Can we be over techd? Over gadgeted ?
How much do we pay attention to what machines are telling us? And not listening to our bodies?
So clearly technology has its benefits. We can see how far we’ve gone. What time we’ve done it in. Check our heart isn’t about to explode. See how our pace is doing. Great!
But does all this technology stop us from actually listening to our bodies? For example you’ll know if your heart rate is rocketing. You’ll feel it. You’ll notice your depth of breath increasing. You’ll feel yourself slowing. So…do. Slow down. Catch your breath. Feel when you’re ready to push forward again?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for tech! I work for a tech company and its pivotal to our success, but for me, part of my training is to get out there and get away from all the tech. Recharge. Refresh.
So is there a happy medium?
How do you do it?
Swimming, I’m pretty confident, so I only really look at the clock at the start and finish. I know from my stroke rate or breathing rate how I’m doing. I know when I can push it a bit more (or not) and 9 times out of 10 I can tell how I’m doing and if I’ll finish on pace (or not!) with my quick times. And 9 times out of ten, it’s an accurate estimate.
Running, it’s good to know what pace I’m running at, but to be honest I only ever check it when we finish a run. We say to each other “middle section felt quick today” and sure enough it was. So we are already training ourselves to know what’s fast or not. What’s comfortable, or not. As I’m still learning my pace, it’s really good to review post run, but we often surprise ourselves how quickly we’ve gone, without measuring during the run.
Cycling is a bit more tricky as I’ve cycled more in the last four months of training than I have in the last 15 years, so I’m only learning my pace and cadence now. I’ve been hitting the gym bike over winter a lot, to start to learn a good pace over half hour or hour long intervals. This has helped my body learn when to push hard or when to relax a bit, but I realised after our Sunday ride that I was actually reading my phone, sat in its little pouch on my cross bar, so regularly I wasn’t truly concentrating on the ride. I was checking pace vs distance. Checking total time. Reading the route. I wasn’t just riding. That’ll come with time I’m sure. Or I just leave the phone at home and go for it!
But… It’s great being able to analyse what we’ve done. How we did compared to previous runs/rides. Comparing with friends. Knowing we are progressing. Knowing we know where to improve.
So I’m not against it. In fact I want to know more! But, maybe we (that’s a collective we) just need to relax the analytics sometimes and focus on how you FEEL your progressing instead?
Either way, I’m not ditching the tech (the gym sessions have helped me improve no end!), just going to use it more wisely!