I’m writing about one of many endurance runner’s favourite instruments, the GPS watch.
Gulliver’s Watch
In “Gulliver’s Travels,” the 1726 satire by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver finds himself shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput. There, Gulliver is regarded an enormous, as he finds himself towering over the Lilliputians, the inhabitants of the island who’re six inches tall.
In a memorable alternate with the Lilliputians, Gulliver pulls out his pocket watch — a instrument they’ve by no means encountered. The Lilliputians report that it’s both “some unknown animal, or the god he worships; however we’re extra inclined to the latter opinion, as a result of he assured us … that he seldom did something with out consulting it (1).”
Gulliver consults his watch earlier than he does something, such that the Lilliputians assume it’s his god.
Gulliver has this in widespread with the modern endurance athlete.
My Watch
I really like my GPS look ahead to all the same old causes. As a nostalgic individual, the information features like a receipt for my working adventures. I can revisit my metrics, poring over the numbers and making sense of them. In contrast to a reminiscence, which shape-shifts and fades, the numbers are goal and fixed.
My GPS watch can be an excellent accountability instrument. It helps me preserve monitor of my coaching in order that my mileage is inerratic and wise. If I say I’m working simply however my heartrate says in any other case, I can confront this actuality actually.
Additionally, the primary 12 months I skilled with a GPS watch, I grew quicker. I used the information to attract nearer to my limits by recognizing I may maintain quicker paces than I imagined, earlier than my physique entered the pink zone. Introspection alone didn’t persuade me to probe my limits. I wanted to see the numbers to consider I may run more durable.
So, I really like my watch. However two issues will be true, and it’s attainable that I’m turning into a bit like Gulliver in my habits of consideration. There are causes to marvel about how my watch is impacting me — doubtlessly for sick.
Listed below are a number of issues:
The writer together with her trusty GPS watch. All images courtesy of Sabrina Little.
1. The Lack of the Creature
There may be an essay by Walker Percy known as “The Lack of the Creature (2).” Percy describes limitations to “direct, sovereign notion in a world filled with consultants and packaged experiences (3).”
For instance, Percy describes the impossibility of gazing merely on the Grand Canyon. The sightseer doesn’t see the Grand Canyon in itself. Fairly, the Grand Canyon has been “appropriated by the symbolic complicated which has already been fashioned within the sightseer’s thoughts (4).” It’s mediated by means of the lens of expectation, images, and knowledge. We’re abstracted from the expertise “in itself.”
Percy offers a second instance of a scholar studying a Shakespearean sonnet (5). The scholar doesn’t expertise the sonnet instantly. The sonnet is mediated by means of symbols and framing, or explanations provided by instruction. It isn’t encountered by itself phrases.
Percy’s statement rings true of my experiences with a GPS watch. It’s typically difficult to expertise working instantly, instantly, and in fullness as a result of — alongside expectations and an acquired data of the game — my runs are mediated by my GPS watch. My watch gives a stream of numbers I take part in, aware of as they unfold.
I’ve written up to now about an statement my husband as soon as made. He remarked that, once we run collectively, we’re by no means actually alone. We run with the entire individuals, together with earlier variations of ourselves, who’ve ever run that very same stretch of highway and solid a digital shadow. That is true. I’m not totally current.
Typically my watch malfunctions, and on some stage, I really feel as if my exercise didn’t depend — as if it makes a cosmic distinction if I don’t depart a hint of numbers in my wake. I really feel as if my legs can’t profit from a run that made no digital impression. (How will my legs know that I ran?)
And even after I depart my watch behind (one thing I do occasionally), I nonetheless view my runs by means of the habits of consideration skilled by my watch. My perceptions of working are mediated by means of the display screen of numbers my watch has conditioned me to take care of as essential.
So, that is the primary concern. I used to be initially drawn to working, partly, to expertise the outside in its fullness, and my GPS watch diminishes my standing as a sovereign knower. As of late I understand my runs by means of the numbers my watch reviews and the values I’ve assigned to them.
2. Magnificence and Surprise
This concern is steady with the primary. The rationale the “lack of the creature” issues is that sure experiences are forfeited in symbolic abstraction — particularly the area to marvel, expertise gratitude, and recognize the world past the quantitative reviews my watch generates.
It’s fall in Virginia. A couple of weeks in the past, there have been a number of pink leaves portending the transition of seasons. Every day, massive swaths of leaves have modified colours (6). As of this morning, my neighborhood park is resplendent — like a fireworks show.
Typically I run by means of scenes comparable to these, inattentive to the sweetness and centered on my coaching goals. The rationale I seen the leaves this morning was that my daughter (a red-headed toddler who was driving within the stroller) stored exclaiming, “The bushes are pink like my hair!”
I wish to inhabit my runs like my daughter does. I wish to restore marvel and gratitude to my coaching — a minimum of typically. If my watch impedes these experiences, possibly I ought to run extra with my toddler and fewer with my wearable tech.
Fall colours adorn the writer’s working route.
3. Is and Ought
A ultimate consideration is that this: A GPS watch can inform us what ‘is.’ It gives an outline of coaching — the place we run, what we run, and once we run. However our watches can’t inform us what we ‘ought’ to run. They can’t inform us what we should always prioritize or how working ought to match into our lives.
I say this as a result of there’s a sturdy precedent impact in working. Typically I’m drawn to run what I (or others) have run up to now, just because that’s the precedent. Typically momentum compels me to place extra miles in as a result of I really feel like I ought to. However the numbers can’t inform me what’s essential, or how I ought to construction my coaching on steadiness with the remainder of my life. My watch can solely inform me what’s, not what should be.
Closing Ideas
As I stated, I really like my watch. It is a vital supply of data and has facilitated self-honesty in my coaching. I don’t intend to do away with it anytime quickly. However utilizing a instrument like a GPS watch can contribute to emotions of abstraction, and it could actually prepare our habits of consideration towards measuring and controlling, over appreciating and experiencing gratitude. And in the end, our watches can’t inform us what is efficacious or how we should always spend our time.
Name for Feedback
- Do you prepare with a GPS watch?
- In that case, do you ever favor to go away it at house?
References/Notes
- Jonathan Swift. (1902, 1726). “Gulliver’s Travels.” Plain Label Books, p. 33
- Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, in “The Message within the Bottle,” 46-63. St. Martin’s Press.
- Leon Kass. (2004). Introduction to “The Lack of the Creature,” in “Being Human: Core Readings within the Humanities,” edited by Leon Kass, 541. New York: W.W. Norton.
- Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, p. 47
- Walker Percy. (2000). The Lack of the Creature, pp. 57-9.
- The leaves have modified colours like an autumnal model of blob tag. Do individuals learn endnotes?
