Running Log - Parrott Predictor

For the 1st time in the five weeks of my half marathon training programme I ran on a Thursday. Usually this is a rest day for me and had been something to look forward to after running 5 days a week.


I am now at the stage of this training programme where there is no rest rest for the wicked, well there is one day on a Tuesday but I am now in to 6 days a week training. This is something I haven't done I doubt for years.

Tonight it was dark as I set out on an easy 5 miles at 9.15 pace. My Garmin Forerunner 205 recorded splits of 8.59,8.33,8.44,9, and 8.51 for a total of  44.10

Almost hidden away in my Dead Runners Society excel running log  is something known as the Parrott Predictor. I have used the software written by David Hays as detailed here. for many years as it is easy to use and is totally free. There may be other more up to date training logs out there but I haven't really searched for them. The David Hays running log is simple to use and can be downloaded and opened by any user with a version of Microsoft excel 97 or later.

You log your data on one page but there are about 17 tabs which all interrelate and take the data you have entered to provide you with alll many of statistics and graphs on performance.

The parrot predictor named after George Parrott of the Dead Runners Society attempts to give a rough estimate of the amount of time it would take you to run a marathon, based on the distances and times of running workouts that a person has recorded for the week.
If a person hasn't recorded enough running for the week, the predictor will simply read "sub 26.2 Mi week" (or "sub 42 km week" if recorded in metric) and no estimated pace will be shown.

My parrott predictions for the marathon show

Jan 11th 3.53.07
Jan 18th 3.50.36
 Jan 25th 3.49.50

I am not training for the marathon but I do think it is a good indicator that my training is going in the right direction