Previously a couch potato all my life, I only started running 3 years ago (4 actually to this Christmas Eve!). Other than my husband, none of my real life friends were into running (although most of them had good physical measurements). And although I love him, my husband’s “Shut Up and Do It. Don’t talk about it.” attitude made me turn to social media outlets to discuss running. And I took the rookie (mis)adventure into gadgets and apps to log my running history.

A tech junkie and a fascinated statistics and numbers person (probably because I always wanted to study statistics, but never did), I soon dropped into the world of Polars and Garmins and Paces and Distances and Heart Rates and … oh! A LOT more numbers than I bargained for. I was overwhelmed, but I plunged into it to read it all one by one, to understand what they all meant, to learn what they could do for me.

In the midst of it all, one tiny thing was swept to the back of my mind. One tiny little detail, yet the most important of them all.

All these data and numbers and technology had made me forgot the simple joy of running by feel. Running fast if I felt like it, or walking if I felt like it. Increasing my pace because I had it in my legs, or slowing down because my legs were screaming at me.

Technology had consumed the simple basic action of running. The running that I first started to run away from my demons, the running that I continued as I saw its effect on my spirits and my body, the running that I embraced as it introduced me to some awesome friends, the running that I celebrated by pushing my body to do what it had previously thought it could not.

A couple of running seasons in, a couple of marathons later, I re-discovered running. “Re-discover”? Yes, because it  was tough to let it go, to learn to run naked and feel the wind in my hair and enjoy (or otherwise) the very basic human act of running free.

I still love technology (Heck! Who am I to talk? I post my workout and get some wonderful feedback. All thanks to technology.), but I would like to pride myself on the fact that perhaps I am no longer a slave to it.
I still need my numbers and statistics, but they can wait until *after* I have finished my run (or anyother workout). No longer do I obsessively look at it wondering if I am keeping the correct pace or heart rate, but I will read it later on to see if how I felt on the run matches how I really did on the run.

Hopefully, I have grown as a runner to take advantage of the technological advances and not be a slave to it.

How about you? Are you a technology buff when it comes to running and working out? Or do you go by feel and keep simple logs or not-at-all?
Is it something about being a Type A++ , that drives a lot of triathletes, that has something to do with being attracted by technology? Or do we consciously embrace the technological advantages that modern day resources has given us?