Pace Calculator

Runner's Pace Calculator for PalmOS®

Features

Pace is a sophisticated runner's pace calculator for PalmOS® devices. With Pace you can:

Enter a time for any distance and Pace will calculate your pace for all other distances. For example, enter a time of 2:05:00 for the marathon and discover that your mile pace was 4:46.0.
Predict your time at other distances based on an entered time for any distance. For example, enter a time of 4:46.0 for the mile and discover that your projected time for the marathon is 2:45:16.7 (of course it's different, you don't run your fastest mile 26 times straight!).
Adjust the prediction formula by matching it to your own performance by entering actual times from different distances.
Customize Pace by entering the distances you are interested in.
Save profiles of adapted performance prediction and distance for as many runners as you want and load them and change them at any time.

Purchase Pace Now - $9.00

The registered version of Pace costs $9.00.

Download and Install

You can download the trial version of Pace here.

To install Pace follow these instructions:

Download pace_calculator.zip.
Unzip pace_calculator.zip in a directory of your choice.
Install pace.prc on your handheld device. This can normally be accomplished by double-clicking on the pace.prc file from Explorer and then HotSyncing your device.
Pace requires Mathlib, a free math library for PalmOS®. Many Palm devices already have Mathlib installed. You can attempt to run Pace without installing Mathlib--if Pace complains that it can't find Mathlib, then install Mathlib.prc from the directory where you unzipped pace_calculator.zip.
This documentation is provided in a subdirectory called "doc" when you unzip pace_calculator.zip.

Limitations of Free Version of Pace

The free version of Pace has all the features of the registered version. After the free version has run 3 times, however, it will add a delay to calculations each time it is run.

Using Pace

Starting and Registering Pace

When you first run Pace, it is unregistered. If you purchased Pace register it by selecting "Register" from the menu. Enter the registration code that your were given when you purchased Pace.

If registration fails, be sure you have entered the exact code as given at purchase time. If it still fails, you probably entered an incorrect Palm User ID at purchase time. The registration code is based on the Palm User ID and is sensitive to case and extra spaces.

To verify your Palm User ID, run Pace on the handheld and select "Show Palm ID" from the menu. Pace will display your Palm User ID in regular text and in numbers representing each character. Send this information to me at tthkbw@verizon.net and I will send a corrected registration code.

Setting Times

Pace defaults to using 400 meters as the lap distance and then 1500 meters, one mile, 3000 meters, 5000 meters and the marathon as the other distances. The 400 meter time is set to 60 seconds and the times for the other distances are calculated and displayed.

You can change the times in two ways. First, you can increment or decrement the lap time by using the "+" and "-" buttons to the right of the 400 meter time display. Based on the setting of the pushbuttons on the top right of the screen ("+1" and "+.1"), the lap time is incremented or decremented by the selected value and a recalculation is done.

You can also touch any of the distance buttons on the left side of the screen and set a specific time for that distance. Doing this brings up the distance dialog where you can set the time. When you have entered the time, touch "Done" and Pace will return to the main screen and recalculate all other distances using time for the distance that you just set as the base.

Predicting Performance

Pace may also be used to predict times for distances given a time for some base distance. To do this, Pace makes use of a formula first developed by Pete Riegel and published in Runner's World, August 1977, in an article entitled "Time Predicting." The formula used is:

T2 = T1 x (D2/D1)1.06

where T1 is a known time for known distance D1, D2 is the known distance for which the time T2 is to be calculated.

To use Pace to predict your 3000 meter time based on a known 1500 meter time, for example, touch the 1500M button and enter your 1500 meter time. Then touch the selector button on the first line of the Pace screen to the left of the "Predict From" label. Select "1500M" from the drop-down list presented. This tells Pace to use the 1500 meter time and distance as the base for all predictions. Now touch the "Predict" button to the right of the 3000 meter time. Pace calculates the predicted time and displays it with a following "*" to indicate it is a predicted time.

Pace can calculate the time for any distance from any distance and time, although extrapolations become less realistic as the difference between distances becomes greater.

To remove predicted times and recalculate based on the lap time, select "ReCalc" from the menu.

Changing The Prediction Formula

You can change the prediction formula used by Pace by changing the exponent in the formula. To do this, select "Predict Data" from the Pace menu.

On the Prediction Ratio screen select one of the pushbuttons "+.1", "+.01" or "+.001" as the amount to increment or decrement the exponent by. Then use the "+" and "-" buttons to change the value of the exponent. Remember that this value is an exponent in the equation and small changes will have relatively large effects. Pace implements some limitations on the value, allowing exponents in the range of 0.3 to 3.0.

When you enter the Prediction Ratio screen, the runner's name is displayed under the window title. The next line has the current exponent for the prediction equation and the control buttons for incrementing and decrementing it. Below that are buttons used to load other runner's data, save changes to the current runner's data, or create a new data record.

The "Match" section contains the "Match" button and the distance and current time for the prediction base distance, and the distance and predicted time for the predicted distance. The prediction base distance and time are the same as those on the main screen when you enter the Prediction Ratio screen.

When you increment or decrement the exponent, the match time for the distance to be predicted is updated to reflect the change and give you an idea of the effect your changes are having.

Matching Known Performance Using Pace

You can also have Pace calculate an exponent for you based on times and distances you enter. To do this, follow these instructions:

Select the shorter distance using the selector on the left below the match button.
Touch the time button for the shorter distance and enter the time for that distance.
Select the longer distance using the selector on the right below the match button.
Touch the time button for the longer distance and enter the time for that distance.
Touch the "Match" button and Pace will calculate the exponent that most closely matches the ratios of time and distance.

Creating, Saving and Loading Runner Records

On the Prediction Ratio screen, you may create new runner records, save the existing record, and load previously saved records.

To create a new record, touch the "New" button on the Prediction Ratio screen. You are prompted for a name for the runner, then the data is saved. The data includes the runner's name, their exponent for the prediction formula, and the distances configured for them.

To save exponent changes, touch the "Save" button.

To load a different runner's data, touch the "Load" button and you are presented with a drop-down list showing previously saved runners. Select a runner and their record will be loaded.

Customizing Distances

You can also make any changes you like to the distances that Pace displays and works with. To do this, select "Configure" from the menu.

On the "Configure Distances" screen, touch any button and you are prompted to enter the distance for that button and a label to identify the distance. Note that the labels have a maximum length of 32 characters, but only as many characters as will fit in the button border will be shown. Do not mix units in the distances entered.

All changes to distances are stored with the runner's record, so they may be restored at any time using the Load function.

Limits

Pace doesn't really care about units, but only about ratios. This means that you can enter distances in meters, feet, yards, inches or parsecs as long as all distances are entered in the same units.

Pace limits the exponent for the prediction formula to be in the range of 0.3 to 3.0.

Pace limits the maximum distance to be 100,000 of whatever unit you are using.

If Pace calculates a time that is too large to be displayed (greater than 99 hours), it will place "Too Big" in the time field.

Pace won't let you enter a negative time or allow you to decrement the time to a value less than zero. This is because I believe time travel to be impossible.

When you enter a time for a distance other than the lap distance, Pace recalculates all the times by first using the entered time to calculate the lap time and then extrapolating the other times from the lap time. Because of this, rounding errors could cause small differences between the time you entered for a distance and the time that is recalculated by this method. For example, if you enter 4:10:00.0 for the marathon time using the default distances Pace is configured with, Pace recalculates the marathon time to be 4:09:59.9. Oh well--you only care about that .1 second if that's what you lost by!

Each runner record is less than 200 bytes long. This means that if you have 200 Kbytes free on your Palm device, you could store records for 1,000 runners!

The Future of Pace

If there is enough response to Pace, I will add the calculation of VO2 max based on times for a given distance, and calculation of training paces based on times for given distances. Otherwise, I'll do something else.

Contact

If you have suggestions for Pace please feel free to email me at tthkbw@verizon.net.