My GPS Watch and Me – iRunFar

I’m writing about one of many endurance runner’s favourite instruments, the GPS watch.

Gulliver’s Watch

In “Gulliver’s Travels,” the 1726 satire by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver finds himself shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput. There, Gulliver is regarded an enormous, as he finds himself towering over the Lilliputians, the inhabitants of the island who’re six inches tall.

In a memorable change with the Lilliputians, Gulliver pulls out his pocket watch — a instrument they’ve by no means encountered. The Lilliputians report that it’s both “some unknown animal, or the god he worships; however we’re extra inclined to the latter opinion, as a result of he assured us … that he seldom did something with out consulting it (1).”

Gulliver consults his watch earlier than he does something, such that the Lilliputians assume it’s his god.

Gulliver has this in widespread with the up to date endurance athlete.

My Watch

I really like my GPS look ahead to all the standard causes. As a nostalgic particular person, the information features like a receipt for my operating adventures. I can revisit my metrics, poring over the numbers and making sense of them. In contrast to a reminiscence, which shape-shifts and fades, the numbers are goal and fixed.

My GPS watch can be an ideal accountability instrument. It helps me hold observe of my coaching in order that my mileage is inerratic and wise. If I say I’m operating simply however my heartrate says in any other case, I can confront this actuality actually.

Additionally, the primary yr I skilled with a GPS watch, I grew quicker. I used the information to attract nearer to my limits by recognizing I might maintain quicker paces than I imagined, earlier than my physique entered the purple zone. Introspection alone didn’t persuade me to probe my limits. I wanted to see the numbers to imagine I might run more durable.

So, I really like my watch. However two issues could be true, and it’s attainable that I’m turning into a bit like Gulliver in my habits of consideration. There are causes to surprise about how my watch is impacting me — probably for sick.

Listed below are a couple of considerations:

1. The Lack of the Creature

There may be an essay by Walker Percy referred to as “The Lack of the Creature (2).” Percy describes boundaries to “direct, sovereign notion in a world filled with specialists and packaged experiences (3).”

For instance, Percy describes the impossibility of gazing merely on the Grand Canyon. The sightseer doesn’t see the Grand Canyon in itself. Somewhat, the Grand Canyon has been “appropriated by the symbolic advanced which has already been shaped within the sightseer’s thoughts (4).” It’s mediated by means of the lens of expectation, images, and data. We’re abstracted from the expertise “in itself.”

Percy offers a second instance of a scholar studying a Shakespearean sonnet (5). The coed doesn’t expertise the sonnet straight. The sonnet is mediated by means of symbols and framing, or explanations supplied by instruction. It’s not encountered by itself phrases.

Percy’s commentary rings true of my experiences with a GPS watch. It’s typically difficult to expertise operating instantly, straight, and in fullness as a result of — alongside expectations and an acquired information of the game — my runs are mediated by my GPS watch. My watch supplies a stream of numbers I take part in, aware of as they unfold.

I’ve written previously about an commentary my husband as soon as made. He remarked that, once we run collectively, we’re by no means actually alone. We run with all the folks, together with earlier variations of ourselves, who’ve ever run that very same stretch of street and forged a digital shadow. That is true. I’m not absolutely current.

Typically my watch malfunctions, and on some degree, I really feel as if my exercise didn’t rely — as if it makes a cosmic distinction if I don’t go away a hint of numbers in my wake. I really feel as if my legs can’t profit from a run that made no digital impression. (How will my legs know that I ran?)

And even once I go away my watch behind (one thing I do sometimes), I nonetheless view my runs by means of the habits of consideration skilled by my watch. My perceptions of operating are mediated by means of the display screen of numbers my watch has conditioned me to take care of as vital.

So, that is the primary concern. I used to be initially drawn to operating, partially, to expertise the outside in its fullness, and my GPS watch diminishes my standing as a sovereign knower. Nowadays I understand my runs by means of the numbers my watch stories and the values I’ve assigned to them.

2. Magnificence and Surprise

This concern is steady with the primary. The explanation the “lack of the creature” issues is that sure experiences are forfeited in symbolic abstraction — particularly the area to surprise, expertise gratitude, and recognize the world past the quantitative stories my watch generates.

It’s fall in Virginia. A number of weeks in the past, there have been a couple of purple leaves portending the transition of seasons. Each day, giant swaths of leaves have modified colours (6). As of this morning, my neighborhood park is resplendent — like a fireworks show.

Typically I run by means of scenes comparable to these, inattentive to the wonder and targeted on my coaching goals. The explanation I seen the leaves this morning was that my daughter (a red-headed toddler who was driving within the stroller) stored exclaiming, “The timber are purple like my hair!”

I want to inhabit my runs like my daughter does. I want to restore surprise and gratitude to my coaching — a minimum of generally. If my watch impedes these experiences, possibly I ought to run extra with my toddler and fewer with my wearable tech.

 3. Is and Ought

A closing consideration is that this: A GPS watch can inform us what ‘is.’ It supplies an outline of coaching — the place we run, what we run, and once we run. However our watches can’t inform us what we ‘ought’ to run. They can not inform us what we must always prioritize or how operating ought to match into our lives.

I say this as a result of there’s a robust precedent impact in operating. Typically I’m drawn to run what I (or others) have run previously, just because that’s the precedent. Typically momentum compels me to place extra miles in as a result of I really feel like I ought to. However the numbers can’t inform me what’s vital, or how I ought to construction my coaching on steadiness with the remainder of my life. My watch can solely inform me what’s, not what should be.

Remaining Ideas

As I mentioned, I really like my watch. It is a vital supply of knowledge and has facilitated self-honesty in my coaching. I don’t intend to eliminate it anytime quickly. However utilizing a instrument like a GPS watch can contribute to emotions of abstraction, and it might probably prepare our habits of consideration towards measuring and controlling, over appreciating and experiencing gratitude. And finally, our watches can’t inform us what is effective or how we must always spend our time.

Name for Feedback

• Do you prepare with a GPS watch?
• If that’s the case, do you ever favor to depart it at dwelling?

References/Notes

1. Jonathan Swift. (1902, 1726). “Gulliver’s Travels.” Plain Label Books, p. 33
2. Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, in “The Message within the Bottle,” 46-63. St. Martin’s Press.
3. Leon Kass. (2004). Introduction to “The Lack of the Creature,” in “Being Human: Core Readings within the Humanities,” edited by Leon Kass, 541. New York: W.W. Norton.
4. Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, p. 47
5. Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, pp. 57-9.
6. The leaves have modified colours like an autumnal model of blob tag. Do folks learn endnotes?