"We know too much and feel too little"
OR: The Numbers Game, Part 3
"We know too much and feel too little" (Bertrand Russell)
I love this quote and find it very inspiring, but reality hits hard. We live in a data-driven world. In the age of information-warfare. Through countless media channels, social platforms and data analysis tools, we have permanent and real-time access to every piece of information that has ever been documented by mankind. Plus a significant amount of fake news.
Likewise, the time we spend reflecting and trusting our gut feelings has decreased to a ridiculous minimum.
This dilemma also affects our running. We are slaves to the figures our sport produces. Our own, but even more so the figures of others, like our coaches, training partners, competitors, or elite runners we admire.
The actual essence of our sport is:
"Whoever gets to the tree first, wins."
Not even a stopwatch needed for this.
But to move up the hierarchy, we started paying attention to
HR
TSS
HFV
VO2MAX
D+
BMI
%HRMAX
and VT1/2
without exactly knowing what this data means. Typically, we are just assuming. (To bring my point across even more dramatically, I am leaving you with these unpleasant abbreviations here.)
After all, the sheer knowledge doesn’t make us better runners. Sometimes maybe even the opposite.
Guilty as charged
Latest since my Das Z Letter “The Numbers Game”, and its dramatic successor “Why do we compare ourselves to others?” you know that I am a victim, too. Since my earliest days as a runner, I’ve been monitoring and interpreting the hell out of my data and I still do, until this day. So, I am not judging here. Well, perhabs a bit.
Does data make me a happier runner?
Sometimes yes.
Sometimes no.
On the one hand, it’s like an extra bonus world besides the actual running. Even thought running itself is still the main thing, I often find it extremely satisfying to look at the data afterward. It grants me a feeling of control. Like I would understand my complex human body a bit better, especially if a run didn’t go as planned.
On the other hand, data and numbers can drive me insane if I don’t watch out.
It’s a thin line, and I have been on the wrong side of the tracks more often than I want to admit.
Back to the question if data makes me a happier runner
If I recall the most intense running experiences I’ve been granted in the past 10 years, hardly any of them were related to numbers and data. Most of them evolved from feelings and sensations like total exhaustion, inexplicable primal force, or being stripped down to the very essence of my existence, where nothing mattered and everything made sense.
I wouldn’t describe all of these experiences as “happy” ones, but they surely stand for why I run.
If time didn’t exist…
My wife Lisa asked me a demanding question the other day.
“What would a marathon PB be like, if time didn’t exist?”
Let that sink in for a moment.
First, the absence of time would make the whole concept of a PB obsolete. It would probably even make running a marathon obsolete, as well.
However, what would be left was a feeling. A feeling of having done something extraordinarily great. Greater than anything ever done before. An enormous achievement. A true milestone. Something totally epic.
A PB-feeling without a measurable or comparable PB.
Remember? “We know too much and feel too little.”
That’s it. The feeling is what matters. That’s what we all should be longing for instead of computing numbers.
Everything not running
I bought new headphones. Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO wired, over-ear headphones, to be more precise. Pretty old school. I used them in many recording studios as a musician, and remembered their perfect fit and extraordinary sound quality.
Although recording the Das Z Sprachnachricht is the quicker part of my weekly Z-output, I still felt the urge to level up a bit and get more professional.
I did basically the same with my microphone a couple of weeks ago, when I upgraded this essential podcasting tool from a RØDE NT-USB to a Shure MV7. The modern little sister of the infamous Shure SM7B, which all of you have heard in millions of songs, audiobooks, and podcasts.
Equipped like a real podcaster, but with the mindset of a writer. I wonder how long this is will be going to go well.
I like the question your wife posed. It‘s good to think beyond the numbers.