After the initial insights gleaned from wearing an Apple Watch over the first month or so, I felt I could recalibrate certain assumptions and so better listen to my own body. But I prefer traditional watches, and only strap on my smart watch before hitting the gym, assuming I manage to remember.
Long term, these devices hold enormous promise but today I just can't be bothered to make one my daily drive.
Almost 10 years ago I got my first wear all the time running watch. Prior to that I'd had an ancient garmin that I regularly forgot to charge and use because it was a pain and then just used my phone. I decided on the watch when I got sick and tired of the phone giving me inaccurate data. Specifically one day on a bike where it reported my path as going through a mountain.
I mostly ignore the whining about recovery and sleep and all the other things but they can be useful. For sure now that I'm in my 50s I need a day off to recover after hard exercise. If I don't do that I see the lack of speed in the subsequent workout. Interestingly it seems like if I run then bike that's worse than bike then run.
I agree with all this, even though I use a GPS watch and before that I used to time runs and work out the distances using a Google Maps app, and before that just ran the same routes trying to beat my own times. I tell myself that I use the watch to slow down and just concentrate on HR, although this doesn't work more often than it does, and use Strava to check that every run gets progressively faster, but this is hit-and-miss as well.
At the moment, I'm going through a phase where my heart rate is really high although like you, it doesn't feel like it, so all my metrics (I use Polar, Strava, and Intervals.icu) tell me that my fitness is going down, while I actually run faster at just about talking pace. I've thought about upgrading my watch to one that gives a recovery estimate, but I'm not persuaded that they have any validity.
I watch quite a few professional runners' YouTube Videos. On the one hand, there's Marco Arop who ran some tempo miles recently, and someone asked in the comments why he didn't do lactate testing like everyone else. I haven't checked if Arop replied, but he clearly knows how he feels, so testing is pretty much redundant data. On the other, there's Clayton Young who measures everything and seems to spend a lot of time crunching all the numbers his runs produce, and, well, it works for him. I'd rather be Arop than Young, but I am what I am, and am tempted to buy Stryd footpods instead of a new watch. My wife will kill me.
I know this isn’t the main purpose of the article, but I just use a cheap armband to strap my phone to my shoulder to track the run speed / distance on Strava. It’s just convenient enough to use that it’s worth it to check occasionally but inconvenient enough that you don’t want to check it constantly like a watch.
After the initial insights gleaned from wearing an Apple Watch over the first month or so, I felt I could recalibrate certain assumptions and so better listen to my own body. But I prefer traditional watches, and only strap on my smart watch before hitting the gym, assuming I manage to remember.
Long term, these devices hold enormous promise but today I just can't be bothered to make one my daily drive.
Almost 10 years ago I got my first wear all the time running watch. Prior to that I'd had an ancient garmin that I regularly forgot to charge and use because it was a pain and then just used my phone. I decided on the watch when I got sick and tired of the phone giving me inaccurate data. Specifically one day on a bike where it reported my path as going through a mountain.
I mostly ignore the whining about recovery and sleep and all the other things but they can be useful. For sure now that I'm in my 50s I need a day off to recover after hard exercise. If I don't do that I see the lack of speed in the subsequent workout. Interestingly it seems like if I run then bike that's worse than bike then run.
I agree with all this, even though I use a GPS watch and before that I used to time runs and work out the distances using a Google Maps app, and before that just ran the same routes trying to beat my own times. I tell myself that I use the watch to slow down and just concentrate on HR, although this doesn't work more often than it does, and use Strava to check that every run gets progressively faster, but this is hit-and-miss as well.
At the moment, I'm going through a phase where my heart rate is really high although like you, it doesn't feel like it, so all my metrics (I use Polar, Strava, and Intervals.icu) tell me that my fitness is going down, while I actually run faster at just about talking pace. I've thought about upgrading my watch to one that gives a recovery estimate, but I'm not persuaded that they have any validity.
I watch quite a few professional runners' YouTube Videos. On the one hand, there's Marco Arop who ran some tempo miles recently, and someone asked in the comments why he didn't do lactate testing like everyone else. I haven't checked if Arop replied, but he clearly knows how he feels, so testing is pretty much redundant data. On the other, there's Clayton Young who measures everything and seems to spend a lot of time crunching all the numbers his runs produce, and, well, it works for him. I'd rather be Arop than Young, but I am what I am, and am tempted to buy Stryd footpods instead of a new watch. My wife will kill me.
Really beautifully stated throughout. Trying to do better at this very thing currently. Cheers!
I know this isn’t the main purpose of the article, but I just use a cheap armband to strap my phone to my shoulder to track the run speed / distance on Strava. It’s just convenient enough to use that it’s worth it to check occasionally but inconvenient enough that you don’t want to check it constantly like a watch.
That was how I originally started logging runs, and I dislike the weight of a phone on my upper arm enough to not do it anymore.
Although I do often run to work with a little fanny pack with my phone / wallet in it, which doesn't bother me at all. Might try that out.
That chart also shows that we get happier as we age.
True, but the effect size is so small as to be effectively nil.
Measurement error. I’m 71 and 10X happier now than 50 years ago.
Mainly because I no longer give af