# Green means faster than the best you ever did

> A splits panel measures you against your own best run, segment by segment, in green and red. It's the most emotionally brutal interface anybody has ever put on a screen.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/speedrun-timer-splits

Seven rows. A segment name, a running time, and a delta. Four of them green with a minus. Three red
with a plus. At the bottom, very large: `33:47.20`.

Every one of those deltas is a comparison with the best you have ever personally done. Nobody else
is involved.

## What is a splits panel?

A live comparison against your own record, broken into sections.

A run is divided into segments, and each segment has a best time you've previously achieved. As you
play, the panel shows whether you're ahead or behind — not overall, but *right now, at this point*.
Green means you're faster than you have ever been at this exact moment. Red means you aren't.

It's a running commentary on your own past performance, updating every few seconds.

## Why is it emotionally brutal?

Because the opponent is unbeatable and it's you.

Most competition lets you lose to someone else and go home. A splits panel compares you against the
best version of yourself, which is a standard you set and can never permanently clear — every
improvement immediately becomes the new thing to beat.

That's an unusually honest piece of interface design, and it's why people find it compelling rather
than discouraging. It also generalises well past games, which is most of the reason to print it.

## What should the segments be?

Anything divisible that somebody repeats.

A commute. A morning routine. A recipe. A training session. A shift. The format needs only three
things: named sections, times, and a comparison against a previous best. Almost every repeated
activity has all three, and most people have never seen theirs laid out this way.

The names are where it becomes personal —
[real names of real sections](/stories/cycling-shirt), not generic ones.

## Why does the colour do so much?

Because it removes the arithmetic.

Nobody reads `-2.31` and computes a feeling. They see green. The panel is designed so that a person
under pressure, with no attention to spare, gets the answer pre-digested — and that decision is why
the design has escaped speedrunning into fitness apps, dashboards and anywhere else people track
themselves.

Two colours carrying a whole judgement is also
[why it prints so well](/stories/limited-palette-prints-better).

## Can I print somebody's real record?

Their run is theirs, and the courtesy matters more than the law here.

Times aren't ownable — a number is a fact. What is somebody's is their name, their brand and the
implication of endorsement, and this is a community where records are personal achievements
attached to identities. Printing a well-known runner's splits reads as being about them.

Your own splits belong to you outright. A friend's, with a nod from them, is a very good gift.

## Should the total be that big?

Yes, and it's the reason the design works.

A wall of small figures with one enormous number at the bottom is a clean hierarchy: texture from a
distance, detail up close, and a single unambiguous headline. The total is the thing somebody would
actually say out loud.

Two decimal places matters. `33:47.20` is a measurement; `33:47` is a rounding.

## Does it print well?

Yes — precise tabular type is durable artwork.

Consistent row heights, aligned decimal points and uniform stroke weights all reproduce cleanly.
The risk is only density: seven rows is about right, and a real panel with twenty would turn to
texture. The deltas want to be set as large as the times, not smaller.

Black grounds with bone white type. Green and red used only on the deltas, and nowhere else — the
restraint is what makes them legible as a signal.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the run at [JustOG](/) — the segments, the times, and which ones you were ahead on. Pick a
direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and
shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Four green, three red, and a total that will be wrong by next week.