Watchless Monday

David from RunningBecauseICan (Twitter: @RunningBecause) has been promoting “watchless Monday” runs for a while now. I’ve had two reasons for not jumping on the bandwagon. First, I don’t run on Mondays. 🙂 Second, I’ve been training for the Zooma Annapolis Half Marathon but only running three days a week. I didn’t feel like I could give up one of my training runs for a watchless run.

When I realized that the Memorial Day holiday would fall during my taper week, I promised that I would do a watchless run on Memorial Day. I kept my promise, even though I had rearranged my weekend schedule (for a scrumptious reason!) so that my Memorial Day run was my last “long” run before the Zooma Half.

I had second thoughts as I was walking out the door without my Garmin, but I decided that I had more to lose than win by monitoring my pace. Under the best of circumstances, a nice pace would boost my confidence as I head into race weekend. But there was so much that could go wrong. I was tired. It was humid (95% humidity). It was warm (71°F at 6:00 am). A slow pace would be disappointing, even if I had at least these reasons to explain it. So I left my Garmin behind and headed out.

But, I did have my iPod. And I did use the stopwatch feature just to monitor my total time. I wanted to run for about 75 minutes. I had decided on a route that I knew was more than 7 miles but less than 8 miles–I haven’t it run it often enough to know the exact distance. 

I felt pretty good during my run. My pace was solid but not too hard. My breathing was at a 3/2 rate. The heat wasn’t too bad, it just made the run feel like work. The last long hill was hard, but I felt like I recovered quickly for the last flat mile back to my neighborhood. When I was close to home, I checked the time on the stopwatch (1:05) and decided to take the long way back so I could run for a total time of 1:15. The very last short hill nearly killed me, and I stopped running a few driveways before my usual stopping point.

It felt so nice to walk into my air conditioned house! After I stretched and showered, I got a bag of ice for my feet–at one point during my run some plantar fascitis-type pain flared up in my left foot. I hope it was just a fluke, but I’m not taking any chances. Not this close to my Half, and not with three races on my calendar for June!

I did the math on my running shoes, and figured that they probably have over 300 miles on them (if I averaged 20 miles a week since February). I succumbed to the sale ads at Road Runner Sports, and ordered a new pair of the same shoes: Mizuno Wave Nirvana 7.

I also ordered a handheld Nathan water bottle so I don’t have to wear my hydration belt on short runs this summer.

By mid-morning, my lower back was really achy and stiff. I started to wonder if I’d run too hard, even though it didn’t seem that fast at the time. I used runningmap.com to plot my course (7.85 miles). When I entered that and my time (1:11) on DailyMile.com, it calculated my average pace as 9:03. Yep, that’s a bit fast for this hilly route, especially given the weather conditions.

I can’t blame my watchless run for running too hard. I doubt I would have made myself slow down if I’d seen 9:00 minute mile split times this morning. It does remind me that I’m not very good at pacing myself, and reinforces my plan to use my Garmin to help my pacing during the race.

Have you done a watchless run? Did you enjoy it?

Do you carry water on your runs?