I’ll admit it: I’m a runner who lives by the watch. Ever since I got my Garmin five years ago, I’ve been using it for pretty much every run. I’m addicted to the data. I’ve gotta know how far and how fast, and during a run, I’ve gotta have continual feedback. Pretty sure I’m conditioned to salivate or feel a rush or whatever when I hear each kilometre beep.
Last season, though, I began to notice that I was glued to my Garmin during races. Not only was I checking my k splits, but I was also looking at my average pace between splits to make sure I was running the right pace. But there was a problem: if I was too slow, I would get frustrated and surge, wasting emotional energy and zapping my legs with unnecessary lactic acid. If I was too fast, I wouldn’t adjust my pace – I’d just rationalize: maybe I’m ready to run 10s per kilometre faster (I never was). In the end, all this Garmin watching was sucking the fun out of racing – and it was making me race worse.
So during a 5k race two years ago, I tried not looking at my Garmin. I still wore it, but I resisted the urge to look at each k marker – resisted the call of the beep. And you know what? I ran a PB. I thought, great – this is the key – the watch is slowing me down. I also filled my head with thoughts of how it was way cooler to “run by feel,” to detach from the technology, to run pure and naked.
But now I’m not so sure.
During the National 10k Road Race, I decided to go naked – no watch at all. I was peaked and ready to roll, and I didn’t want anything coming between me and my body during the run – I was going to kill my PB by feel alone. Like a Jedi (or something). And the thing is that it felt great – it was an awesome race. But when I rounded the last turn, I was shocked to see that my time was slow – a minute slower than where I thought I’d be, in fact.
So now I’m wondering if I blew my time in that race because I wasn’t checking my splits. Come to think of it, I wonder if I plateaued in races this season because I was running without a watch. Would I have pushed a bit harder if I knew my splits were slipping? Would a watch have kept me from falling back in the middle of races? The problem with running only by feel is that it’s easier to slip towards comfortable than to push into a manageable discomfort. Maybe having objective feedback from a watch could help me keep the hammer down.
For next season, I’m moving more to a middle ground between watch and no-watch. Other runners I know wear the watch but limit how many times they look. They’ll check the first mile to see what the pace is like, and then from there, everybody has their own plan. I did a half marathon once where I only checked every 5k, and that worked great. I find checking every k in a 5k or 10k is too much, so I’m going to experiment with how much feedback works best. I also have to work on not panicking if the pace is slow and actually easing up if the pace is way too fast. If I don’t use the feedback effectively, then there’s no point in having it.
So I’m going to try giving up the purity of the watchless race, but I’m not going to return to my data hog days. It’s all about finding the middle way, the golden mean, the bowl of porridge that’s just right. I’ll just have to watch and see.
