Running Naked!

I ran naked last Sunday. It was a scary, what do I do now, moment, being in the village of Spencerport, ready to run on the canal path and realize what I had done, or in this case didn’t do.

My Garmin was at home, still plugged in to the charger. My Timex sport watch was sitting on top of the refrigerator. Sure, MW, who was going to run nine miles with me, had his Garmin. But it wasn’t the same. I hadn’t run without the Garmin or sport watch for …well…for years? How was I going to keep pace? What if the pace felt fast, or slow, but wasn’t? I couldn’t tell. Basically I would have to run by how fast my body felt like going and not sweat whatever the pace was. Now I couldn’t glance down every two minutes to see my current pace or distance covered. Without a satellite following my progress at every second would the training still count? What would I put in my running log book? I ran today? That seemed bogus. I need to count the time, the miles, and the average pace, maybe mark my best mile. With my logs I can go back 25 years and tell you what the weather was on any given day I ran. Isn’t that important to know? I can point to the day I did a tempo 4.4mile run from my home on Ridge Meadows Drive to the Trimmer road bridge and back in 30 minutes, knowing that then I was getting in good shape. 

This Sunday I wanted to write down in a new logbook that same type of data, except I was naked, without the watch or Garmin. At the end MW gave me the approximate time, since he began running .7miles away, from his home, and the approximate distance. It was strange how many times I looked at my wrist or went to turn the watch off. Maybe someday I will not worry as much about time or distance and run naked more often. But not today, or tomorrow, I hope. I still need to quantify and qualify for the logbook. I am locked into the technology. Last night I ran on the high school track. It was comforting, doing 400m repeat laps which turned into mile repeats, knowing the distance was uniform and my watch was adding up the time. I came home feeling great about the workout and able to calculate the pace and didn't run naked, which is good when you are around a schoolyard!