Unwatchful
I always run with a watch, feeling incomplete without it. In the 70’s when I started distance running, it was a Timex Ironman, at that time the state of the art. It gave total time and splits when you punched the lap button. Pretty basic by today’s standards. I knew the approximate distance of the routes I ran and would thus calculate an average pace. I kept logs from inception on miles run per week, month, and year.
I kept buying new models of the Ironman until the Garmin Forerunner 205 came out in 2006. That was a game changer! It gave new kinds of data! Most notably: time, cumulative and current pace, automatic mile splits, and retained history of runs that could be looked at later.. The practical side was it opened up where I might run – I could take new routes, do loops instead of out-and-backs. And so on. GPS harnessed my penchant for feedback. The time, distance, and pace it showed found its way into my training logs.
I know people who run (and even race!) without a watch or GPS. And I’ve been apt to think – “they’re missing an important feedback loop that detracts from their running performance.” But I’ve recently been reading Christine Felstead’s book Yoga For Runners, looking to incorporate some yoga to address ongoing hamstring issues. Maybe I can be called an older dog still interested in learning some new tricks! She suggests, if even just one day a week, running without concern for time or distance. A challenge for someone so reliant on their GPS. But yesterday, I gave it a try.
To be honest, I knew where I was going – along the bikepath up to the Lakeview Cemetery entrance 2.5 miles away and back. I’ve run this route so many times with my GPS, I know the exact mile marks. So, I wasn’t really going cold-turkey. But leaving the watch at the gym, I started out, committed to paying closer attention to things I regularly passed. What might I notice? As I entered Waterfront Park, I noticed there were chairs on the upper deck of the ECHO science museum. Had they always been there? Then, taking the boardwalk, which parallels the bikepath, I noticed some people with a map, slowed briefly, asking if they were visitors. In broken English, they said they were from Italy. I said “welcome” and went on my way, only to see them on the way back when I called out “Italy” with thumbs up as I passed. They smiled and must have thought this was a pretty friendly place.
Instead of turning around at the Lakeview Cemetery, I went through the always-open gate. I was always in too much of a hurry to go in. Today I did. There were a number of tombstones with American flags. The dates suggested these were people who fought in one of the wars. How were their lives changed (or ended) by that experience? What was it like leaving your family for years to live in hostile lands? What was it like for the families when they returned? These were not questions I had contemplated when rooted to my GPS.
On the way back, after passing the Italian visitors, I stopped in the Local Motion bike rental shop, which I’ve passed hundreds of times but never been in, to inquire whether they had an air pump with a small enough nozzle to reach the valve of our kayak cart tires, which had been flat and unusable for a year. They had four pumps, none of which would work, but we talked about the various places I might try.
Getting back to the gym, my starting point, I marveled about what had just happened, as I did some stretching, a couple yoga poses, and lights weights. For the first time in many years I had run without a watch. Yes, I knew the approximate distance so I could enter it into my log. My average pace may have been a bit slower than usual. Not sure. And, surprisingly, I didn’t care! I had done what many people regularly do – I just ran!
I see doing this occasionally, maybe even weekly, going forward. Who knows what I might see and find besides what my GPS watch is telling me?