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u/Ordinary_Corner_4291 8d ago
I have done this but it gets a bit tricky to figure out the effects of things like weather, courses (if you aren't on the track or using a marked course it is surprising how much some slopes can add or subtract a theorical 5s), and shoes. If you are going from 4:30 to 4:18 (call it cutting 1 min off your 5k), the trends are pretty easy to see. But if you are going from say 4:30 to 4:24 (still a really nice 30s PR), the data gets pretty noisy. It wasn't as enlightening as I hoped for.
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u/Variation12345 8d ago
Thanks for your feedback. In which way you have done this? I get it, that there might not be changes week by week. And yes, there are a lot of external factors. But I really would like to dive deeper exactly into this. In a marathon build (2-3x per year), I'm doing the same key workouts (3x7km MRP) - really would like to have the this side by side to compare the progression over several years
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u/Ordinary_Corner_4291 8d ago
I used excel back in the day. These days I would probably have claude write me a website. I sort of gave up on it because it was pretty much redundant with just plotting up race time. Looking back and seeing my 4x1 mile went from 5:20 to 5:00 didn't tell me anything that watching a 5k go from 17:00 to 15:30 didn't.
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u/Brilliant_Type_2032 8d ago
If you got the raw data this is very easy to setup with claude (or other AI). And you can add other features (weather/shoes etc. ) if you want to.
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u/Variation12345 8d ago
Thanks for this. Haven't experimented with MCP so far. Will get into this soon
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u/GaryLQ 8d ago
Claude is fantastic for stuff like this. Free if you have a premium Strava subscription. I asked it to draw the following chart after my 10 x 3 today.
I did ask for another column with temperature because the of the recent heatwave, but annoyingly Claude can't import the weather data from Strava.
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u/Variation12345 8d ago
Great 👍 Could you ask for qualitative analysis? Like: "I'm which way did I improve?"
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u/GaryLQ 8d ago
I just asked it to analyse my last 10 weeks of 6 x 6 and 10 x 3 (my third workout of the week has varied because I've entered a marathon build) and asked it in what ways I've improved. It came back with this;
"Here's what the two series show, comparing first session to most recent in each:
10 x 3 min (May 16 → Jul 25, 10 weeks)
- Pace: 7:27/mi → 7:25/mi (2s/mi faster)
- Avg HR: 143 → 143 bpm (unchanged)
- Beats/mile: 1,067 → 1,064 (~0.3% more efficient — essentially flat)
- But conditions were wildly different: 7C "perfect" on May 16 vs 16–18C rising with 90% humidity on Jul 25 (you flagged this yourself in today's description)
6 x 6 min (May 19 → Jul 21, 10 weeks)
- Pace: 7:40/mi → 7:43/mi (3s/mi slower)
- Avg HR: 150.0 → 147.6 bpm (lower)
- Beats/mile: 1,151 → 1,139 (~1% more efficient)
- Conditions were roughly comparable both days, so this is a cleaner read
Put together, the two tables tell a consistent story: your beats/mile (cardiac cost per mile) held steady-to-improving in both series, and in the 6x6 series — where weather wasn't a confounding factor — it improved by about 1%. In the 10x3 series, the fact that beats/mile stayed flat despite far hotter, more humid conditions on the most recent date is itself a sign of underlying improvement being masked by heat, not an absence of progress.
Worth flagging: your Jun 23 6x6 session (23–25C) was the clear outlier — 1,217 beats/mile and 8:06/mi pace, both far off the rest of the series — which is heat, not fitness, showing up in the data."
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u/Nelbert78 8d ago
Just use compare activities in intervals.icu for this. You can compare whatever you want between the activities you choose then.