A TAKE ON GPS WATCHES
Are they necessary? Do we need them?
I got my first GPS watch my junior year of high school, it was a Timex. I think I bought it for about $70 bucks, not a fancy watch by any means. It told me the distance, the pace and the time, that’s all I needed.
I had that for a while, I used it on and off. My coach that year was really big on us recording all of our stats and putting them onto this website for better individualized training. ( But in hindsight it was probably just to prove that we actually went running. )
That watch unfortunately didn’t last more than about a year. After that I got this GPS watch made by Bryton. Pretty much a random company that makes GPS watches, and it did the trick.
But even after going through not one, but two GPS watches, I always seem to find myself going back to the basic 30-lap sport watch.
And honestly, that’s all you need.
Sure, looking down at your wrist and seeing all of these random numbers on a bright and fancy screen is cool! It’s interesting, I love finishing a run and going through previous runs and comparing them, or just looking at how fast each mile was. How many calories did I burn? What was my heart rate?
Just so many numbers, so many numbers that I probably wouldn’t even care about if I didn’t have this watch. Numbers that for the most part don’t even matter.
It’s A LOT of clutter in your mind.
Just about 100% of the time when I’m running with a GPS watch, that’s all I’m thinking about. It’s so much harder to just get into the groove. I’m constantly looking at my wrist to see if I’m at the “correct” pace, if I’ve gone 10 miles or only 10 steps.
And frankly, it’s quite debilitating.
Yeah, GPS watches aren’t the worst thing ever. They can be a great tool at times. There are definitely times when you might want to know the exact pace or distance, maybe a tempo run, a long run? Or mile repeats when you’re not on a track.
But when it comes down to it, most of the time it’s just information that is completely unnecessary.
The fact is, if your 5k is in the 16’s, your easy run doesn’t have to be sitting at 7:30, it’s okay to let it slip to 8:30, 9:00. It’s not the end of the world.
Running is one of the greatest things there is, just you and the unknown in front of you, so why take any of that away with little light up box?
We live in a world where technology is constantly beating down our neck, almost everywhere we look we see it. Technology is almost always on our minds, we see something cool and it’s like a reflex for us to reach for our phone and take a photo or a video. The first thing we do when we wake up is check whose texted us or whats going on in the world. It’s never ending.
Very rarely do we get a chance to zero in on one thing and one thing only.
And why not let running be that one thing? No thinking about pace or distance, how many calories you’ve burned or where your heart rate is.
Just you, your thoughts, and the open world.
- Jacob D.L.
