"[Heather MacLean, an Olympic 1,500-meter runner] realized her watch was draining the fun from her runs. It was especially apparent to her during a low-key stretch when she was simply trying to build fitness.
I hated that every run I went on, I felt like I had to check my pace and my distance and whatever else,” she said. “So I just decided that I was going to lay off it for a while and switch to a regular watch.”
She never went back. MacLean, 28, who now wears an Armitron Dragonfly that she said she picked up for $10 at Walmart, acknowledged that there were certain workouts when a GPS watch would come in handy, like when she did a tempo run by herself. (Tempo runs are faster than easy jogs, and frequently run at a prescribed pace.) But Mark Coogan, her coach, has long prioritized effort over pace, and MacLean logs her training in minutes rather than in miles.
“I know I’m at the elite level now, so not everything is going to be joyful,” MacLean said. “But when there are things that bring me a lot of joy, I’m going to invest in them. And one of those things is the ability to avoid focusing on my pace during my runs.”
Without the pressure of feeling as if she needs to account for every mile — or, perish the thought, post her workouts for public inspection on Strava, the exercise-tracking platform — MacLean has also gotten better about listening to her body. She has no qualms about bailing on an extra workout if she is feeling beat.
“And I’ll tell Mark that I’m going for a walk instead,” MacLean said. “And he’s like, ‘OK!’”
Same, it was getting a Garmin that got me into tracking steps, fitness etc. I didn’t even run initially. I walked for 18 months first. Slowly progressing to jogging bits of it, then more until eventually I was jogging the whole circuit.
I’m no elite runner. The first kilometer of my circuit has a 130m ascent of staircase up an escarpment. It’s brutal and I love conquering it. But it stifles any hope of breaking time records.
Ever thought about letting that staircase be the stat end? That way you can also squeeze in a rest every circuit if you feel like it.
I’d just … not do it sometimes. I’d justify it with “too tired today” and “Don’t have enough time for Jacob’s Ladder today”. Having it when I’m fresh takes that excuse away.
It’s also kinda on the way out of the CBD and into a big park. It would be sort-of doubling back away from the office. I could make it work, but the beautiful park is like a reward for doing the climb. Having the return to the office be my reward for doing it wouldn’t quite have the same incentive.
Ahh, that makes sense. Whatever works for you.
Back in school our PE teacher would make us run up the staircase and then back down, incrementally increasing the floors we’d have to climb in one go. It was torture, and I remember it bitterly, even though it did loads to improve my general health and breath control.