With a few spare minutes this week, I read “Your Smartwatch May Be Impeding Long-Term Running Goals” by Jason Fitzgerald. It didn’t tell me much I didn’t already believe, but in our computerized age, full of data and metrics on everything, focused on optimizing the last 1%, I was glad for a little confirmation bias.
Collecting as much data as possible and diving in is a serious temptation for me. Once a year, I barely talk myself out of an Oura ring. I look at Whoop now and then. Having numbers for sleep, resting heart rate, recovery sounds amazing! But I’ve learned to not wear my watch to bed—I wallow and obsess in the day to day numbers, wondering what the trends are, focusing on optimizing.
It becomes an unnecessary stressor, though. The world is already full of headlines telling me I’m sleeping wrong, not scrambling my eggs perfectly, advising me on the best way to dine. Adding in a device to tell me I slept like shit? Well, I already know that. Worse, like the article telling me I’m not a perfect egg scrambler, I fear getting a good night’s sleep and the device telling me I did it wrong. Adding all this data, at least for me, leads to trigger stacking.
So I purposefully limit the data to a few key pieces. Even then, individual data points are mostly meaningless. The trends matter. Is the average pace on a particular route trending faster as similar efforts? Is my HRV within it’s normal range despite ramping up miles? For example, last week, everything was off. In the back of my head, I worried something was off, but I’d also spent several days at a friend’s bachelor party, partaking of way too much alcohol and cannabis. This week, the trends quickly moved in the right direction.
Fitzgerald’s piece also fit in with a recent conversation with Charlotte. We were talking about how we used to have more time. I’ve begun to wonder how much that sense of less time is connected to our devices helping us “optimize.” Maybe the sense of time I had in the 90s had less to do with having time, and more to do with not being optimized. Maybe all that life happened in the inefficiency and boredom—arriving ten minutes early because you weren’t sure of traffic vs “Google Maps says to leave in five minutes because of traffic,” half listening to the radio for an interesting story vs always having an interesting podcast going.
So I’ve ditched much of the pressure to squeeze as much into life as possible. No more GPS just to know when I’ll arrive some place I’ve been to a hundred times. Trimmed subscribed podcasts so some days there’ll be nothing in the car but the radio. We even have a schedule for what TV show we’re streaming on what night—it eliminates the stress of “what are we watching tonight?” and keeps us from bingeing. In some ways it’s a version of Note to Self’s “Bored and Brilliant” series, cutting out distractions.
Weekly Summary
Goal: 54
Actual: 54.2
It was a good week! Shook off the remnants of a friend’s bachelor party. Mother Nature teases us with autumn temps. Legs and body started feeling up to the challenge. This was probably my easiest 50+ mile week ever. In the past, a week like this would normally left me feeling broken.
Weekly Log
Mo: Meandered around Sperryville. Had a rough mileage in mind to hit, started the run with a set route, but then decided to tool around. Tried the greenway up to Penn Druid brewery, added a little here, some there. Nice change of plan.
Tu: Enjoyed a cool morning 5. Same idea as Monday. Nothing challenging. Legs felt more solid than in the last few weeks. Letting my legs and body recover for Wednesday’s long miles.
We: Solid 17 mile long run up Mt. Marshall. Warmer than expected. Ran short on water. Took the climbs and flats easy on the first 2/3s, then aimed for moderately hard on the last 5 going down. Everything felt pretty good! Looking forward to the rest of the week and training in a taste of fall.
Th: Despite the beautiful weather, it was a rest day.
Fr: Relatively cool and dry. After a rest day, legs felt good and ready. Turned in a nicely paced easy 5.5.
Sa: Figured it’d good to hit the track after the major change in running form. Nothing fancy, 4 sets of (2x200, 1x400). Fairly consistent bouts, legs and glutes kept going till the last 400. Hoping to see some neuromuscular gains and improved turnover.
Su: Easy recovery run up Old Hollow and then some. Feeling mildly fatigued, but wasn’t hard to keep a nice run/walk going to keep HR in upper Z1 to mid-Z2.