I'd set my alarm for 4:45am the night before. I know I had because I'd double-checked it. But when I woke up with a start at 5:00am the little alarm symbol wasn't showing on the screen. Somehow I must have turned it off. Or maybe I'd imagined the whole double-checking scenario the night before. Either way I was running really late.
I had less than 15 minutes to get dressed, strap my feet (complicated explanation for this one - just accept that it stops my ITB from flaring up), stuff a banana down my throat, drink enough water to stop dehydration yet not too much as to cause a stitch or enforce lots of toilet stops AND go to the toilet.
The first four items on the list were totally doable in that time-frame. The last? Well that was totally up to the whims of my intestines and we all know how whimsical they can be at times.
Luckily, whimsy smiled in my direction and I was ready in ten minutes flat which had me wondering why I've been getting up so early in the past when the stress of having to make a tight deadline is such an effective cleanser.
Saturday's long run was a designated No-Watch run. The point of it was to make the group get back to grass roots running. To run for pleasure. By feel. Without electronic prods making us push ourselves harder than we should.
We ran a familiar route so we'd know the approximate turnaround points but apart from that there would be no data to input into my program. No uploads from my watch to the Garmin website. It was a 'if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it does it make a sound?' conundrum. Would the run even count? I wasn't sure how I felt about it. #dataaddict
How stupid am I?? Of course it counts when there's 30 or 40 other runners to act as witness. To say nothing of the cyclists, walkers and non-GaleForce runners that we went past. Basically nothing had changed apart from not having to stop and start my watch at water stops - and believe me I tried.
It was even quite liberating. I didn't have that beep every kilometre that forced me to look at my watch and reassess my pace. It felt like we were running at a pretty good pace and had I seen that I was running at, let's say, 5:10 then I would have started to worry that I was going too fast and backed off the pace. If I'd seen we were running quite slow but it felt harder than I thought it should then I would have felt a bit annoyed with myself. Having no watch allowed the run to just be a run - and I could pretend that it had been awesome.
Because it was - just ask Elio.
*****
In a miraculous turn of events I managed to track down some footage of the epic tussle between Bevan and I at speed last Tuesday. It's just the last hundred meters of the final rep and I'm the dude in the black pants (my cute checked ones were in the wash).
I'm still basking in the triumph,.
HaHa - that gif is hilarious!!!
ReplyDeleteSo glad that even with the late wake-up you made it on time. I'm anal about knowing my time and distance - maybe I should work on that.
Love the clip! When I did the 12WBT program in 2011 and lost weight and was exercising a bit most people wore a HRM so they could work out calories burned etc. I'd done that years before and became ridiculously obsessed with the calories burned and naturally it became more about that and less about the exercise (which isn't healthy for my obsessive mind!). So... I never did wear a HRM - I just exercised for enjoyment. (Of course I wasn't running to time limits and the like though!)
ReplyDeleteDeb
Bwhahaha! Love the footage!
ReplyDeleteAnd so you should! It's lovely to feel triumphant!
ReplyDeleteNice video! But I'm afraid a run without a watch DOESN'T count of course. ;)
ReplyDeleteLove the video! I was at a Lululemon outlet today and thought I saw the shorts you have. But they wouldn't look good on me so I walked right by!
ReplyDeleteI often write blog posts that no one reads, so I know what you mean about questioning if they even exist. I have a tough time running without a watch, I just need an account of it.
ReplyDeletei have to admit feeling rather adrift without my Garmin! The funny thing is that I went for such a long time without owning one!
ReplyDeleteI almost never run with a watch - really, just my long run for GPS purposes (and even then, not all the time), and speed work. I bet if I wore it more, I'd speed up a little!
ReplyDeleteSometimes being a "relaxed runner" means that someone runs without a watch. Beautiful video!
ReplyDeleteI always run with my watch but that's more for the data afterwards. At the moment my runs are slow and I don't run for time so I never check my time on the watch.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to sound harsh, but you know you kind of look like an old man in that video lol.
ReplyDeleteRunning without a watch. I can't remember the last time I did that. I forgot my Garmin at the pool on Sat and I was like what do I do - oh yeah - count laps.