little push to get out the door.

I've now completed my registration for the 2013 Boston Marathon and I'm eagerly awaiting confirmation! Now I just need to find another goal to put together a spreadsheet for.