How trying to run faster led me to build a web app
I didn’t love running from the start. Not even close.
By the time I was in my 20s I had tried various sports but hadn’t found my thing yet. I was living a sedentary lifestyle with growing lower back issues. Running was not the sport advised for me to “fix it”. In fact, I was told running, being a high-impact sport, wasn’t suitable for me.
I had tried running a few times only to find out that it was every bit as hard as I remembered from those gruelling high school relay runs around the park that brought a taste of blood to my mouth. I dreaded that feeling. Little did I know back then that I would have loved it from the start if only I had run a lot slower.
An unexpected goal
Right before I turned 30 I decided to complete the Copenhagen marathon that was just 5 months away, having next to no running experience. My employer at the time was the main sponsor of the event and employees got a free ticket to the race. So, completing a marathon became my goal almost by accident.
My plan was to walk-run the 42 km around the city until I heard that my co-workers had bet I wouldn’t be able to complete the distance. My motivation became fuelled by my determination to prove them wrong. So, I started to train with a good friend of mine who had been running in her high school days and slowly something happened - I began to look forward to my runs.
I ran that marathon from start to finish in 4 hours and 12 minutes, convinced I would never do it again. But over time I had come to appreciate running, and more importantly, my back pain had miraculously vanished as running made me physically stronger. Yet, I struggled to run consistently without having a clear goal and training for another race gave me a reason to keep going.
So, for years I ran on and off, picking the next marathon and beginning training a few months beforehand. As I completed marathon after marathon, however, my ambition to get faster grew. I didn’t have a coach back then and I didn’t know how to train properly. I just ran.
The habit that changed my approach to training
Being data-driven by nature, I wanted to understand my progress in numbers, and somehow reverse engineer my current fitness toward my future goals. From April 2012 I started to keep a training log in Excel, which I later brought over to Google Sheets for a possibility to access my data everywhere. As of today, I have kept my training data in this same file for 12 years.
At first, I only tracked the distance, duration, and average pace of my runs along with workout comments. After I got a Garmin GPS watch with a HRM strap, I started to include heart rate (HR) data. The breakthrough occurred when I aggregated this data monthly and yearly, and created graphs to visualise my progress. This allowed me to interpret and understand my performance trends more effectively.
How I’ve increased my running distance (part of 2019-2020: maternity leave)
How my average running pace has improved and how seasonality has impacted my runs
Over the years, I added more and more variables to my table - time of day, type of training, high intensity proportion, cross-training, weather, feeling, perceived effort, overall health, run power, core body temperature, maximum heart rate, cadence. Later also heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate (RHR) and sleep quality that I was measuring with an Oura ring.
I didn’t mind logging this data manually because it helped me analyse my workouts, making me more aware of my training and progress. This practice continued to benefit me even after I started working with a running coach, as I shared my insights with him.
The surprising benefit of seeing progress
I tested different training analytics tools but couldn’t find a solution that was both straightforward and easy to use, while still being as informative and flexible as my basic Google Sheets file. My watch apps showed me some of the things I was tracking in my table but not the graphs and long-term trends I had grown to rely on.
I kept my data table all these years because it enabled me to track everything in one place, regardless of which watch brand I used. It gave me the freedom to look at my progress from different angles, ensuring that the data I recorded was accurate and measured, not estimated. It gave me the possibility to look at different data points and compare it to how I felt. But perhaps most importantly, it gave me the motivation to keep running.
I saw my average heart rate decreasing and the relationship between heart rate and average pace getting better. I began to notice how volume, intensity and different types of training impacted my performance and immunity. I realised how I would need to train differently as a woman in my 40s than my male counterparts in their 20s-30s.
Reviewing my running data over days or weeks provided a snapshot of my current fitness level. Analysing trends over months and years gave me a deeper understanding of my progress and boosted my confidence in achieving my goal of running a sub-3 hour marathon in 2021.
How my average heart rate and marathon pace have changed
How the relationship between my heart rate and running speed has grown
The epiphany to build KULG
Trying to figure out my own performance led me to research runners for my master’s thesis, build a Garmin watch app for marathoners and eventually become a running coach myself. After starting to coach other distance runners, I immediately realised how difficult it is to give effective guidance to someone without getting immediate feedback on how the person is doing both physically and mentally.
I then tailored my data table and methodology for my runners. Within a few months, I not only witnessed the remarkable progress they were experiencing but, even more significantly, I noticed that it instilled a sense of accountability and motivation in runners of all levels. The people who trained with a specific goal loved seeing how they progressed over time.
It was at this point when one of those runners asked me why I didn't start to offer my table along with my approach to tracking data to others. It was an interesting thought but the template I had created needed to be occasionally “handled” by someone to ensure that the data was flowing correctly and the graphs didn’t break.
This was the moment when I came to the idea to build my approach to training analytics into a product for runners and running coaches. I was lucky enough to find team members who shared my vision. Fast forward a year, and we are on the verge of releasing the first version of our web app to the people who have pre-registered. We decided to name it KULG, an Estonian word for “flow”, “forward movement”, “progress”, to celebrate the power of long-term consistency in running.
Maris is a marathon runner with 15+ years of experience from over 20 marathons, holding an age group Estonian marathon record. She is a certified running coach and the founder of kulg.io. You can also find her in Instagram with @projectrunbaby.
