Let’s talk about running and technology for a minute.
It’s a great tool, but it’s not everything. And it should never be something you can’t run without. The only things that should fall into the “can’t run without category” are clothes (assuming you run in a public place) and probably shoes. Nearly everything else including iPods, apps, and GPS watches aren’t necessities and you don’t need them to go for a run.
However, I have to admit, my garmin and I are nearly inseparable during marathon training. I’d like to think we have a healthy relationship though. At the end of every season, I put Pacey away for several weeks (yes, my gps watches are always given the name “Pacey”). This past week I put my garmin on my wrist for the first time since running the Chicago Marathon (read my Chicago Marathon recap here) in early October.
This year I’d like to challenge you to leave your gps watch or app at home at least once a week and I’ll do the same.
Why?
1. We need a break from being so Type A all the time. Numbers don’t always add up to meaning anything significant and it’s important to let go and just run. It’s freeing to not worry about pace, mileage, distance, etc and just go with the flow.
2.GPS Watches don’t always keep you honest about your workout. We all have these ideas of what paces we should hit during specific types of workouts, but most workouts you do should be ran by effort level, not by a prescribed pace. By forcing oneself to keep up with a specific pace by keeping an eye glued to a GPS watch means we often neglect to listen to what our body is actually telling us.
By listening to our bodies and not simply looking at the pace on the screen of a GPS watch, that may mean that some days tempo effort might be an 8:00 mile and another day it might be a 7:45. One day an 8:00 mile feels like an effort level 9 (which is not tempo effort, by the way), while another day it feels more like an effort level 7 (tempo effort on a scale from one to ten). You don’t want to cheat yourself by running too easy and you don’t want to put yourself in a hole and ruin other workouts by running too hard of an effort.
To run your best you have to be honest about how you’re feeling not force yourself to hit certain paces just because you believe you’re suppose to be hitting them. If you can’t hit specific paces that you need to without looking at your watch, then it’s time to reset your goal.
3. Run just to run. Running and training are great, but I’m pretty sure most of us train because we once ran because we discovered just how much we loved putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. If you want to sustain your relationship with running for a lifetime, include more GPS-free running and run just for the sake of running.
Suggested times to run without a watch:
– Recovery runs
– After you’ve been sick
– Fun runs
– Recovery runs
– Shakeout runs
– Recovering from an injury or a time period off from running
Will you join me once a week in 2015 and run gps-free? Tag your gps-free runs on instagram and twitter with #GPSfreeRUN.
This is great advice! I think it’s easy to get so focused that we all forget to have a good time and stop obsessing over the numbers. I need to toss my watch more often! I think some of these reasons are the same for why I stopped using the scale haha!
Great idea! I am collecting too many good resolutions reading everyone’s posts!
This is a hard one for me because I like to have a pretty accurate mileage log throughout the year. I can definitely see the benefit though. I’ll think about running my regular 3 mile route with just my Timex watch instead of my GPS. It’s a compromise, I guess! 🙂
I agree with you, I often get thinking about my pace or time too much and my “fun run” is not so fun. I am getting ready to start training for another marathon and will take this advice and share it with others. Thanks!
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