u/Getaclue49

I’m posting this here as the great “Strava tax” debate is so ubiquitous, but I’m aware this isn’t really an issue with Strava itself. However, I thought it’d be a good centralised point to ask from.

I recently ran my first 10km race and got a great chip time, yay!

I’d used Runna to complete the run, as it was the end of a 10km plan, and I wanted the pace reminders. I have an aging Apple Watch 7, but it’s always been fine during training and the odd park run here and there.

During the race, I had a sneaky suspicion that my GPS had gone awry after the KM reminders were way off the physical markers alongside the road, but at the end of the race, it’d measured the run as a whole 210m short, as a 9.79km.

Now, I know that it’s possible for the course to have been measured incorrectly, but I sample checked the activities of the other people Strava had linked to my run, and their runs seemed to be around 10.01km. They all were also using Garmins, of note.

I tried to correct the distance in Strava, but it whacked the total distance up to 10.5km and that messed with all my times wayyy too much. It has disappointed me a bit that I don’t have the correct information for my run, like my actual 5km split times, not to mention missing the 10km best effort.

I’m not here to rehash the fact that these errors will always happen, and it’s not the end of the world: I know it isn’t.

My question is: why do you think my watch was so out when others didn’t seem to struggle? Would switching to a Garmin help this issue? Or, was it a completely random fluke that could happen to any watch and I should stick with my old Apple Watch and stop looking to capitalism to solve my life.

Thoughts would be appreciated before I throw money at the issue, ty!

Hoping someone has some insight to share on this. I have my first race next weekend (10km) and I really want to try and get a decent time.

After having my baby last year, I’ve been running consistently since September 2025, starting with a C25K and then I moved to using a 10k Runna plan. During that time, I’ve been at a pretty decent calorie deficit and losing 0.5-1lb a week.

It doesn’t seem to have affected my training much, but there’s nothing in the plan really that would match the all out push of a race day effort. Speed sessions/intervals are short bursts that I can handle. Long runs up to 15k are usually at a conversational pace.

My question is: is it important to abandon a deficit when you have a race coming up for best performance? If so, how long before is it necessary to do so?

I know conventional wisdom is that extra fuelling etc is not needed for a 10k, so would eating higher cals the day before be sufficient? I know people are unlikely to give me an answer that will definitely align with my body but I’m interested to hear if any other long term dieters have faced this dilemma and what you did/how if affected your race?

I’m super close to my goal weight (6lb to go!) and don’t want to derail anything unnecessarily but want to be well prepared and feel like I came out swinging.

TY!