Running With Too Much Data

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I started running when I was twelve. I didn’t have a watch, and didn’t see a reason to have one. If I needed to time myself for something, I used one of my dad’s old watch faces, but that was rarely necessary. I ran based on how I felt, and measured distance with the odometer of my family’s pickup truck. When I was seventeen, my track coach insisted we all get watches. Nothing fancy, just a cheap Timex from Walmart. Mine was maybe ten dollars.

We timed our intervals; mile repeats, 800’s, 400’s, 200’s. My coach recorded everything, but I didn’t really think about it. I learned what running a 6 minute mile felt like, what an 8 minute mile felt like. I learned what pace I could maintain for a mile or two or three. I learned when my body would be able to push.

In college, I kept my Timex. We trained more by time than by distance, so if we had a 60 minute easy run on the docket one day, we didn’t know (or really care) how far we ran. Our coaches measured loops for us on a golf course and we did interval work there. Sometimes we would wear heartrate monitors and every so often, we’d all do a VO2 max test. Our data was stored on paper in haphazard piles on my coaches desk. I largely ran on feel, and learned to push past discomfort and pain, even when I maybe shouldn’t have.