I’m warming up for the Cape Peninsula Marathon in February of 2023. It’s 5am. There’s a cool breeze blowing and hundreds of other runners are all lined up on the start line with nervous chatter and laughter filling the air. I’ve had a good training block for this race and I am hoping to run faster than I did the previous year.
On my wrist is the Garmin Fenix 7X. A beautiful specimen in the world of sports watches. Up until this race date I have been running with this watch for almost 3 months so it knows me (at least it thinks it knows me) pretty well.
For those familiar with Garmin watches or similar smart watches and fitness devices, you’ll know that many of them provide you with a readiness or performance score after about 10 or so minutes into your workout or activity. It gives you an estimate based on the historical data that it has collected on you as to how ready you are to perform on this particular day. In the case of my Garmin watch, one gets a performance condition score that ranges from -20(worst) to +20 (best).
Here is how the Garmin support website explains the performance condition score:
As you complete your activity, such as running or cycling, the performance condition feature analyzes your pace, heart rate, and heart rate variability to make a real-time assessment of your ability to perform compared to your average fitness level. It is approximately your real-time percentage deviation from your baseline VO2 max. Estimate. Performance condition values range from -20 to +20. After the first 6 to 20 minutes of your activity, the device displays your performance condition score. For example, a score of +5 means that you are rested, fresh, and capable of a good run or ride.
Ok so back to the race. I complete my warm up and my Garmin gives me a Performance Condition Score of -8. Yes, you read that correctly, negative 8! In other words, I should call for a ride and head home to go back to sleep. Instead, I smile at this number and actually laugh. Why? Because I’ve learned over the years to detach from the numbers on my watch and learned how to feel into my own body and simply trust the training that I have done and ensure that I have tapered well. It’s taken time to reach this point, but I can tell you that is one of the most liberating feelings.
So you might be wondering, what happened on this race day in February this year. I ended up running a PB for my marathon in 2h46min. So much for my poor performance score. This post isn’t meant to bash Garmin at all - I’m a huge fan and supporter of Garmin and have worn their products for the past 8 years and don’t see myself changing to another brand any time soon.
The purpose of this post is simply to highlight the fact that we should learn to detach from our smart watches and not be governed by them. They are useful for sure, but they cannot be the only metric that you live and die by. Use your smart watch as an indicator, but learn to trust your training (provided you’ve trained in a sensible way) and feel into your body more. It’s far more fun and rewarding and enables you to laugh on the start line of a race because the only person that knows you best, is you.
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