PR's and Why I Care About Them

In the running world, the acronym 'PR' refers to a Personal Record, or fastest time in a particular event.  They are also known as PB's (Personal Bests) and there are analogous statistics for seasons (SB), countries (NR/NB) and even for the whole world (WR/WB). National and world records/bests have slightly different meanings due to 'official records' not being kept by various governing bodies for certain events, but that doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me.

Why do I care about PR's?  I care about my own PR's because they're one of the ways that I measure my improvement.  Since one of my goals is to run faster in races, if I run a race better than I have ever run before, that's important to me. But if running is an individual sport, why would I care about other peoples' PR's? There are a couple reasons:

• To know if they're credible or not.  When I get running advice from someone, one of the things (but not the only thing) I look at is their PR's.  If that person has PR's that indicate that either he or she has done something right or has experience, they are more credible in my eyes.  If they have PR's that indicate inexperience, they are less credible.
• To know how I compare to them.  If I am considering entering a race, I look at the PR's of the other people I expect to be in the race.  Based on my goals, that may factor into my decision.  For example, if I am targeting a race to try and improve my time in a big way, I will be looking for people whose PR's are about the same as mine or within a reasonable range faster than mine.  
• In order to better get to know them and their goals.  A person's PR's can indicate how much time they spend running, how long they've been running, and which events they've been focusing on.  My mile PR (4:19.70) is much better than my 10k PR (35:08).  This is because I've run dozens of miles and focused my training on that event and only two lifetime 10k's.

So if you're a competitive runner, a weekend warrior, or just considering starting running, know your PR's!  They're important to other runners.  It's important to know your mile, 5k, and marathon PR's (if you have them) because everyone has run at least one mile and can identify with that, the 5k is probably the most commonly raced event right now, and the marathon, for better or worse, is the gold standard for distance running.