Jonathon | 13th Oct 16

This reminds me of some of the Kenyans reducing the world record in some running event by a few seconds each time, to claim the world record bonus several times when they could have broken it once by several minutes or 5-10minutes but then they would have had trouble breaking it again,so the bonus would only be claimed once… by one athlete and then no new world record for a few years. I think because we are now at the point where Garmin can predict our race time (like the MCMillan calculator) there is nomore “didn’t die wondering”,nomore smash the limits, nomore dare to dream the impossible dream,no more suicidal pace,less big moves,less true battles of wills, because we have all become robot runners obeying our watch instead of daring to dream. We can set virtualpacer to make sure we stay on “marathon Pace” we can even resitrict/limit our training to only working with a predetermined marathonpace 12 weeks before the race when after 12 weeks of good training or 3-4 or 20! our optimal marathon pace could be a wholelot faster but we have already had the training plan and the watch decided inadvance what is the “correct pace”for us. There is a danger that spontanouity, getting it right on the day,good weather, fast course, high energy battles with rivals may not yield any gains which they could have, and the 20min PB or 5min PB that could have been had becomes a 10 second or 1min PB because we restrict ourself to slow courses on a predetermined “safe” robotic watch controlled gameplan.Sure the watch and strava or training peaks are awesome tools for analysing and monitoring performance,and very motivational too, but we become emotionally reliant on them and lose the ability topersist if our watch runs out of battery or something else happens that means that the robotic plan cannot be followed. Robotic zombies are easy to take money off, and manage/control, but who makes the biggest gains the seller, and the club manager not the athlete. That is a sad waste of potential. Truth is the days of an exercise book and checking the time on the town clock as you run past it,or one of those new fangled stopwatches are ancient history for most,or for the current generation something they have never heard of, but they did have some advantages. I’m utterly obsessed with strava and the garmin data, and addicted to monitoring K splits in road races especially (although in the old days I relied on K markers on the course which in some ways is better),but sometimes I long to get back to racing “by feel” and analysing the data in my exercise book…for years I have tried to keep both going at once, so have many years of exercise books going back to the 1980’s, and in some ways I think every now and then I break out of robotic zombie lemming mode and be a rebel an individual… the best champions are like that, they are unique not so much robotic although there is plenty of robotic ones around these days too but they tend to last not as long. Plus also what is a definition of excellenceI think its “being all we can be”…so in that case if the person running a 3.29 is being all they can be now with 80kg to tow,they are getting more out of themself,and showing more champion unique rebel wild, individual qualities than the 59kg robotic boring zombie lemming who obeys garmin,coach, club manager, store manager and whoever else wants to sellsomething who runs 2.39-2.44 every year but if they broke free from their self-made prison might one day jag a 2.17 when enough things go right and they dare to challenge the authorityof their garmin,and everyother self installed expert. That might be an extreme metaphorical comparison,but I think it illustrates the potential fallacies of the “trust your watch” (not your training or your desire to smash your limits) mentality that is common today…