My fourth new running watch arrived a week ago. I couldn’t
wait to set it up and use it in the next day’s run. I know the mileage of my
routes; however, nothing like having all the information of pulse and what-not
arrive onto your app on your phone when you’ve finished. I am a little paranoid.
So, at the very least I write down the mileage for the run and for the day. And
if the run was comprised of a speed drill or hill drill during or at the end of
it. This is for my balancing hard running and fatigue as to not overdo and end
up sick or injured. Been there done that over the past nearly 50 years of running.
My emphasis here in the writing is to bring attention to
what someone could expect from something so fascinating and nearly seeming so
free as the Fitbit app. That is, keeping track of your logged in exercises,
mileage and so forth on a gadget in place of what I’d been doing at great length
in logbooks, the computer printouts I’d devised and then printing them out to
coaches over the years when they requested seeing what I was doing. Or as I was
self-coached for nearly 27 years of those closing in on 50 years of running. I recorded
many things about the run. Sometimes it was the weather in great detail, the
type of run. Such as undulating hills, paved roads, dirt, ice and so forth.
This was so I understood the patterns of training and their effects on me. I
could easily look back at the written or eventual printed out logs of miles and
where had I’d gone right or wrong. That was either having an incredible performance
or being downgraded to swimming because I was so injured that I couldn’t run at
all. I also wrote in my logbooks things that were naturally occurring yet ones
I couldn’t control partially due to my birth defects, allergies and the like.
Since I was age ten, I worked on learning how to relax even
under duress. So, I would focus on getting my pulse down as low as possible to
show myself that I had self-control. This was due to the badgering of my dad who
figured girls and women were too emotional and quite weak. I eventually proved
to myself that I had control over a particular allergy. One that was insisted I
take a medication if a particular thing would happen. By age sixteen, even when
I’d had an occasional reaction, I was able to control how badly the reaction affected
me by focusing on my pulse rate. And since age fifteen I’d not taken the
allergy medication ever again.
Aside from that, I had always been interested in human physiology
so ergo the new-fangled idea of the GPS on my wrist connected to a phone to
record everything that I was interested in. I still wrote and write down daily
running mileage in my planners now. Yet I have this cool GPS watch, stopwatch
thingy on my wrist. Or so I thought. My first one was a Nike GPS watch. It was
off in mapping by about 23%. Yet also, I wasn’t as tech savvy as I have become
over the last decade. But it was fun, I’d just have to readjust when running
under many tree covered areas, this was about 25 years ago. The way I knew how
poorly a watches’ GPS sucked was the friends I was running a 50 miler or 72
miler with had their own different GPS watches from different companies. Too, some
had wheeled stuff by hand as they’d lived closer to where they were running
when I’d visit for a special long weekend run.
So, I gave up on GPS watch thingy and stayed with my regular
running watch on courses or on the track areas I knew. I continued to write everything
down, even when in 2008 I’d stopped competing in running races yet maintained
90-230 miles per week of running till 2016 when I’d lowered it to 80 miles per
week of running as I’d been doing grappling and fight competitions, with no
need to truly train at the track. I basically did some tempo runs, hill repeats
and an occasional fartlek workout.
One day, I’d finally had to bite the bullet and buy a new
smart phone, it would be only my third phone in fourteen years. This time, it
was a better deal. If I gave five dollars more as a one-time deal and got an
additional phone number for an extra ten dollars a month that belonged with the
watch, I could have another more upscale running watch with GPS and now phone.
Wahoooooo! So, I did it. My business had been doing well. The watch phone was
for the kids to call me from school as could my husband in an emergency that
hadn’t involved the school. So, I could
be out for a run in between work, and I didn’t have to carry my phone with me.
I just had to forward the calls from my phone to my watch. I was living the
life.
Except for the S2Gear Samsung GPS still had some glitchy
things. And I continued to write down my running mileage with other details
daily in my logbook. I was still content with my purchase. After three years of
having this watch, I noticed that the GPS was beginning to fade even more, the
battery was probably getting too old and I no longer needed the second number
as business had changed a bit. So, I decided to put the S2Gear watch aside and
bring my phone along with me on my runs during the hours our children were in
school and at other activities outside our home.
Soon, it was the summer of 2021 and I was due for another new
phone. The old one had been purchased in 2014. I thought seven years was a good
run for a phone that was constantly used for business primarily. I was about to close my nearly three decades’
long therapy business, my husband had passed and I was entering a whole new
realm with our daughters now. Our oldest needed a new phone, and our youngest’s’
phone was only ten months old. Too, our oldest was headed towards college and
youngest was now extremely active in high school. I had to handle all household
items, college visits/move-ins, high school events and closing one business and
opening a new one in a different industry whilst I went back to school, taking ten
courses, nine were college courses, while keeping up with my therapy license
credentials and schooling for that. This time I hadn’t purchased an additional
watch or an added phone number with my new phone. Saving money was my option.
Eighteen months later, an organization emailed me and
thanked me for the donations in my husband’s memory. My husband was a hiker. Before
he passed, I suggested to him since he was so involved with helping kids and
adults to get interested in hiking and the outdoors that we should donate to
the NY/NJ Trail Conference when he passed instead of flowers and such for his
funeral. We’d also agreed since it was still Covid-2020 that to keep everyone
safe there would be no gathering after the funeral till Covid had abated a bit.
He agreed.
So, in this email there was the news of the goings-on of the
Trail Conference, and it mentioned a charitable way of service to the country,
AmeriCorps through the trail conference. Since I’d missed being in the Marines
and it’d been decades since I finished my time in the service. I knew our
daughters would not object to my working in the woods for the good of the
people of the country in our state and in a neighboring state.
It took the Conference and AmeriCorps some convincing since
they considered me, at this point over age 60 too old for the trail crew work
that I wanted to do full-time in the mountains for three months. They called it
the 450-hour program. It was meant
primarily for those ages 32 and under. I had no clue about this and filled out
the paperwork. I was fingerprinted, screened by the feds, four people
interviewed me, as well I had to give them five referrals for my character and
fitness. There I was over age 60 and they took me on for three months full
time. I found out two months before my 450-hour service began that I’d been
approved. I knew I wasn’t going to make any money because it was charitable
work. The approval gave me a hankering for another watch with GPS. I was in a
department store looking for something else and there they were on sale. They had
in stock the Fitbit, Versa 4 watches.
I purchased the watch and enjoyed it for about two weeks and
then again glitchy on the GPS when I’d be running. So, again I decided to use
it as a stopwatch while running and was able to keep track of time once I
started working in the mountains. It appeared most everyone else had the more
expensive top of the line GPS watches like Garmin and they used Strava which I
was not familiar with. I was content with my slightly malfunctioning watch. It
counted steps, kind of. I was back to
wearing my regular old-fashioned running watches on my runs. Then I’d slap on
the Fitbit Versa 4 for work and if I’d gone hiking just to keep track of time.
I maintained the Fitbit phone app using the yoga app and walking app and then
recording individual runs. The yoga, walking and hiking part of the app I let
work on my Versa 4.
About six months ago my Versa 4 was getting worse on my
hikes and walks, so I pulled out my old S2Gear 2013 (bought in 2014) watch. I
charged that sucker up and took it for a walk while also wearing my Versa 4.
The S2Gear watch now well over a decade old, worked like a charm for 34 minutes
the first two months on the GPS. I wondered what changed. But eventually it was
30 minutes of the old watch working; then 24 minutes the GPS worked accurately
for. Now maybe 11 minutes. So, since I’d not bought anything for myself, other than
a pair of $20 earrings for Christmas and our daughters didn’t need all that
much except a little ‘gelt’. It was just after New Year’s 2026. Our youngest was
still home from college, she said, “The doctor suggested a Fitbit.” I replied, “Oh,
you should get one. I think you’d like it.” She decided on a lesser brand with no
ability to call someone from it, yet it had a phone finder that she’d tested
and it worked. I spent $40 more than her to get a Fitbit Charge 6 model.
The first five days were Fab! Then it did what the other
three watches had done, it skipped areas and it showed on the map on my phone
where it skipped. Yet I’d never turned off the gadget, nor the run part of the
app. It just decided I was nowhere, about a third of the way of my 15-kilometer
run and the last third of the way I’d suddenly disappeared. I saw an update, so
I figured that could’ve been the reason. Nope. I went online chat thingy and for
them to help me, they were going to have me pay them $5. No way! What I’d
thought of and began to realize that there may be some truth to my suspicion.
My suspicion? Oh yeah. Every time you are on your phone with
the Fitbit app, they are encouraging you to go social with it. Aehhhhh emmmm
for a fee of course. And they encourage you to join Fitbit Premium. But wait,
there’s more—More? You ask? Yes, indeedy. More they can charge you for. So, I
have once again circumvented the system of ‘MORE’. Although my circumventing
may take a bit longer to get the answer of what my mileage and pace are, it’s
well worth it. When the watch app map failed, I remembered the exact roads and
times I’d reached each turn. As well, I ran on roads I’d been running on quite
a bit over the past 27 years.
So, I took out my pen, pad and reliable mapping and pieced
each section I’d ran on together and I knew the times because the watch and
stopwatch on the Fitbit work splendidly. As I mentioned this may be a slower way of
figuring out what you ran and how far you ran; however, for me I’m going for
accuracy in distance and to figure out my fitness level. Too, watching the watch
record my pulse which I know is accurate as well. That’s part I use most.---Jody-Lynn
Reicher
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