Parrot Predictor

Great question, Mark! (in the comments section of one of the prior posts)

What is the Parrot Predictor ?
The parrot predictor 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 you have recorded for the week.
If a person hasn't recorded enough running for the week, the predictor will simply read "sub 26.2 week" (or "sub 42 km week" if recorded in metric) and no estimated pace will be shown.

It's part of Breakingthetape's reports, so I just threw it on there to see what happens over time.

Here's what it has shown over these last 8 weeks with the amount of miles I put in between parathesis:

Apr 07 3:40:24 (33.0M)
Apr 14 3:34:11 (46.0M)
Apr 21 3:44:35 (51.0M)
Apr 28 3:36:15 (49.0M)
May 05 3:31:40 (60.3M)
May 12 3:29:00 (72.6M)
May 19 3:35:14 (81.1M)
May 26 3:20:39 (69.6M)

(It would be nice to also show the average pace per week but at this time, it only does pace per overall month, or, weekly average pace per type of workout (and I have categories like Greenbelt, Austin Roads, and Townlake, and I'm too lazy to do the math for a combination of the three.)

Once September rolls around, and we move into speed work, i'm assuming that thing will dip down to right where I want it to be... 3 - 3:10 range. (and if it doesn't? well, i'll just take it off my blog, and call it a crappy tool!)

Other Parrot Predictor definitions I found by googling it:
"Basically Coach Parrot believed you cannot run a marathon any faster then your fastest 42km in training on any given week. At the end of each week it gives you your expected marathon time. It's an average of your fastest 42km of training for a given week, so it doesn't mater if you do 42km or 142 km your going to have some shorter fast runs and some longer slower runs, take your fastest 42km, avg it out and thats your marathon pace."

and this guy's got some mad Excel skillz and has Parrot preodictor in his homegrown spreadsheet!