Als ehemaliger Whoop Träger kann ich alles sehr gut nachvollziehen. Oura kam für mich damals nicht in Frage, da ich Schmuck nicht tragen kann (ob wohl verheiratet, musste halt ein Tattoo statt Ring her ;-) ). Zudem finde ich einen Ring zum trainieren (z.B. Kettlebell) sehr ungünstig. Anfänglich, war der Whoop als Orientierung was der Körper so macht oder nicht macht, super spannend, doch irgendwann hatte ich aber nur noch ein Whoop-Leben, also irgendwie fremdbestimmt. Als die Erkenntnis kam, gings mir danach viel besser. Würde nie mehr zurückkehren wollen, es reicht mir bereits, dass meine Suunto mir bereits wieder sagt, wie gut mein Schlaf war oder nicht, doch ich ignoriere es heute gekonnt.
Ha! Glaube wir ticken da alle ähnlich… Die Gefahr, dass das ganze kippt und man auf einmal zum Sklaven des Trackers wird ist groß. Ich teste das jetzt noch mal für mich bin mir aber sicher dass ich den Ring auch wieder ablegen werde irgendwann ;-)
I have been running from June of 2020. This is regarding running but be can be applied to different walks of life as well. Not every moment of life needs to be optimized. Before adding things into our lives, we can looks for things that can be subtracted or can be eliminated.
I started running back in June of 2020. I was firstly using a classic Samsung button phone for a couple of months to track just the total time of my runs as I didn't kept a smartphone from 2016 to 2022. Then I bought a Casio watch, not taking my phone on the run to note the total timings of my run. I kept it this way till November of 2024. No smart watch, no strava and no other app to track the metrics. This was also because I didn't intended to keep running for this long. Now I have been using both Coros Pace Pro & Strava since last November. I have been some sort of like Anti Technology and didn't wanted to be tied to all these numbers.
Personally speaking the perception of effort is a major factor. When I say to myself that I have to go on a run for 30 KM at hard effort, my cognition itself knows that this is gonna be quite tough and heartbeat can be felt in head as well. So, it has an idea of what kind of tough it can be but when sometimes I have a 20 KM run or shorter run- it can feel like tough around 12-14 KM mark. Ellen Langer, a renowned psychologist at Harvard did a research and asked people to do jumping jacks and asked when they felt tired, the answer was not a number but two thirds of the way they felt tired. Even if it was asked to do 100, then also around 66 which 2/3 of the way & when asked to do 200- then also 2/3 of the way which is around 135.
It is quite a tough thing make a mark that if smart watches makes runners worse. But I totally understand your point that how it can make an impact on how we perceive things and how it can limit on race day to go the depth of reservoir of pain cave & pushing to nth level. Both Joe Klecker & Biya Simbassa have been running races on sheer determination to do great & not watches let them dictate how they are feeling. Joe Klecker even said no watch or no HR or pace can tell them when to make move. Even Emile Cairess can be seen wearing a simple Casio watch during the marathons and too being Majors where the competitions is cut throat. Nina Engelhard as well trains with no watch & even Zach Miller used to train with a Casio watch, not tracking numbers in first 3-4 years of his running. I still remember Miller vs Hawks youtube video of TNF Endurance Challenge 50 miler in 2016, they weren't relying on numbers- that was sheer end to end battle with grit and not letting their perception of pain getting over them. What happened at CCC which was this year a 60 KM race, I don't think so Jim relied on keeping HR under control sort of thing for 5 hours- he ran as fast as he could for the whole distance. What happened at World Athletics Championship at Tokyo b/w Aphonce Simbu & Amanal Petros.
If you are talking about pain perception and that too in ultras, the example of UTMB 2022. The goat Kilian Jornet was in the trenches and was about to pull the plug from the race but Blanchard came and motivated him to keep moving. Kilian Jornet's perception of pain had surpassed and he himself felt like he emptied the reservoir but it seems even this experienced of an overall athlete misjudged or was taken away by the pain he was feeling at that particular lowest of lows. At the end, Kilian ended up continuing & winning the race in CR time. how is this possible when an athlete was almost about to throw in the towel but ended up winning in CR time. Pain perception is a lot of mental training and not being over whelmed by what one feeling during the lows. And numbers should be a part of training but not should be dictating especially in ultras, everyone has to enter pain cave in ultras. Could Jim have closer to the 100 KM WR times, if he would have kept looking at his watch & HR in 2021 Carbox X2 project, it could have made his cognition go haywire for sure if the numbers would have been a bit off. He missed it by 12 seconds.
Smart watches should play a role and not be over powering over an individual meaning they are just taking every thing on absolute terms which the data is dictating. We need to find a balance to train with watches & Strava as well.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be- We should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
Joy has to be in the drive seat of training as well. Ben Dhiman after coming 2nd in UTMB simply put one gotta love doing this, then only one can succeed. Tom Evans also said his relationship with running went to that he had to perform & win but before this year's UTMB, he reclaimed his relationship with running which got reflected in his win. Ruth Croft has been having a similar approach for more than a decade. Does Courtney not have fun, when almost 99.99% would have quit, she kept chipping away and continued to cherish the community she was surrounded with.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
And it is not an easy job to pull back the mileage of running, we are kind of TYPE-A personalities, hyper-competitive. But it is great to know that you know what you body can hold & how you can keep doing it for longer duration, keeping longevity into perspective.
I think it comes down to passion and joy that has to be truly felt deeply in order to make the most out of one's personal running journey wherever it is leading.
And I couldn't agree more on what you wrote about the importance of consistency: Just as putting in the work in training and recovery, listening to the body is a skill that needs to be cultivated and acquired over a long period of time and through personal trial and error. I am a big believer in that technology in this way is nothing but a short-minded false shortcut that won't lead to the desired success. It might even slow down progress because it gives us false signals we mistakenly use for learning and only later realize that there are other things and signs to look out for.
It may sound harsh and brutal but for certain in things in life there simply is no shortcut, and running is a great example for understanding this. Whether it is mileage, recovery habits or intuition - these are all things that require patience, perseverance and the ability of self-reflection to master.
Als ehemaliger Whoop Träger kann ich alles sehr gut nachvollziehen. Oura kam für mich damals nicht in Frage, da ich Schmuck nicht tragen kann (ob wohl verheiratet, musste halt ein Tattoo statt Ring her ;-) ). Zudem finde ich einen Ring zum trainieren (z.B. Kettlebell) sehr ungünstig. Anfänglich, war der Whoop als Orientierung was der Körper so macht oder nicht macht, super spannend, doch irgendwann hatte ich aber nur noch ein Whoop-Leben, also irgendwie fremdbestimmt. Als die Erkenntnis kam, gings mir danach viel besser. Würde nie mehr zurückkehren wollen, es reicht mir bereits, dass meine Suunto mir bereits wieder sagt, wie gut mein Schlaf war oder nicht, doch ich ignoriere es heute gekonnt.
Ha! Glaube wir ticken da alle ähnlich… Die Gefahr, dass das ganze kippt und man auf einmal zum Sklaven des Trackers wird ist groß. Ich teste das jetzt noch mal für mich bin mir aber sicher dass ich den Ring auch wieder ablegen werde irgendwann ;-)
Auf den Z-Letter habe ich schon eine Weile gewartet. 😅👍
Haha ja war ne ganze Weile im “Draft” Ordner ;-)
I have been running from June of 2020. This is regarding running but be can be applied to different walks of life as well. Not every moment of life needs to be optimized. Before adding things into our lives, we can looks for things that can be subtracted or can be eliminated.
I started running back in June of 2020. I was firstly using a classic Samsung button phone for a couple of months to track just the total time of my runs as I didn't kept a smartphone from 2016 to 2022. Then I bought a Casio watch, not taking my phone on the run to note the total timings of my run. I kept it this way till November of 2024. No smart watch, no strava and no other app to track the metrics. This was also because I didn't intended to keep running for this long. Now I have been using both Coros Pace Pro & Strava since last November. I have been some sort of like Anti Technology and didn't wanted to be tied to all these numbers.
Personally speaking the perception of effort is a major factor. When I say to myself that I have to go on a run for 30 KM at hard effort, my cognition itself knows that this is gonna be quite tough and heartbeat can be felt in head as well. So, it has an idea of what kind of tough it can be but when sometimes I have a 20 KM run or shorter run- it can feel like tough around 12-14 KM mark. Ellen Langer, a renowned psychologist at Harvard did a research and asked people to do jumping jacks and asked when they felt tired, the answer was not a number but two thirds of the way they felt tired. Even if it was asked to do 100, then also around 66 which 2/3 of the way & when asked to do 200- then also 2/3 of the way which is around 135.
It is quite a tough thing make a mark that if smart watches makes runners worse. But I totally understand your point that how it can make an impact on how we perceive things and how it can limit on race day to go the depth of reservoir of pain cave & pushing to nth level. Both Joe Klecker & Biya Simbassa have been running races on sheer determination to do great & not watches let them dictate how they are feeling. Joe Klecker even said no watch or no HR or pace can tell them when to make move. Even Emile Cairess can be seen wearing a simple Casio watch during the marathons and too being Majors where the competitions is cut throat. Nina Engelhard as well trains with no watch & even Zach Miller used to train with a Casio watch, not tracking numbers in first 3-4 years of his running. I still remember Miller vs Hawks youtube video of TNF Endurance Challenge 50 miler in 2016, they weren't relying on numbers- that was sheer end to end battle with grit and not letting their perception of pain getting over them. What happened at CCC which was this year a 60 KM race, I don't think so Jim relied on keeping HR under control sort of thing for 5 hours- he ran as fast as he could for the whole distance. What happened at World Athletics Championship at Tokyo b/w Aphonce Simbu & Amanal Petros.
If you are talking about pain perception and that too in ultras, the example of UTMB 2022. The goat Kilian Jornet was in the trenches and was about to pull the plug from the race but Blanchard came and motivated him to keep moving. Kilian Jornet's perception of pain had surpassed and he himself felt like he emptied the reservoir but it seems even this experienced of an overall athlete misjudged or was taken away by the pain he was feeling at that particular lowest of lows. At the end, Kilian ended up continuing & winning the race in CR time. how is this possible when an athlete was almost about to throw in the towel but ended up winning in CR time. Pain perception is a lot of mental training and not being over whelmed by what one feeling during the lows. And numbers should be a part of training but not should be dictating especially in ultras, everyone has to enter pain cave in ultras. Could Jim have closer to the 100 KM WR times, if he would have kept looking at his watch & HR in 2021 Carbox X2 project, it could have made his cognition go haywire for sure if the numbers would have been a bit off. He missed it by 12 seconds.
Smart watches should play a role and not be over powering over an individual meaning they are just taking every thing on absolute terms which the data is dictating. We need to find a balance to train with watches & Strava as well.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be- We should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
Joy has to be in the drive seat of training as well. Ben Dhiman after coming 2nd in UTMB simply put one gotta love doing this, then only one can succeed. Tom Evans also said his relationship with running went to that he had to perform & win but before this year's UTMB, he reclaimed his relationship with running which got reflected in his win. Ruth Croft has been having a similar approach for more than a decade. Does Courtney not have fun, when almost 99.99% would have quit, she kept chipping away and continued to cherish the community she was surrounded with.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
And it is not an easy job to pull back the mileage of running, we are kind of TYPE-A personalities, hyper-competitive. But it is great to know that you know what you body can hold & how you can keep doing it for longer duration, keeping longevity into perspective.
What a great comment!
I think it comes down to passion and joy that has to be truly felt deeply in order to make the most out of one's personal running journey wherever it is leading.
And I couldn't agree more on what you wrote about the importance of consistency: Just as putting in the work in training and recovery, listening to the body is a skill that needs to be cultivated and acquired over a long period of time and through personal trial and error. I am a big believer in that technology in this way is nothing but a short-minded false shortcut that won't lead to the desired success. It might even slow down progress because it gives us false signals we mistakenly use for learning and only later realize that there are other things and signs to look out for.
It may sound harsh and brutal but for certain in things in life there simply is no shortcut, and running is a great example for understanding this. Whether it is mileage, recovery habits or intuition - these are all things that require patience, perseverance and the ability of self-reflection to master.