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We know your GPS watch is all the rage: from tracking your pace to reading your text messages to brushing your teeth and combing your hair for you. It has lots of fancy bells and whistles. But sometimes we should ignore all the info it’s throwing at us and just run by feel.

Now we’re not going to ask you to leave your watch at home altogether. We tried that before and it didn’t work – we wouldn’t wanna miss out on that Strava mileage… Instead on your next recovery run we want you to plan out a route ahead of time that is a prescribed distance and just go out and run it. Don’t look at your watch a gazillion times and adjust your speed to try to hit your prescribed easy run pace. Just listen to your body and try to run easy. See where that lands you.

We tend to get distracted by the info from our watches when some of the most valuable info we can get as runners is from the signs our bodies give us. Your recovery run pace isn’t going to be exactly the same everyday and you need to learn to let your body tell you when you should dial it back. This is something Coach Dylan is trying to get back in the habit of doing and it’s something that can be very valuable for everyone. Next time we will delve into why you should run this same route you’ve mapped out on a regular basis. And how doing so can benefit your running.

We believe this a simple, low-tech way to track your recovery or lack thereof. Here is what we suggest and the thinking behind it;

  • Run that same route on your recovery runs, on the day after your usual speed work and/or tempo runs.
  • Record an overall time for your run, but don’t obsessively check your pace and HR and all that jazz during the run. Just get a time. Heck wear an old chrono watch or carry a stop-watch if you want to be really old school.
  • Try to run the same ‘easy’ effort for these runs.

After a few weeks of doing this you should be able to get an idea of how well you are recovering from your hard workouts. If you consistently run 60 minutes for your 12k route and then one day you run 63 minutes (while going what feels like your usual easy run effort) it might just be you’re having a bad day. Or it might be a sign that you went to the well too much on your last hard workout. Or that you are still feeling the long run you did 3 or 4 days prior. If the next time out your go back to running 60 minutes, great. Let’s call that 63 minuter a bad day. But if you’re consistently slogging away and finding your running 63 minutes again and again, it might be a sign you need an easy week or a rest day.