Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

352: Is Technology Hurting or Helping Your Performance?

• Angie Brown

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Exploring the Impact of Technology on Running Performance

Today we discuss the double-edged sword of technology in running. We delve into how various devices, like GPS watches, heart rate monitors, and sleep trackers, can both aid and complicate runners' training routines. We emphasize the importance of listening to one's body over strictly adhering to data and discuss the potential stress and disconnection that overreliance on technology can cause. The episode also covers the concept of cumulative fatigue, the benefits of adding a little extra to one's run, and encourages runners to find a balance between using technology wisely and staying in tune with their body's signals.


02:01 The Heart of Today's Episode: Technology in Running

03:54 The Pros and Cons of Running Tech: A Deep Dive

13:52 Heart Rate Training: Accuracy and Alternatives

21:25 The Art of Pacing Without Technology

23:16 The Impact of External Devices on Training

24:14 Navigating the World of Health and Fitness Tech

27:59 Understanding Your Body Beyond the Numbers

35:26 Finding Balance: Using Technology Wisely in Training

40:49 The Simplicity of Health: Beyond Gadgets and Numbers

43:10 Trusting Yourself Over Technology


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This is the real life runners podcast, episode number 352. Is technology hurting or helping your performance?

Angie:

What's up, Runners? Welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for joining us. Before we jump into today's episode, a quick reminder that we have a free class going on this week, and if you're listening to this on the day that it comes out, I have one more option to join me live this afternoon. That's Thursday, May 12th. Or sorry, March 28th at 2 p. m. So if you're listening to this by chance before then and want to join me head over to realliferunners. com Forward slash half marathon and get signed up for that class And if you are listening to this after that head over to that website Anyway, i'm going to be updating class dates regularly Um, actually you might want to go to realliferunners. com forward slash class because that will give you The latest free class that i'm offering so you can check out What? The topic is that I'm going to be, you know, teaching you guys about to help you improve your running because our goal is to make running education accessible for everyone. And that's what we do every week here on the podcast, but. If you'd like to go a little bit deeper on specific topics, I do offer periodic they're going to be basically monthly this year, um, monthly free trains that you can join me on zoom to and one of the benefits there is that you also get your questions asked. Answered. Um, you can ask me your questions in real time and I will answer them. Um, so that's one of the big benefits of joining me live. And also I just have some really awesome information and can go deeper on like specific topics. So head over to realliferunners. com forward slash class to see what's next. The current offering is so today we are jumping into the world of running technology. And if you listen to our episode last week, we talked about forced recovery and also checked in with Kevin after his surgery. The fun thing about this is that when we were talking about our episode this week, um, Kevin doesn't remember recording the episode last week because it was the day after surgery.

Kevin:

I mean, I remember recording it. I just don't remember what I talked about. You

Angie:

remember that we recorded an episode. Yes, that's what I don't actually remember what the episode was about.

Kevin:

No, but I mean, I literally didn't remember when, when we finished last week and you hit stop recording and you were like, I think that was a pretty good episode. I'm like, Excellent. Because I don't not know what I just said for the last, however, chunk of time we talked.

Angie:

You did say that, but I think that, I mean, I haven't gone back and listened to last week's episode yet, but hopefully you guys found it good. And if you did, why don't you head over to Apple iTunes, Apple podcasts right now, or Spotify and leave us a quick review and let us know how much you, you liked it as a. Nice pat on the back for Kevin of like way to record a podcast on the day after a surgery.

Kevin:

I'm looking forward to this week's podcast. I can lean into the microphone a little bit better without, you know, pain through my whole abdomen.

Angie:

Yes, excellent. So on last week's episode we talked about the unfortunate circumstance when recovery gets forced on us when we aren't connected with our body. And The importance of both listening to our body and then honoring our body. It's not just enough to listen to our body, but we then have to make some changes and make some adjustments based on what our body is telling us. And so if we want to kind of back it up one more step, connecting to your body is what you need to do before you can listen to it before you can adjust and honor it. You have to actually learn how to connect with your body first. And so today we want to talk about. All of these devices and technology and things going on in the running world and how they are, some of them are helping us and helping us to connect to our bodies in different ways and helping us to connect to improved performance. And some of them we believe are definitely hurting us in that area. So we're going to have a little unfiltered discussion about this today.

Kevin:

I mean, some of them are theoretically helping us, but are possibly just giving us a whole heck of a lot more information,

Angie:

which can leave us a lot more confused and overwhelmed and not know what to do,

Kevin:

right? You got me a new watch for Christmas and I love my watch. And every morning I wake up and it lets me know how well I slept. I could do that myself. Like I could just be like, I feel like I slept really well.

Angie:

How do I feel today?

Kevin:

But instead, well actually I do because I think it's funny to, to compare these two things. Yeah. Because I've, I've thought this for a while. Like I've known people that have watches that let them know how well they slept or rings or various devices that tell them, this is how you slept, this is how you're recovering. And I've always thought, well, couldn't you just wake up and kind of feel like, yeah, I think I slept pretty good last night, or I still feel a little bit tired. So I think it's funny to wake up and then. Think about how I feel and then as I'm doing car line and directing traffic in the morning I look at my watch and have my watch tell me how I'm supposed to be feeling

Angie:

Yeah and I think that that's good though because you still put that step in at the beginning to actually check in with yourself and ask and I think that this is where a lot of us a lot of people are Starting to I'm gonna say get this wrong because I believe that it is When we become dependent on technology, that's when it becomes a problem. And that's when we start to get things wrong. I think that using technology to enhance how we feel and to enhance some of the data that we already can gain about ourselves by learning how to connect with ourselves is a good thing. But when we are starting to disconnect from how we feel and depend on an external device, that's where it becomes problematic. And so. You are still kind of taking that pause to check in with yourself and say, how am I feeling right now? And then you say, okay, let's see how that compares to my watch. There are other people that. Don't even do that check in and they just go straight to the device, right? Maybe it's the watch, maybe it's the aura ring that, you know, people have, like, there's a lot of different sleep trackers that are out on the market today. Um, and you know, we're going to kind of get into some of those. We're not going to go into very specific products. Cause that is not the point. This is not like a product review episode, but more of like this general idea of like, when is technology a good thing and how can we use it to our benefit? And when do we need to be aware of some of the downfalls that. It can bring in.

Kevin:

I think that that big difference is being able to take that pause, being able to still have that connection to your body, like that, that mind body connection. And then having the extra information because the, these devices can record all sorts of things. Some of them more precisely than others. And so that's, that's one of the downfalls, but one of the issues is Not taking a pause at all, not trying to see how do I feel, whether it's, you know, after sleeping for a while or in the middle of your run, like, Oh, I feel like I'm pushing really hard. Nope. Don't think about that. Some people just check down and check their heart rate on their watch and see, Oh, yes, I am definitely feeling like I'm pushing really hard. Right. You can do that without looking at your watch.

Angie:

You can. So let's get into kind of the general overview first of some of the pros and cons of just these devices in general, I think. And then we can kind of go into specific categories. So again, I think that some of the pros of these devices are they are giving us some pretty interesting information, right? And I think that we can start to see. Trends. And I think that that's one of the, the, uh, ways. And one of the things that I think is beneficial with a lot of these devices is being able to kind of see general trends, because like you mentioned, one of the cons is that depending on the device, depending on what you're tracking, There is a level of specificity or validity that is present here or reliability for that matter. If I'm going to get into all of the little data speak, but is it actually measuring what it's supposed to measure and how accurately is it actually measuring that thing?

Kevin:

Right. Because some of these devices are directly measuring whatever they're telling you, and some of them are measuring something else and then making some inferences, you're kind of putting it in a, uh, Uh, behind the, the curtain, it's a black Algorithm? Thank you. It's like, it's a black box algorithm that they won't tell you about because it's all, what's the word I'm looking for?

Angie:

Proprietary?

Kevin:

That's the word. I'm like, it starts with a P. Yeah. Proprietary. Um, it's, it's their black box algorithm and then they come back out and like, my sleep score. I don't know what goes exactly into that. And I'm sure that I could look up and get an idea of, Oh, well, we take measurements on this, this, this, and this and come up with a score.

Angie:

Right. But how much of, how many of us actually look into what that even is? Like you and I have talked about this before. You're like, how do we even get that? Right. Because. When we take our sleep score, for example, we say, okay, well, they're probably taking into effect our heart rate. They're probably taking into effect our respiration rate depending on the device, but how well can a device on your wrist actually measure your respiration rate anyway? Very curious

Kevin:

about that because it does it, it does it for me.

Angie:

It probably measures your movement, like the overall body movement, right? So there's a lot of different things that it can probably measure, but what we have to remember also is that it's measuring some of these things. Relatively accurately, but there is a margin of error that I don't think all of us think about all the time, and we take a lot of what these devices give us as science and as hard truth. And I think like any science, right? Science is great there, but there are also limitations to science. So if you've ever read an academic research paper, they will go through. I mean, there's obviously a format. For all academic research, and they give you a hypothesis, and then they have to go through an experiment, like the scientific method, and they go through an experiment, and they collect data, and then at the end, they give you the results, and then they draw a conclusion, and depending on the research, and the level of the research, and the researcher, and um, A lot of other factors there, there's some good research out there and there's some really, really bad research.

Kevin:

That's true.

Angie:

Right? And so I think that it kind of goes the same with these devices is that some of the information that they, that it gives us can be pretty accurate. Some probably is not very accurate at all.

Kevin:

Well, I mean, here's the thing is when you're measuring stuff using the appropriate tool is. Really important. If I'm measuring the distance across your desk, a ruler is going to be relatively helpful. If I'm measuring the distance from here to my job, a ruler is not going to be super accurate, but the opposite of if I'm trying to measure the distance of your desk and I use the odometer on the car, that's not going to work real well. And so it's really, are you using the most appropriate tool for that type of measurement? And, and, uh, How much air is associated when you talk academic journals and stuff like that, they report these air measurements. And sometimes that's

Angie:

why I brought the up the academic journals. Thank you for bringing that back around because

Kevin:

there's air in all the measurements and they have to state what that air is. And sometimes it's like, well, it looks like there's a conclusion. It looks like there's a Doing X caused Y, except when you take into account the size of the air bars, it doesn't. It doesn't actually do anything. It's not actually

Angie:

a significant result. It's

Kevin:

not significant enough because the air, the air bars are so, so sizable.

Angie:

Exactly. And that's exactly why I brought up scientific research. Thank you. I forgot that while I got on my little soapbox. It's

Kevin:

neat when I'm actually focused on one of these podcasts.

Angie:

But yeah, and that's the thing is, you know, we, a lot of us buy these devices and we don't recognize what the margin of error is. And I'm sure they, if you actually look into it and probably read the manual, they probably have something in there. It's probably in there like for legal reasons, right? But yeah. But I think some people would probably be shocked to see what that margin of error is.

Kevin:

It is. I forget what, I have not looked up the new watch that I have, but my old watch, I looked up how far off the heart rate could be. And it was something like 5%, which is a sizable change in both directions, which is why if you ever run with, you know, any sort of, you know, fancy, Techie watch and then you upload your data and you look at these charts in their app or on your computer or whatever You're like why is my heart rate jumping all over the place? I was running at a very steady rate and it's up and it's down and it's up and it's down. It's like no It's not but your watch Has a 5 percent up and down air. And so it's jumping from the two extremes.

Angie:

Well, and also it depends on where you're running too, because all these GPS watches attach, attach, not attach, connect to satellites, right? And depending on the level of connection of wherever you're running, some signals, sometimes the signals are better. Sometimes you get an immediate signal. Signal and your data is going to be more accurate. Sometimes it takes you a long time to get the signal or you drop the signal, signal partway through. And the data is not going to be as accurate. Like I know, uh, we have a two mile loop around our house and there are certain spots on that loop. I know are dead spots. And like, if I look down at my watch, all of a sudden my pace will drop by two minutes or more for no good reason. And I'm like, like you said, I didn't slow down by two minutes per mile, but all of a sudden I'm in that dead spot. And so my watch goes wonky. When I run along the beach, there's also another spot that I know that does that, right? Like, if I would look at my watch during that time, my pace is not accurate at all. And so let's, you know, we're already kind of talking about watches. And so let's just kind of go a little bit deeper here. There's a couple issues here. So number one, heart rate training. Okay. If you are using your watch. Which uses a wrist based heart rate that has an error margin of let's, let's say 5%. You know, the watch that you have technology keeps getting better, right? And so those error margins do tend to go down. But even so, if you're using wrist based sensors on the back of your wrist, Right? There's, there's still going to be a margin of error. A chest strap, if you use a chest strap to, to measure your heart rate, that's going to be much more accurate. Okay. Always has been and always will be.

Kevin:

Apparently the new one, I forget which brand it is. They have an arm strap that is, it's drastically better than their own wrist, which is why they're trying to convince their customers to switch over to the arm strap. And people are now trying to figure out, is that actually as accurate as the chest? Which is still a question mark. I'm not sure where it's going. But I know that. within that brand. The one on the arm is drastically better than their wrist technology.

Angie:

That's interesting because part of what comes to my mind is the brachial artery. So which would be what you doctor, which which is the one that the arm strap would would measure because it's going around the bicep area, right? So that, that's one of the places that they, when, when you learn how to take your own heart rate or when you learn how to take a patient's heart rate when you're in med school or PT school, there's certain places, like we all know, like the inside of your wrist is one of those spots, right? So it's kind of interesting, we're supposed to measure heart rate on the inside of our wrist, but the wrist based heart rate is on the back of our wrist. That's not where we're measuring. Yeah, but when I,

Kevin:

when I measure heart rate and feel somebody's wrist, I use my fingers instead of a magic green light. Does the magic green light do something different?

Angie:

I don't, I don't know how the magic green light works, but you see my point is that we're not actually over that spot. Whereas, An arm strap could tap into the brachial artery, which is another place that's actually where they teach you how to take, um, a pulse in a baby because with a, with a tiny little baby, you're not going to want to go to their wrist because you're, you're just going to want to go to the brachial artery. That's, that's where you find it. I just

Kevin:

asked you to take the heart rate of our kids. That's pretty much how I figured it out. So,

Angie:

and then of course there's the vertebral artery, which is up in the neck. So you, you definitely don't want to be putting a strap up there, um, and choking yourself during the run.

Kevin:

Well, I mean, for our cold weather listeners, maybe like a scarf with a heart rate monitor built into it could be convenient during the winter. Now

Angie:

we're just giving people product ideas. So if you are, you know, on those product teams, you're welcome. But, um, just talking about heart rate training, right? So if you are someone that. agrees with and tries to Modulate and adhere

Kevin:

to your specific heart rate zone.

Angie:

Thank you Apparently i'm the one with the word problem. I've got this. Um, yeah, so if you're using heart rate based training to Determine how fast or how slow you're supposed to be running out on the roads or the trails, and there's an error and you're like, well, I can't go above 150 beats per minute, but there's a 5 percent error. Now, all of a sudden, if you're at 157 or 143 could actually be 150. So you could be out of that specific zone, but you know, spoiler alert, your heart rate isn't that important anyway. Like the exact number is not important. As important as you probably think it is anyway, but

Kevin:

they definitely blur from one to the next stream being like, well, I have to stay under one 51 51 is training a completely different zone of my body and it's the

Angie:

color on your watch changes all of a sudden you go into the different named zone. That's a different color. If

Kevin:

my watch says it's a different zone than it probably is. Probably

Angie:

is right. So yeah, it's, it's obviously it's not that accurate anyway. But if you're someone that is really trying to keep your, your heart rate in a given zone and there is a margin of error, then. Maybe you're not even measuring the right thing.

Kevin:

True. Which then leads to, so what are we supposed to do? Like, if, if there is this natural air, and honestly, these products keep getting better. Because there are a lot of people that get great benefit out of heart rate training. Like, the premise of heart rate training is, Lovely. I think it puts a little bit too much emphasis on that. You can jump from one zone to the next and you, it, that it doesn't blend from one zone to the next, that there's hard boundaries between,

Angie:

well, because it's easier black and white is much easier than gray.

Kevin:

I know. But depending on where your heart rate is and how they're going to, to assign these zones, some of these zones may only be five to 7 percent wide, like zone three, depending on how I would set up my zones. What, what system I would use would only be. Less than 10 beats wide.

Angie:

Like if you're doing threshold training. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin:

So that's a real narrow bar to hit if you don't have super accurate data coming in, which is why then there's, there's other technology that's trying to come up with. If heart rate can't do it, is there other ways to go at it? And people keep trying to figure out all these other ways that we can measure things inside of our body to try and figure out the most optimum way to train.

Angie:

Right. And you know, kind of, And we can talk about some of those if you want to, like they're, why don't you mention a couple of those now?

Kevin:

So one of the big pushes was using continuous glucose monitors, which were essentially originally designed to help people, you know, monitor their diabetes. Continuous glucose monitor makes sure that no one was spiking or dropping, everything was staying healthy and that's great. But people were like, well, if we can use this to monitor sugar levels within the body, maybe, and I think I'm sure this started within cycling, that we could optimize. How much food is going into our people to make sure that they are continuously being able to fuel at the most optimum level. And what they figured out is they can't really use the data from that and predict almost anything. Like that was the ultimate conclusion was, um, after a few years of doing this, one of the major companies that puts these, that creates these devices is like, yeah, you can't really use it to optimize, um, athletic training.

Angie:

But it seems really cool, right? I know, but

Kevin:

the company's

Angie:

going bankrupt. But this is what happens. People are like, oh, well I need that new technology to tell me if I'm doing a good job. And I gotta have that white thing on my arm here now. You know, like I gotta stick it on and never let it come off. But this is what we often do. We're looking to these external things. to give us validation, to let us know whether or not we're doing it correctly. You know, going back to the watches, same thing with distances, you know, we talked about heart rate just, just now, but what about distance? How many of you, I will raise my hand here. Okay. I will 100 percent raise my hand here. How many of you, if you finish your run and it's at 4. 98, you run around the corner until it actually hits 5. 0. Like I do that. Yes, I do. Is my watch that accurate? Absolutely not. Right? Like, and especially the longer you go on it, like, I will run side by side with my friends, and we will be within, like, 05 of each other, and the longer the run is, the more discrepancy there is. Of course. If they have, you know, If somebody has a fancier watch than another person, then oftentimes, like what we're finding it pretty funny. Um, I, I had the cheaper watch of the group, um, for a while, I would say I still do, I've upgraded my watch sense, but it's still, um, you know, one of the, the lower end versions compared to some of the others, mine was always. Shorter, like they were, they were getting to their mile faster than I was, even though we were running side by side, I was like, you're being rewarded for the fancier watch.

Kevin:

Yeah. But then all of you have to, I mean, you don't, but then some people take their watches and then upgrade it to Strava and it takes your five mile run and lets you know that it was three and a half.

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. Right. And that's the thing is like all these different technologies use different things. And so if you are so adamant about getting a certain. Mileage or a certain pace. So say you're not using heart rate. You're using pace. Okay. Well, I have to be within, you know, I have to do this interval between an 8 30 and an 8 35 pace. Most likely your watch is not that accurate to actually know, you know, distance wise, satellite wise, pacing all the things if you're actually within that window. And again, it also doesn't matter if it's an 8 30 or an 8 35, right? But For all intents and purposes, but this is kind of this just examples of this overarching premise of people are losing the ability to find a pace based on a feeling and based on effort level there. We are more and more relying on these external sources to tell us if we're doing it correctly.

Kevin:

Yeah, I mean, this used to be one of my huge sources of pride back when I was running in high school is. Like one of the kids on my team said, you're, you're a robot. And he meant it to the level that coach could pick out whatever pace we were supposed to do. And I would just drop into that pace. And so everybody knew, you didn't have to take the lead. As long as you were within a step or two of me, you were going to be essentially running the pace, but you watch some of these elite teams and they'll get a group of like 10 people doing a track workout. They're not all crossing the line. at the exact same spot. They usually rotate to who's in the front. So one person's crossing the line in like 65 and the next person's crossing in 66 and then the back of the pack's at 67. They're all doing the same workout. It really is all the same thing. And so even on something as precise as running on a track, like the best of the best are running in a pack that's big enough that they're, they're off by a few seconds because they're in a pack instead of just a straight line.

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. And so, You know, all that to say, we need to be able to connect to ourselves and can connect to our bodies and be able to read, you know, how are we feeling today? Just because we're supposed to run a workout at a certain pace. How is the rest of your life affecting you? You know, maybe like, like we said, maybe your, your watch told you your sleep score, your ring told you your sleep score. And so you know that you're, you're tired other than just, you know, feeling tired, um, or have you eaten enough food today? Have you, like, Were you not feeling well? Are you recovering from something? If you're just feeling off, do you have a lot of stress going on at work? How is the weather going to affect you? All of these things are going to have an effect on how you perform. And if you think that you need to hit a certain pace or a certain heart rate or a certain numerical value, that. Some external device is going to give you you're essentially disconnecting from all of those other things that have a huge effect on your training

Kevin:

Well, I mean, you've got a couple of things in here that you can all monitor on that device of how did I sleep last night? I don't know. Let me check my sleep score. How much food did I get? I'm not sure Let me check my calorie tracker. Am I feeling well? I don't know. Let me check my recovery score Like there's all of these things.

Angie:

Calorie trackers are often inaccurate also

Kevin:

Yeah, I know. That's why I threw that one in there. Um, so hold on. Let me check all of these numbers that I'm not listening to. I'm just checking what the technology tells me. And then I'm going to use that to then try and come up with an exact pace that I need to run. That is also just estimated off of technology. Like a simple stopwatch and a track. Is going to be more accurate than your watch in all likelihood, depending on where you're running. There's a few places that you're going to be basically as accurate, but basically a 400 meter track and a simple stopwatch is going to be pretty good if you're trying to stay on a very, very tight pace.

Angie:

Yeah. And like you bring up nutrition tracking too, like we, this is one of like the first things that we often look at, and I shouldn't say often look at, but historically speaking, before we even had any of these fancy devices. Yeah. You had a scale, right? And a lot of times people use that number on the scale to let them know whether or not their body is the quote unquote, right. Weight or the right feeling the right way, but it still

Kevin:

has an air bar on it also it

Angie:

does and the scale at your mom's house always has an error. I'll just, I'll just say it that way. Sometimes when I get on that thing, I was like, what in the world is this recording? Um, but like there's a little adjuster at the bottom. Like there's a little dial at the bottom for you to like adjust it to make sure that it's actually on zero. And even so, sometimes it's off. And depending on, you know, What the altitude is where you live, like you're, you waste differently, like in South Florida than you do up in the mountains because of, of gravity.

Kevin:

I mean, not that much. I mean,

Angie:

based on some of the, the act, like the details that some of these scales are giving you nowadays, that are giving you like weight down to the like 0. 1 pound.

Kevin:

Yeah. That's, that's a little tight on prediction on, on the thing, but

Angie:

it's not like a huge difference, but like, my point is you're, you're letting an external device, like the scale Determine how you feel about your body. If that number isn't giving you the right thing, then you're going to feel bad about yourself. Or maybe it's giving you a number that you like. You're going to feel good about yourself that day. Versus, looking at your body in the mirror. Seeing how your clothes fit. Seeing how your stomach feels. Like, just like, noticing, like, how strong do I feel in my own skin? In my body? Like, what am I able to do? Versus, you know, letting this number Determine that

Kevin:

sure. And you know, it's not like the bathroom scales are scientific, like super well calibrated scientific evaluating machines, their cheap bathroom scales,

Angie:

but now they've got all these like body fat scanners and all sorts of things to

Kevin:

shore. But your basic low end bathroom scale. No one checks that, but there's a manual in it. And you know, what's written in the manual is the air within every measurement that it's doing, which a hundred percent how to

Angie:

calibrate it, which most people don't do.

Kevin:

No one does that part. And you know, is it actually on a flat surface? Who knows, but there's air in it. Even if you go through and you do all the calibrating, there's still going to be air every single time you step on. And it's not always going to be the same. Air every time. So you can't even compare from one day to the next because there's, there's issues going on, or maybe you're just holding onto some more water. What did you have for dinner the night before? Was it a little salty? That's going to throw things off way more than like, Oh no, there's extra numbers on the scale. I should now feel bad about myself. I should feel good about myself depending on, you know, which direction you want the scale moving.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that that's kind of the next part of what we really want to talk about is How these numbers then determine how we feel about our training, about our pacing, about our body, like, that's one of the things, you know, because it's one thing to get some information, but it's then what are we making that information mean? Are we letting that information tell us you're doing a good job and now that's okay to feel good about ourselves or you're not doing such a good job, right? Because like we just mentioned, all of these things have error Uh, inherently involved in them. So if you're using a GPS watch to estimate your pace and your VO2 max, and then you're using that GPS watch to spit out a race prediction, and then you actually go run in a real life race and don't, you know, worry about the fact that, you know, it's 90 degrees out and it's hot and humid and sunny. Not

Kevin:

everybody runs in Florida.

Angie:

I know, but we do. So it's an easy thing for me to look, to look to, right? And you don't hit. The number that your watch predicted are you gonna feel bad about it? Are you gonna feel disappointed that you missed this theoretical time that your watch kind of spit out at you?

Kevin:

Yes I think the answer is yes. The end. That's it. Episode over. Right, and we've wrapped that one up. So yes, the whole idea of a race predictor that is, again, another one of these black box algorithms that each company's going to have their own way of figuring it out is definitely not the best thing to determine your self worth off of. But before we get there, I want to go back to that whole, do you have to run all the way to five miles? Because. You tend to have to make sure that you hit the distance.

Angie:

I don't have to, I like to.

Kevin:

You like to.

Angie:

Yeah.

Kevin:

There are two different coaching podcasts that I listen to. And one of the coaches is adamant that you don't come up short. And the other one, It doesn't care if you come up short and thinks it's actually beneficial from time to time to purposely come up short, to create a mental challenge for yourself.

Angie:

Right. Especially if you are someone like me that likes to finish it out at a round number, then it's an added challenge for you Actually cut yourself short and hit save and then deal with the discomfort of not hitting the round number,

Kevin:

right? So there's there's that aspect but the other coach had a pretty solid argument if you're prescribed to go run eight miles and you run 7. 8 miles and you miscalculated what the loop was gonna be in your back to your house too soon You're back to the trailhead too soon. Do you add on the extra quarter mile? And he was like, oh Um, yes, because at that point, the mental and physical challenge of, well, I'm back at my car, I'm back at my house, and I have to turn around and go continue to run, is such a massive hurdle to overcome, that he thinks that you have to do it, because It, it makes a mental boost that direction,

Angie:

right? And the other thing that you can also point to is if you're supposed to do eight miles and you do 7. 9, that's not eight miles. So that's out of integrity. You didn't actually do what you said you were going to do and kind of the point. Of this podcast is well, maybe you did and your gps just measured it wrong, right? But mentally you didn't and so I think that both can be beneficial. It's about which direction Do you tend to lean into right? Do you tend to kind of overdo and always want that round number and it's more of a mental challenge for you to be To cut it short or is it more of a mental challenge to? Extended a little bit longer when you're kind of ready to be done.

Kevin:

And I think there's also a difference between, are you off by a couple hundredths because in that case you probably are already there or you're off by a 10th, like you didn't say you were 500 short, you might be a 10th short or you might already be done with the distance by then. But if you came up a quarter mile short, that's probably outside of the air of the device. And then it is the physical, the mental challenge of saying, uh, I'm back at my car. I'm back at my house and now I have to go do a loop to actually cover this distance.

Angie:

And that would be really mentally beneficial because if you're used to always being short, then what are you also training your mind to do, right? Like, are you always coming up short when it comes to your workout and just be like, Oh, well, it's just the GPS device, right? Like you're training yourself to. Not hit the intended distance every single time.

Kevin:

Yeah, and that it's gonna be okay that you don't have to push for the entire time Which makes racing really really difficult when you have to try to come to a kick and you've never actually finished the whole distance ever

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. So it's really a matter of which direction you tend to Um, lean towards and then which direction do you want to practice right now, too? Because I, I see that even within a certain individual, I would say that I have the tendency to want to like finish out the mileage and, and not stop short. So stopping short, it would give me that, that benefit, but then there's also going to be a benefit for me to extend it a little bit more or make sure that I am hitting, you know, the full distance or even going that little bit extra and challenging myself to, instead of, Ending at 5 miles going 5. 1 or 5. 2, which also is not an even number, but it's not an even number in the opposite direction.

Kevin:

Right. That's, I mean, I think that's kind of the takeaway is

Angie:

5. 17 I should say.

Kevin:

Always coming up like drastically short is going to cause an issue because yes, there's some error in the things, but you're just, you're selling yourself short on that one. But if you know that you come back to the house and it's like 5. 9, 5. 2, But 4. 9 and you're like, ah, but my add on is like a half mile and then I'm going to be way over my distance. Some people are just going to do like loops of their driveway until they're there. And I don't think that's, that's beneficial. I don't think there's really, you're getting anything out of that, but going on an extra loop that's going to put you over, I think does serve both a mental and longterm physical benefit as long as you're recovering appropriately.

Angie:

Yeah. And that recovery also requires you to be connected to yourself. You know, how are you feeling? How much of a training load is your body undergoing this week? Like, and like, it's in some ways the technology can help here too, because sometimes we are just feeling tired and that's actually how we're supposed to feel. Because there is this concept of cumulative fatigue. That is part of what we try to put onto ourselves during a training cycle. Is that by teaching ourselves how to get tired and then how to run when we're tired, that's very beneficial if we're trying to train for a race. Because at some point in that race, you're going to feel tired and you're going to have to fix it. force yourself to push through when you're tired, but if we're constantly disconnected from ourselves and constantly pushing through when we're tired, that's when it becomes the problem. Like we talked about in last week's episode of force recovery.

Kevin:

Yeah. I mean, it's a whole idea of, of checking out because you're tired all the time. And so you're trying to constantly overcome and pretend that you're not tired. Sometimes having the watch tell you that your, your body battery is at is a sign that maybe, maybe you've been pushing really, really hard and it might be time to take a break. So, you know, if, if it's wrong and you're feeling amazing, that's great. But If it's telling you you're running on fumes and you actually pause and think about it and be like, yes, actually I am tired and I have been tired for the last four days, then it can, it can be helpful. But again, that's just a chance to tune into your body.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that this is where I think that the data does become helpful and that's looking at those overall trends. You know, if you are like, I think that they're a lot less helpful on like a day to day basis, like from one day to the next. But I think that. If you're constantly ending the day with your body battery at five, cause that's as low as my body battery will go on my watch. And so I know if I am. Ending at five pretty much every single day of a given week or a given couple of weeks. I have something to look at there, right? Like, I'm feeling tired and there's a darn good reason. What else is going on in my life? Why am I ending the day completely drained every single day? Or if I notice that my sleep score is not recovering to, you know, a certain level. Whatever that quote unquote normal is. So I think that these data trackers can be relatively useful. Because even though they might not be recording the data, if the data is not exactly what it should be. is within your body, you can still see of like what it measures for you and kind of what is your quote unquote normal according to that piece of equipment. Yes. Does that make sense?

Kevin:

Yeah. So in that case, some of these, these numbers that get spit out just because it says that your, your sleep score was like Right. I don't know, a 50, let's just throw a number out there. It was a 50. If you always get 50s and you feel great after those, that might be your baseline. And so if, if suddenly you're consistently hitting a 50, suddenly one day it throws a 30 out at you and you're like, yeah, I feel exhausted. It makes sense. So a 50

Angie:

in that case isn't necessarily bad,

Kevin:

right?

Angie:

Because that is. That's your normal.

Kevin:

That's your normal. But

Angie:

it's also an interesting thing to look at to say, okay, if I'm only hitting a 50, is my normal actually a lot better? Like, only half of what my potential actually is here, too.

Kevin:

Right. And this is a way that you might be able to start experimenting on things.

Angie:

And that's where curiosity comes in, and it plays a really important role here.

Kevin:

But then, to see if sleeping longer, if changing the temperature when you sleep, all the different things that you can do to try and optimize your sleep. When you wake up, don't immediately check your sleep score. I think the first thing you Like, when you, when you wake up, check and see how you feel, like, how do you, do you actually feel more recovered? And then if you want to see if, you know, the magic number changed, you can check in and see what happened to the number. But I think a lot of people just rely on the number to let them know how they should feel that day or they wake up and heaven forbid the number got too low and they get nervous about it. And now they, they put more pressure on sleeping correctly the next night. And that's the worst thing that you can do for your sleep is to stress about sleeping correctly.

Angie:

Yeah, exactly. Because obviously stress is what the actual problem here is in all of this is. Are these devices actually adding to your stress level? Is it making you feel better about your training? Is it making you feel worse about your training? Like, just use them all with a grain of salt. You know, take what is helpful for you and leave what's not helpful. You know, don't get dependent. On this data, on these devices, and that's really kind of what it all comes down to is don't use these, these devices as ways to disconnect from your body, use them as tools to help you further connect, but still put in that pause, you know, that's really the biggest thing I think, you know, going back to like one of the first things we said in the episode is putting that pause in to check in with yourself and say, Hey, How do I feel here? Right? Like when you actually connect to your body and understand how you feel, what you're thinking, what your stress level is, how you feel at certain, you know, weathers, different temperature and things like that, like, and then use your watch to kind of, you know, Corroborate that, like, you know, kind of like confirm it or deny it or just give you an extra piece of data. It's not that the, I don't think that the watch or the device should confirm or deny, but just give you one more piece of data to kind of go into your overall Um, information,

Kevin:

right? Which includes how you personally feel. I like that. You mentioned that you should take it with a grain of salt. Cause it reminds me of one of my other favorite devices out on there is like the continuous salt monitors that like it measures how much salt is in your sweat, that's also a patch that goes on your arm, but then I've also seen one that's a patch that goes like on your forehead, which I just, I want to go running down the street and see somebody with this thing across their I know that it's a sweat monitor and I just, I want to stop and chat with that person. But there's so many things and we're not done. Like we're not done in being like, Oh, well now we've, we've got heart rate monitors and we've got. you know, the glucose monitors, we've got continuous lactate monitors, so many things. And at the end of the day, they're all just numbers. If you're not using those numbers to help you to help benefit you, and if those numbers are just increasing stress on your life, Those are worthless numbers. If you can do something with the numbers and they're actually legitimate numbers that you can use and try to find the trends and make improvements, then they're beneficial. If they're just creating stress, they're not beneficial at all.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that they can create that stress because we get so dependent on the numbers and we try to make things a lot more science y and specific than they need to be, because. There's a lot more money to be made. Like, let's not be fools, right? Like, let's not be fools when it comes to this. It's much easier to tell people you have to go buy this device so that you can keep your lactate threshold in this optimal range. Then it is to say, go out and run easy. Most of the time, run harder. Some of the time, make sure you're getting enough sleep. sleep, drinking enough water and eating enough food and you'll probably be healthy and feel good. Like there's not money to be made on that. Like the more specific the device, then the more devices you're going to need, the more money they can make off of you. Like all of this is consumerism. Like, and there will be people that argue that like, no, the science is important. If you are not an Olympic caliber athlete that's trying to squeeze out every fraction of a percentage when it comes to your performance, most of this data probably doesn't matter for you. You could probably get way better by sleeping more, training a little bit more, like adding a little bit of volume to your, to your week if you want to, but sleeping more, fueling your body appropriately, cutting out some junk, and Drinking more water.

Kevin:

I mean you talk about it unless you're working at that olympic level Yeah, when they started doing these lactate tests and they took them to elite olympic caliber African runners they went into one of the training camps and it turned out that they were doing their workouts the same like Scientifically correct that their lactate levels while they were doing certain reps were exactly in the range that they were supposed to be in because over years of running, they figured out what medium was and they figured out what the hard side of like they had such gradations within their running that when they were told run moderate, they had one when they said run moderate and then just a little bit above it, they had it. They had all of these things, they didn't need lactate monitors because they were so in tuned with their body and that is why they're also one of the best runners in the world.

Angie:

Yeah, because they're in tune with themselves. Yes. And that's really what the takeaway, we want the takeaway to be from this episode is tune into yourself, connect with your body. Don't rely on external devices to tell yourself whether or not you're doing a good job because when it comes down to it, if you're moving your body on most days, if you're getting sleep, if you're drinking water and eating quality food most of the time, you're doing a good job. And that's really what it takes to make a difference. Support your general health, your longterm health and an active lifestyle that I'm guessing all of us listening to this podcast right now want to have.

Kevin:

Yeah. Excellent. Excellent conclusion.

Angie:

So be healthy, listen to your body. All right. You guys, um, if you liked this episode, please take a screenshot. Share it on social media, hit that send button right now and send it to a friend that you think would benefit from it. And if you haven't yet, please leave us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify so that more runners can find the podcast and we can help more people. And as always, thank you for spending your time with us. This has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 352. Now get out there and run your life.