Blog 4.Parking Lot Panic

Coming out of winter, savour the experience: the smells, the sun, or the mud. Forget the training computer every once in awhile.

A few days out from the equinox, spring is nearly sprung. Cherry blossoms unfold and evenings stretch their legs. Respite is welcome. Through the dark months, us endurance honks have chained ourselves to treadmills and pelotons, following our workout plans with religious fervor, every heartbeat, watt, and calorie tracked and logged.

No Data, No Cry

A recent cartoon poked fun at the endurance crowd. It depicted a lycra-clad athlete boasting about her workout stats: 162bpm, 524 watts, over 10,000ft elevation gain. Blah, blah, blah. Question marks encircle the other person’s head. To which they ask, ‘But did you have fun?’ She glances back to her watch; ‘it doesn’t say.’

Data-obsessed athletes, and those living with one, know this scenario isn’t far from the truth. Enjoyment is a feeling, unmeasurable by a watch. Imagine this readout: the combination of these metrics should peg your enjoyment at 7.5. What? In fact, hyper-focus on output data can remove any pleasure derived from exercise, turning it into a second job. Blame Strava!

Every so often in order to change things up, I drive to a new location with my bike. One time, I forgot my training watch. I literally froze. I couldn’t ride. It’s because I held two stupidly wrong beliefs: 1. If it’s not tracked then it didn’t happen, and 2. Without data I couldn’t measure the session’s quality.

Once I beat my entitled ass in the parking lot, I saw my problem for what it was. Doing the thing had completely detached from my enjoyment of it. Panic-quelled I realized that my legs and bike could actually function without a watch. So off I rode, but let me tell you, those first watch-free miles were wobbly. I survived. Barely.

Post ride, I didn’t scroll through my workout data. Instead, I noticed my thirst, tiredness, and heavy legs, there because I did a monster bike ride, not because some arbitrary numbers told me I should feel a certain way. Notice the difference? It gets crazier. I recalled the crunchy gravel under the tires, the heat blast upon cresting the first hill, the raccoon that cut me off mid-descent. Beyond my forgetfulness, nothing about the day is remarkable, yet the memory still hangs around. Hmmm?

Forgetfulness is Bliss

Then an even stranger thing happened, I ‘forgot’ my watch the following week. Pretty soon I forgot it every time. Comparatively speaking though, without tracking my workout data I am slower now—yes triathletes, you were right—but on the flip side, my enjoyment of exercise has shot through the roof. To my mind, that’s a solid trade-off.

Letting go of the need to measure, gets me into my body. My heart (and legs) will tell me if I crushed a workout. Wondering what happens if you sprint to the next signpost? Do it and find out. Was it fun? Race to the next one too. Watch be damned. And after the pain subsides, smell those blossoms and feel the wind in your hair.