Watchless

Yesterday evening I went on a nice picnic with my wife at a park about 5 miles from our house. We'd gone to church in the morning and the day was so warm I was planning on running in the evening. After all our daily activities, including swimming, it was after seven by the time we finally got to the picnic. Fortunately I had my running gear on already--I was planning on running once we got home.

Then, an incredible idea hit me: I would just run home from the lake park. I knew there were sidewalks the whole way and it'd save me time. This would have been a pretty normal run except that I didn't have my Garmin.

Now, I know running can happen without charting your average pace, distance to the hundredth of a mile, and heart rate, but I hadn't done it forever. So, on my run from Holland Lake back to our townhouse I was free of a Garmin. In fact, I didn't have a watch at all. No watch, no iPod, nothing.

It was strange in some ways--every once-in-a-while I would check my wrist only to find that there was no digital display between my arm hairs. I also went to pause my time at least twice when I had to stop at stop lights. In the end, however, it was nice to get through a run with nothing but the sensation of movement and the meandering train of thought running through my head. I think I'm going to get a few more runs in sans the Garmin--just to keep things interesting.

Eight days through August and I've ran on every one of them. The first week I made it 47 miles, which was actually a fair amount more than I was planning on. Nothing's hurting too bad so I'll aim to stay around 45-50 miles for a couple weeks--I'm just hoping the weather cooperates. It's hard to get any real long runs in when it's 85+ out.