Sometimes, it pays not to know

There was a story in my last Canadian Running magazine called “Live and Die by the watch”, where the runner writing the story wiped out hard in the middle of his run, and before he’d even rolled over and assessed the damage to his body he’d taken the time to stop his watch.

He goes on to relate the story of another runner-friend with a similar experience: “he had slipped on some ice and fell in front of a moving bus.  He had to scramble and literally roll onto the sidewalk to avoid being hit, and yet, before the length of the bus had passed him, he had stopped his watch.”

I laughed.

And then I thought.

And when I went out last Sunday for a quick run, I deliberately left my watch behind so that I could just enjoy the run and not worry about my pace.

And then Tracey blogged about leaving her watch behind completely, because the competition she was experiencing with herself was getting to be a little overwhelming.  And I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I’ve always been a little obsessive with my time and my pace and my distance.  I love watching myself improve, and I love pushing myself.  But I can tend to get a little…obsessive.  I’m particularly obsessive when I log in to Daily  Mile.  I want to have run farther, or faster, or posted better pace times than other people.  And that’s not a terrible thing – I think competition is good, but my runs have begun to be more about always being faster and going farther, regardless of how my body is feeling.

And so I run my 800m repeats, but I make sure that I run them as fast as I had seen someone else run them the week before, even though it might kill me to do it.  I might feel like running a nice easy day, but the thought of what that will do to my pace when I post the run makes me run faster than *easy*.

So when I left my watch behind last Sunday, it nearly drove me insane that I had no idea if I was running *fast enough*.  Finally, by around the halfway point, I relaxed.  And when the pace felt too quick, I slowed down.  And when it felt good, I let my legs run as fast (or as slow) as they wanted.

Now I’m in physio for a long-standing issue with my hip, and I have no choice but to take it easy.  And so my last two runs on the treadmill have been conservative, and I haven’t posted my times – partly because I didn’t want to, and partly because I completely forgot to write them down.  I think that’s maybe a good thing right now.

I’m not saying that I’ll go on like this forever, because I won’t.  I like knowing how fast I’m going, and I’m totally jonesing for a Garmin that will tell me on my outside runs how fast I’m running in real time, and how far, and all that cool stuff.  And I like pushing myself, and I will do that again too.  But I forgot how good it felt to NOT push myself, and to just run nice and easy.

(Thanks for your post Tracey – you said exactly what I’ve been thinking lately.)