It’s amazing to think that I spent my first few years as a runner without a GPS-based running watch. It feels like GPS activity watches are ubiquitous now among all endurance athletes. The first running GPS watches were the huge, clunky 205 and 305 models from Garmin. Compared to today’s offerings, they had a lot of shortcomings: battery life of a few hours, a requirement for proprietary software on your computer, accuracy issues, GPS lock issues, and limited storage. Because of those shortcomings, and because I was pinching pennies to pay off my college debt, I didn’t think the benefit was worth the cost of those early GPS watches. I do remember meeting up to run with friends who were early adopters of running GPS tech.

I think that when it comes to runners using GPS technology, there are two polar ends of the spectrum. Once in a while, I’ll meet a runner that doesn’t track anything. One might label this kind of person a trog, to use author Dave Eggers’ term from his futuristic dystopian novel The Every. A trog is a person who eschews certain technologies, largely because the technology is unnecessary, but also because it is detrimental to well-being in the long run. At the other end of the spectrum are the people like the friends I mention above; the runners who cringe at the thought of taking an unrecorded step.

I sympathize with both points of view. I understand the benefits of tracking running performance. I recall hearing a quote from famous author and podcaster Tim Ferriss, who is fond of saying “What gets measured gets managed.” If you’re aiming for a new personal record in a race, you should definintely be recording your hard workouts at the very least. However, on the other side of the spectrum, I think it’s ridiculous to end a group run and watch some of the group members arbitrarily run another 20, 30, or even 500 yards because they can’t have their device stop on a number that isn’t a precise decimal fraction or whole number. Are they aware that a marathon is exactly 26.21875 miles, or 42.195 km?

These days, I lean toward the trog side of things, at least on a philosophical level. Sometimes I forget my GPS watch in the rush to get out the door. I did a 15-mile trail group run the other weekend with no watch. I survived. It was fine. I spent a few years wearing my training watch full-time, once the battery life could handle a week without charging (looking at you, COROS). Now, I wear a nice automatic watch more often than my GPS watch. The automatic watch is also a piece of incredible technology and precise engineering, but mostly because of what it accomplishes without a battery.

In this modern era where the vast majority of runs are tracked via GPS, those runs are also shared. In my world, it’s mostly on Strava. I know there are other platforms, but I only ever saw community value in Strava since I started using it in 2014. I used Strava for years. Used in the past tense, because right now I’m not using the platform. I stopped linking my runs to Strava a few months ago because I’m getting back into the swing of regular training, and I think that uploading things to social media has cascading effects on the way that people view their own activities, and the way that people view the sport in general. I want my training to be absent of those effects, at least for now.

Personally, when my activities are shared to Strava, I’m at least a little self-conscious about the length and paces of my runs. I think this is because I’m not “in shape” right now, by my own standards.

Since I’m not sharing activities or even recording them in many cases, I’m much more open-minded about what each run will become when I step outside the front door. Without any potential for external scrutiny, I don’t feel bad about shuffling along in conversational pace, and stopping several times mid-run, or meandering up and down sets of stairs to go explore corners of the city that I’ve never noticed before. Every run becomes more of an opportunity to explore, reflect, and examine.

Many professional athletes don’t upload their training activities publically. I’m sure they track everything for their coaches, and that they have prescribed runs and training, but sometimes I wonder how frequently they bail on their prescribed schedule because they slept poorly, or because they’re tired and burned out. It’s easy to get caught up in a rat race of competitive numbers on a weekly or monthly basis.

Several weeks ago I was chatting with a friend, a professional trail runner, about how the professional trail runners in Europe run far less on a yearly basis than those in the US. It’s not uncommon for championship-level ultramarathon runners in Europe to run just 2,000 miles in a calendar year. To be fair, they spend much of the off-season doing ski mountaineering races or other cross-training activities, which could be considered “training”, but the point being that they’re as good or better as runners in the US that run twice as much on a volume basis.

Americans are known around the world for our excessive consumption. We buy enormous vehicles and fail to use their extra seats or towing capacities most of the time we drive them. We buy excess amounts of processed foods that come in bulk in plastic containers and cardboard boxes, then we store those things for months on end. Does technology cause us to over-subscribe to running, too? I’d be interested to see if there’s data around overuse injuries that compares distance runners in the US with those around the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the data show US runners to incur overuse injuries more frequently.

Regardless, I’ve decided that I like to be more reflective and thoughtful about my running, and not to overdo things as I’m ramping up for Boston. Technology has its place, and I’ll use it once I’m in the final 4 months of training. Until then, I think it has the potential to cause more harm than good. As with many things, running technology is probably best consumed in moderation.