GPS Watch? No Thanks. Top Runners Are Ditching the Data.

As a adorned school runner at Notre Dame after which on the University of Tennessee, Dylan Jacobs dabbled with a tool that a lot of his teammates thought of indispensable.

But on these uncommon events when Jacobs succumbed to see stress and slapped a GPS watch round his wrist, he virtually instantly remembered why he had resisted the temptation within the first place.

“The runs just felt so much longer,” stated Jacobs, 23, a three-time N.C.A.A. champion who lately turned professional. “That was one of my main problems with it. I wasn’t enjoying myself or looking around. Instead, I was kind of looking at the watch every quarter-mile to see how much longer I had left.”

GPS watches — standard manufacturers are Garmin, Suunto and Coros — come geared up with satellite tv for pc know-how and coronary heart fee displays to supply a buffet of capabilities. Want to know the way far and how briskly you’ve run, or what number of milliliters of sweat you dumped in Central Park final weekend? How about your common stride size? Your cadence? The record goes on.

For many, GPS watches are a remarkably helpful coaching software. But there are different runners, together with world-class runners like Jacobs, who’ve a tough time understanding the fuss. To them, a smorgasbord of information is extra hindrance than assist. And get this: Some runners don’t put on watches in any respect.

“I like to focus more on the feel of everything and not worry too much about the time,” Jacobs stated.

Heather MacLean, an Olympic 1,500-meter runner, recalled a interval of her life when she loved the utility of a GPS watch. As a scholar on the University of Massachusetts, she grew to grasp the worth of sleep — and extra vital, that she was not getting sufficient of it — whereas working in a neuroscience laboratory. So she started utilizing a Garmin Forerunner to watch her relaxation and alter her schedule.

Later, as a first-year professional with Team New Balance Boston, MacLean tried to be constant about sporting a GPS watch however was hampered by a few points. First, she was at all times forgetting to cost it.

“I would just let it die all the time, and I’m super lazy with that kind of stuff,” she stated.

Second, MacLean realized her watch was draining the enjoyable from her runs. It was particularly obvious to her throughout a low-key stretch when she was merely making an attempt to construct health.

“I hated that every run I went on, I felt like I had to check my pace and my distance and whatever else,” she stated. “So I just decided that I was going to lay off it for a while and switch to a regular watch.”

She by no means went again. MacLean, 28, who now wears an Armitron Dragonfly that she stated she picked up for $10 at Walmart, acknowledged that there have been sure exercises when a GPS watch would turn out to be useful, like when she did a tempo run by herself. (Tempo runs are sooner than straightforward jogs, and ceaselessly run at a prescribed tempo.) But Mark Coogan, her coach, has lengthy prioritized effort over tempo, and MacLean logs her coaching in minutes relatively than in miles.

“I know I’m at the elite level now, so not everything is going to be joyful,” MacLean stated. “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 stress of feeling as if she must account for each mile — or, perish the thought, submit her exercises for public inspection on Strava, the exercise-tracking platform — MacLean has additionally gotten higher about listening to her physique. She has no qualms about bailing on an additional exercise if she is feeling beat.

“And I’ll tell Mark that I’m going for a walk instead,” MacLean stated. “And he’s like, ‘OK!’”

Sam Prakel was a highschool standout in Versailles, Ohio, when the assistant coach of his cross-country staff launched him to the magic of GPS watches. Prakel invested in a single. It was a mistake from the beginning.

“I just started running too fast on all my runs,” Prakel stated, “and it became harder to recover from them because I was so focused on my pace. I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t good for me.”

Prakel opted as an alternative for a Timex Ironman, which he wore by his freshman 12 months on the University of Oregon. When the band snapped in his sophomore 12 months, he ordered one other. Prakel, 28, has worn the identical no-frills watch ever since — by his time at Oregon, the place he was a five-time all-American, and in newer years as a professional miler for Adidas. He has by no means wanted to vary its battery.

The reigning U.S. indoor champion within the males’s 1,500 and three,000 meters, Prakel has a system that works for him, which is a throwback in a way. What did any runners do earlier than the appearance of GPS watches? They estimated. In Prakel’s case, a 65-minute run is roughly equal to 10 miles and a half-hour jog is sweet for 4 miles. He doesn’t must be exact.

“As long as I do the same things every week and keep it consistent, that’s all that matters,” he stated, including: “I feel like I’m in a better place when I don’t have all that data to worry about.”

For some runners, aesthetics additionally matter. Luke Houser, a junior on the University of Washington who gained an N.C.A.A. championship within the males’s indoor mile final winter, wears a vintage-inspired Casio with a digital show and a gold metallic band. His teammates merely check with it as “the gold Casio.”

“I just think it looks cool,” he stated. “I’ve never been interested in cadence or heart rate, which I don’t think is ever that accurate anyway. All you need to know is how you feel and the time. That does the job.”

Kieran Lumb, who lately broke his personal Canadian document within the males’s 3,000 meters, is nicely conscious that he’s the kind of one who is inclined to the candy lure of information.

At the University of British Columbia, Lumb majored in electrical engineering. Later, whereas working at Washington, he earned a grasp’s diploma in data techniques. And for the longest time, nobody who knew him was stunned that he maintained an Excel spreadsheet to catalog his sleep, exercises and one thing he known as “rated perceived fatigue.”

“Just trying to do a little bit of data science on myself,” he stated.

The twist is that Lumb, 25, who now runs professionally for the athletics attire model On, has not worn a GPS watch since he was a aggressive cross-country skier rising up in Canada. He made the swap as a school freshman to a Casio calculator watch that didn’t also have a correct lap perform for monitor exercises.

“So I’d just have to remember all my splits,” he stated, “and it was awesome.”

Lumb famous that as a result of many runners are naturally aggressive, they will turn into obsessive about numbers. And the enterprise of creating it to the highest of the heap as an elite runner will be particularly taxing.

As a end result, Lumb’s coach, Andy Powell, tries to maintain issues so simple as attainable. For Lumb, that has meant ditching his Excel folder in favor of Powell’s old-school method: weekly exercise sheets that his runners fill out and file in three-ring binders.

“There’s something nice about slowing down and writing it by hand that I find almost endearing,” Lumb stated. “It’s taken a while for me to be less neurotic, but it’s liberating.”