Learn To Love Running: Gadgets
September 3rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Earlier this year I taught a running clinic at my workplace. I titled the clinic ‘Learn To Love Running’. I am passionate about running. I decided to post some of the materials I put together for the clinic here on my blog. This was from one of the sessions.
There are quite a number of gadgets that can help you reach your goals when running. One of the first and most basic is to get a good sports watch with a stopwatch feature. A cheap digital watch will usually suffice. The main requirements are that it is water resistant, light and easy to read and operate. As you get serious about your running and start keeping a log of your training, keeping track of your training times can be a good gauge of your fitness and a great motivator. Timex makes a number in their Ironman series that fit the bill. You can pick one up for under $30 at your local discount store.
Another and one of my favorites is a GPS unit designed for running. They usually strap on your wrist and not only keep track of the time of your run, but accurate distances as well. I use a Garmin Forerunner on my runs. It tracks time, distance, pace, calories, etc. I’m obsessive about keeping training logs, something that we’ll cover in another chapter. Tracking your distance can help you with determining your level of fitness or training for a specific event such as a marathon. In addition to the dedicated GPS devices, there are also apps for your smartphone that can accomplish the same thing. I have the RunKeeper Pro app on my iPhone and it can do many of the things my Forerunner does and also will upload my training data to the RunKeeper website.
The last type of device we’ll look at are heart rate monitors or HRM’s. These devices measure your heart rate and can help you with specific training or weight loss goals. I’ve had several over the years and when I was using them, I felt that they took my training to another level. Exercise experts have a number of recommendations about using your heart rate to determine the levels of intensity of your training depending on what your goals are. For instance, someone who is wanting to lose weight would try to keep the intensity of their workout within a certain range where someone wanting to get faster would need to keep their heart rate in a different zone.
Training with an HRM is not something that I’m going to cover here. However, if you are an experienced runner and are wanting to take your training to the next level, an HRM might help you. As an aside, one thing that I found using an HRM was how much just a small increase in air temperature affected my body. When the temperature would go up, my heart rate would go up even though I was running at the same pace. We’ll cover the effect heat has on you in more detail when we get to the chapter on safety.
One gadget that runners use that I have mixed feelings about are iPods, radios or music playing devices. While these devices can be great while running on a track or a treadmill, they can be downright dangerous when running on the roads or trails. As an example, a few months ago, an 18 year old honor student from New Mexico was struck a killed by a train while she was running along the railroad tracks. She could not hear the oncoming train over her music player, wandered into the path of the train and was struck and killed.
Headphones reduce the awareness of your surroundings. In fact I have had more than a few close calls with disaster that was only averted because I could hear trouble coming. It’s funny but once I was once nearly run down by a herd of white tail deer while running in the country. I was running along a country road that was lined by tree thickets and brush. As I approached a low spot where the deer like to cross I could hear their hooves as they approached. As I stopped I suddenly had deer flying over the fences so close I could have grabbed one. Had I not heard their approach I would likely have collided with these critters who were running at full bore.
The best advice I can give you is don’t wear headphones if you are running on or along roads.
