Can you run faster?

Alexis Yelton

Runners want to run fasterWhat goal should you set for a half marathon time?

What training programs do the fastest runners follow?

Data from Strava.com

Elevation gain this month

Number of rest days per week

Pace

Hal

f mar

atho

n tim

e (m

in)

Age

Time series, demographic, and aggregated running data on 10,000 runners. 1,000 with half-marathon times and other features.

Log

half

mar

atho

n tim

e

Log distance run this month (mi)

Pace

Distance past month Weight range

Time past month Age range

Pace past month Number of rest days/wk

Distance past 6 months Number of long days/wk

Gender Sdev pace

Data from Strava.com

Pace

Hal

f mar

atho

n tim

e (m

in)

Sex

Age range (years)

Hal

f mar

atho

n tim

e

Weight range (lbs)

Analysis

Benchmarking with a linear model 0.49 10 min

Nonlinear regression modeling1. Lasso regression 0.48 10 min2. Ridge regression 0.48 10 min3. Random forest regression 0.66 8.3 min

Regression r2

RMSE

Validation:179 runners3-fold cross-validation 0.79 6.2 min

Seems to be related to a different distribution in the test set. Possibly because of importance of outliers.

Your average pace over the past month is the most important feature by far.

Results

Variable importancePace past month

Distance past month

Distance past 6 months

Elevation past month

Rest days

SD pace

Weight

Long days

Age

Gender

Decrease in node impurities

About me: Alexis Yelton, MIT postdoc

Genomics for understanding ecosystems:Discovery of novel organisms, metabolisms, and ecosystem functions such as large organic compound breakdown by marine cyanobacteria (Tara Oceans data set 7.2 terabases of DNA)

Chitinase in marine Synechococcus

Chiti

nase

acti

vity

Wet lab science for validating discoveries: My first half

marathon:1:56:30

Personal best:1:47:56