This is not a decision market - barring some good reason not to, I am going to try this at some point in the coming months. This is a predictive market, though I wont bet on it since evidence for resolution comes via me (I'll try to show good evidence like a photo of my Garmin watch).

(And before anyone comments: yes I know you have to taper Clonidine)

I currently take Clonidine, which is prescribed off-label to address sleep disturbance caused by stimulant medication. It works great for that. I take 150mcg in the evenings.

However, since I started taking it, I seem to not be able to run as fast. This isn't a problem per se - I run for physical and mental health, not to set records, but it made me curious whether the Clonidine is the cause (it might not be, it's certainly not a controlled experiment). Reading others' experiences on e.g. Reddit seems to suggest some other people do experience this sort of thing. It decreases blood pressure - I guess it makes sense it could impact exercise?

Here is a run from a little under a year ago, in which I was targeting an average pace of 5min/km:

Whereas here is a run from this week:

Which was significantly slower at a comparable average heart rate.

This second run incorporated interval training, so whilst I wasn't targeting a specific speed, I was not holding back on the fast bits of the intervals, this felt like a tough-ish run. Normally I expect interval training to result in higher average speeds than running to a target pace, so this slower average pace surprised me a bit. This was also the second example - I also did interval training a few days prior with a similar result.

For most of the past year I've focused on slower runs in order to avoid injury, otherwise I'd have more examples - I'm increasing speed again now because injury seems to have not reared its head in a while. In the past after running slower for a while I have not really had any trouble increasing speed like that, and 5min/km has been reasonably well within my abilities for a long time.

I thought the slower runs were harder too after starting on Clonidine, but that seemed more subjective (and pace vs heart rate data does not seem to support any conclusion), whereas when I went harder with the interval training, it seemed like that was clearer evidence that I can't run as fast at the same level of exertion as before.

I'll try to get some more controlled data by attempting a 5min/km constant pace run soon-ish. The above interval training was in the evening on a weekday on which I'd taken stimulant medication in the morning, but to be more controlled I should attempt on a Sunday (I don't take stimulants on the weekend, but I do still take Clonidine). It's possible a more controlled attempt will invalidate my hypothesis, in which case I will probably NA this market.

Anyway, on to resolution criteria. At some point in the coming months I'll taper down my Clonidine dose to zero (this will take at least three weeks). This isn't a priority, because other experimentation with medication dose and timing tweaks are more likely to happen first, but is something I plan to do at some point.

At that point, and waiting to be not sick or anything else that you'd expect to impact running performance significantly, I'll attempt to run 5km in 25 minutes. I'll do this on the weekend after a good night's sleep and no stimulants that day or the day previous, and no alcohol the previous day.

For this market to resolve YES, barring something like a sudden injury or freak magpie attack cutting my run short, I must succeed on the first attempt, otherwise it resolves NO. The point of this is that it's something I expect I should be able to do relatively easily.

It wouldn't be in the spirit of this market if I can run 5km in 25min, but only by being near my max heart rate, hence I've put an upper limit (exclusive) of 190bpm average (my max heart rate is something like 215bpm). This means I can go up to 7bpm faster than the March 2023 run, which seems pretty generous.

I've got a good smart watch that I can use to track my average speed and ensure that I am targeting just under 25 minutes without going excessively fast and going over the 190bpm average unnecessarily. If I screw this up for dumb reasons like incorrect mental arithmetic, I reserve the right to re-attempt, otherwise it stands.

My running is mostly on a grass athletics track with negligible elevation change. In the first screenshot above I ran only at the track, whereas in the second one I ran from my house to the track first, which is about 1km, but the extra elevation change is not much. Future controlled runs for this market will be exclusively at the track.