Tightening the feedback loop

At Elevated Rails, we love agile development. I has worked incredibly well for us. So what happens when I tighten the feedback loop on another part of my life? It turns out a tight feedback loop makes a huge difference for a runner as well.

Along with owning Elevated Rails, I'm also an avid runner. I ran the Chicago Marathon last year in just over 4 hours. I'm running it again this year and want to finish closer to 3:45. I know I need to improve my pace to get there.

In the past, when I've timed my runs, I use a stopwatch and check my time every mile or two. That works, but it requires a lot of thought. You have to not only remember the time of your last mile marker, but remember the pace you're aiming for and then figure out the difference. It doesn't sound like a lot, but after 16 miles, any amount of thought takes effort. I've found this style of feedback to be so cumbersome, I rarely time my runs. That means I'm running blind.

Or at least I was until yesterday. I picked up a Garmin Forerunner GPS device. It makes a huge difference! For my first run, I set alerts to tell me when I was running slower than a 9:15 mile, and faster than an 8:30 mile. It made a huge difference. There were quite a few times that my lack of focused caused me to slow down without even noticing it. The end result was almost a 30 second per mile speedup.

So where else can we tighten the feedback loop?

Posted by Mike Mangino on Sunday, May 13, 2007