The Most Important Piece of Technology for Runners

Audio Transcript

Hayley: Hey Runners Connect fans. We have another great question today about technology for runners.

What’s the most important piece of technology you use with running? How does it help you?

That’s a great question. For me, it’s my GPS watch, or whatever I’m using to track pace and distance. That could be a GPS watch, a power meter, or a phone app.

This is because it gives me the key information I need to make sure I’ve completed my workout correctly. I use it during the workout, to make sure I’m doing the run as I should be. By using my GPS watch, I can check I’m in the correct pace range for the run.

I’ll usually set my watch so it shows average pace or average lap pace when doing a workout.

If I’m doing an easy run, I can combine how I’m feeling with the pace my GPS is showing, to make sure I’m in the right range and 100% easy.

I can also check my heart rate to make sure that it’s in line with an easy effort. My GPS watch can also show heart rate if I wear a chest strap.

If all these measures are in the right ball park, there’s a good chance I’m getting the intended recovery and aerobic benefits of my easy run.

Similarly, with a tempo run, if pace, heart rate and my perceived effort all run in the right range, I can be confident that I’m doing the tempo run in the right way, running in the right pace.

One thing I’m hearing more about recently is, using a power meter for running. This offers a few advantages over GPS watch. Pace maybe a little unreliable sometimes, for example, if you’re running on difficult trail, or in windy weather.

If you use a power meter, you can tell how hard you’re working by measuring your power, but which is how much effort you’re exerting.

That will be a good measure, even if you’re running into headwind, your pace might slow, but you can keep the same effort by keeping the same power, if that makes sense.

Another advantage for using my GPS watch is that I can look back over time and see how my pace has improved for a similar workout or run.

That can be really helpful as it’s easy to feel discouraged sometimes and feel like not much improvement is going on day-to-day.

My watch stores my workouts, and allows me to upload them, so it’s easy to look back and see how far I’ve come.

It’s great having a record of workouts too, because if you have a great race or a really bad one, I can look back and see what did or didn’t work.

For example, I’ve just recently looked back at my training for my PR marathon and my most recent marathon, which is almost 10 minutes slow, and I felt terrible.

I can see clear differences in the way I trained, and hopefully I can use that information to train more effectively next time.

Another way my GPS watch helps me, and this is a benefit that you can also get from an Apple power meter, is allowing me to monitor my training load; that’s really important.

You want to make sure you aren’t making any big jumps in mileage, well any big jumps in training.

My watch shows me my cumulative weekly mileage, and I’m half way through the week and I’m already nearly at my plan mileage [inaudible 04:16], it’s probably time to back off a bit.

Of course, it isn’t just mileage that’s important, so keeping a record of intensity, some kind of measure of it, average pace or how many substitutes done, is also important.

By sections I mean harder workouts as opposed to easy runs. Obviously a power meter might be helpful here, as you can keep track of your power output over the week, and something like weekly power output might give you a better idea of your training load for that week.

Of course, you also want to make notes in a training diary, such as how you felt and how hard you felt you pushed, but getting some good data from a watch to back it up is so helpful.

GPS watches have come a long way and they offer even more helpful features these days as your power meters.

They can give you loads of data about your running form or efficiency. This type of feedback can be helpful when you’re trying to improve your technique.

For example, if you are working on increasing cadence, a GPS watch or power meter can give you your average cadence for run, and you’ll see how this changes over time.

Another role of my GPS watch is helping me to pace myself in races. It’s true that I do some of my races by feel, as I’ve mentioned to some of you, but if I’m really going for target time, I keep an eye on my pace for at least the first half of the race.

I use it to check that I keep my pace in control for the early stages, as going too fast can really ruin your race effort.

Equally, you don’t want to go too slow, and then not be able to catch up in the second half. It’s great to pay attention to your effort and how you feel obviously, but I found that if I race when I’m in heavy training, I sometimes feel terrible to start with, and gradually feel better throughout the race.

It can be helpful there to have a GPS watch to make sure you don’t start off too slow as I feel so terrible, because I know I’m going to feel better later on regardless.

A power meter can also be helpful for pacing. An advantage of this, which I found out quite recently, is that you can pace by power, so you can make sure you keep your effort level constant, even if it’s windy, or hilly or off road, I think that could be helpful.

A final thing I want to mention about my GPS watch, which makes me love it so much is, that you can share your workouts.

As members of a pretty awesome running community, I think you’d agree that that could be really great.

If I show workouts, I get loads of helpful encouraging comments which is particularly good for me at the minute, because I’ll have it a little, one of those little slumps and forms.

It can be great to share your workouts and realize that, actually it’s not too bad, it’s just you’re pretty hard critic on yourself.

Showing your workouts adds that little bit of motivation to get out there and stay on track, if you know your friends will see it.

Being able to share my records is also great because I can share them with my coach and get some kind of feedback, which is so helpful when you’re mostly training on your own.

There are so many great GPS watches out there these days, with so many different features. It really is my go to piece of running technology and I rarely leave home without it.

I think whatever you use to measure your speed and distance is really important, and if you use all those additional features that some watches have or power meters, it can really add something.

That’s a really fun question and I enjoyed answering it. Thanks so much.

I hope I’ve given you some ideas on how you can use your GPS watch and how they can help you.

For those of your listening, that want to have your questions answered by one the Runners Connect coaches, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily and click the record button to send over your question.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you haven’t already, consider heading over to iTunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review. It would help us to reach more runners like you.

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