As a adorned faculty runner at Notre Dame after which on the College of Tennessee, Dylan Jacobs dabbled with a tool that lots of his teammates thought-about indispensable.
However on these uncommon events when Jacobs succumbed to look stress and slapped a GPS watch round his wrist, he nearly instantly remembered why he had resisted the temptation within the first place.
“The runs simply felt a lot longer,” mentioned Jacobs, 23, a three-time N.C.A.A. champion who lately turned professional. “That was considered one of my principal issues with it. I wasn’t having fun with myself or wanting round. As a substitute, I used to be form of wanting on the watch each quarter-mile to see how for much longer I had left.”
GPS watches — fashionable manufacturers are Garmin, Suunto and Coros — come outfitted with satellite tv for pc expertise and coronary heart price screens to supply a buffet of functions. Need to understand how far and how briskly you’ve run, or what number of milliliters of sweat you dumped in Central Park final weekend? How about your common stride size? Your cadence? The listing goes on.
For a lot of, GPS watches are a remarkably helpful coaching instrument. However there are different runners, together with world-class runners like Jacobs, who’ve a tough time understanding the fuss. To them, a smorgasbord of knowledge is extra hindrance than assist. And get this: Some runners don’t put on watches in any respect.
“I prefer to focus extra on the texture of all the pieces and never fear an excessive amount of concerning the time,” Jacobs mentioned.
Heather MacLean, an Olympic 1,500-meter runner, recalled a interval of her life when she loved the utility of a GPS watch. As a pupil on the College of Massachusetts, she grew to know the worth of sleep — and extra necessary, that she was not getting sufficient of it — whereas working in a neuroscience laboratory. So she started utilizing a Garmin Forerunner to watch her relaxation and modify her schedule.
Later, as a first-year professional with Workforce New Stability Boston, MacLean tried to be constant about carrying a GPS watch however was hampered by a few points. First, she was at all times forgetting to cost it.
“I’d simply let it die on a regular basis, and I’m tremendous lazy with that form of stuff,” she mentioned.
Second, MacLean realized her watch was draining the enjoyable from her runs. It was particularly obvious to her throughout a low-key stretch when she was merely making an attempt to construct health.
“I hated that each run I went on, I felt like I needed to test my tempo and my distance and no matter else,” she mentioned. “So I simply determined that I used to be going to put off it for some time and swap to an everyday watch.”
She by no means went again. MacLean, 28, who now wears an Armitron Dragonfly that she mentioned she picked up for $10 at Walmart, acknowledged that there have been sure exercises when a GPS watch would come in useful, like when she did a tempo run by herself. (Tempo runs are sooner than simple jogs, and regularly run at a prescribed tempo.) However Mark Coogan, her coach, has lengthy prioritized effort over pace, and MacLean logs her coaching in minutes reasonably than in miles.
“I do know I’m on the elite stage now, so not all the pieces goes to be joyful,” MacLean mentioned. “However when there are issues that carry me lots of pleasure, I’m going to put money into them. And a kind of issues is the power to keep away from specializing in my tempo throughout my runs.”
With out the stress of feeling as if she must account for each mile — or, perish the thought, submit her exercises for public inspection on Strava, the exercise-tracking platform — MacLean has additionally gotten higher about listening to her physique. She has no qualms about bailing on an additional exercise if she is feeling beat.
“And I’ll inform Mark that I’m going for a stroll as an alternative,” MacLean mentioned. “And he’s like, ‘OK!’”
Sam Prakel was a highschool standout in Versailles, Ohio, when the assistant coach of his cross-country workforce launched him to the magic of GPS watches. Prakel invested in a single. It was a mistake from the beginning.
“I simply began working too quick on all my runs,” Prakel mentioned, “and it grew to become more durable to get well from them as a result of I used to be so centered on my tempo. I discovered fairly rapidly that it wasn’t good for me.”
Prakel opted as an alternative for a Timex Ironman, which he wore via his freshman 12 months on the College of Oregon. When the band snapped in his sophomore 12 months, he ordered one other. Prakel, 28, has worn the identical no-frills watch ever since — via his time at Oregon, the place he was a five-time all-American, and in newer years as a professional miler for Adidas. He has by no means wanted to vary its battery.
The reigning U.S. indoor champion within the males’s 1,500 and three,000 meters, Prakel has a system that works for him, which is a throwback in a way. What did any runners do earlier than the appearance of GPS watches? They estimated. In Prakel’s case, a 65-minute run is roughly equal to 10 miles and a half-hour jog is nice for 4 miles. He doesn’t should be exact.
“So long as I do the identical issues each week and maintain it constant, that’s all that issues,” he mentioned, including: “I really feel like I’m in a greater place once I don’t have all that knowledge to fret about.”
For some runners, aesthetics additionally matter. Luke Houser, a junior on the College of Washington who gained an N.C.A.A. championship within the males’s indoor mile final winter, wears a vintage-inspired Casio with a digital show and a gold steel band. His teammates merely discuss with it as “the gold Casio.”
“I simply suppose it appears to be like cool,” he mentioned. “I’ve by no means been inquisitive about cadence or coronary heart price, which I don’t suppose is ever that correct anyway. All you must know is how you are feeling and the time. That does the job.”
Kieran Lumb, who lately broke his own Canadian record within the males’s 3,000 meters, is properly conscious that he’s the kind of one who is inclined to the candy lure of knowledge.
On the College of British Columbia, Lumb majored in electrical engineering. Later, whereas working at Washington, he earned a grasp’s diploma in data methods. And for the longest time, nobody who knew him was stunned that he maintained an Excel spreadsheet to catalog his sleep, exercises and one thing he known as “rated perceived fatigue.”
“Simply making an attempt to perform a little bit of knowledge science on myself,” he mentioned.
The twist is that Lumb, 25, who now runs professionally for the athletics attire model On, has not worn a GPS watch since he was a aggressive cross-country skier rising up in Canada. He made the swap as a university freshman to a Casio calculator watch that didn’t also have a correct lap perform for monitor exercises.
“So I’d simply have to recollect all my splits,” he mentioned, “and it was superior.”
Lumb famous that as a result of many runners are naturally aggressive, they’ll change into obsessive about numbers. And the enterprise of creating it to the highest of the heap as an elite runner may be particularly taxing.
Because of this, Lumb’s coach, Andy Powell, tries to maintain issues so simple as attainable. For Lumb, that has meant ditching his Excel folder in favor of Powell’s old-school strategy: weekly exercise sheets that his runners fill out and file in three-ring binders.
“There’s one thing good about slowing down and writing it by hand that I discover nearly endearing,” Lumb mentioned. “It’s taken some time for me to be much less neurotic, nevertheless it’s liberating.”
