In this highly technological century in which we find ourselves hurtling faster and faster, fancy new electronic accoutrements are brought before us every day by glib marketing moguls in hopes of attracting even more of our disposable income.
It used to be that the only indispensable running accessory was a watch. Some runners eschewed even that most basic technology. The old-school runner felt he could tell from perceived effort exactly how far and how fast he was running; to rely on an extraneous gadget was to somehow demystify and demean the holy experience of running.
That’s a little extreme, even to me, and I freely admit to being old-school in many of these matters. But I do deem a watch borderline essential for running. Though it’s nice to leave it home on occasion, a good running watch is a useful and reliable accessory, one that can enable not only the run to be timed accurately, but the data stored and recalled at a later time.
In the early 1990’s the first mass-produced heart rate monitors hit the market and the technological age of running was off and, well, yeah, running. By strapping on a chest transmitter bearing a hidden electrode designed to detect the actual lub-dub of the beating heart, a runner could wear a sports chronograph that would display not only the elapsed time of a run, but the heart rate of the runner during exercise. HRM’s allow runners to not only realize how hard their heart is beating at any given point in a run, but to speed up and slow down as necessary. The benefits of this are myriad and will be discussed in a future column.
Later the first lightweight portable music systems became widely available and some runners began wearing headphones on nearly an everyday basis. Personally I never found this enthralling: if I want to listen to music, I prefer to relax in the comfort of my home listening to true high-fidelity sound. (I admit it: I’m strange. I actually use a phone just to call people and, believe it or not, a camera to take pictures. Go figure.) Anyway, the compromised audio quality from a Walkman, IPod or MP3 player, combined with the huffing and puffing of my own breathing, just doesn’t add up to an enjoyable listening experience. Besides, I like running; I’m not trying to ignore it or force it into the background. Much more importantly, wearing headphones or earbuds while running is a clear safety hazard. Whether the danger is from automobile traffic, a speeding cyclist, or a violent sociopath on the loose, a runner listening to music or talk radio (or gabbing on a cell phone) cannot be sufficiently aware of their surroundings to protect themselves to the best of their ability. Injuries and deaths have been clearly attributable to this disassociative behavior. It would be wise to limit this type of usage to indoor running or walking, where it’s safe.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are all the rage these days. With the addition of a footpod, thick armband, or an oversized wristwatch, it’s now possible to determine with great accuracy the speed and distance being covered. The only limitation to this technology is that it requires line of sight to satellites for accurate triangulation to occur. Thus a thick canopy of trees can block the transmission, interrupting the data flow. Similarly tall buildings can do the same thing. It’s only temporary, for as soon as the runner reemerges from the trees of skyscrapers, the signal resumes. But here’s the rub: the system assumes the runner has traveled in a straight line from where signal was lost to where it picked back up. In the city that’s often a safe assumption. But in the woods, a meandering trail could conceivably have curled, looped, and wandered around for a significantly greater distance than the straight path of travel assumed by the GPS, leading to inaccuracy in both the speed and distance computation. I suspect we can safely assume these bugs will be worked out in future incarnations of this technology.
The latest craze involves sensors that blend positioning technology with music and data transmission, leading to an amalgam of sensory overload limited only by the imagination of technicians and marketers worldwide. Soon it will be possible to use voice activated technology to combine runs with college coursework or professional flow charting, to make HD videos of ourselves running and upload them instantly to our own webpages, to read or write books while doing marathon long run training.
I must admit that I have no inside knowledge of any of these impending technologies, but I wouldn’t be surprised should any of them (and more that are wackier still) come to fruition in time to become the latest fad in this suddenly high-tech world of running. In the meantime, however, you’ll have to lace up your shoes yourselves to hit the road; I don’t expect the thought-activated shoe-tying/GPS/Ipod/heart monitors to be marketed worldwide for at least another year or two.
Uh, oh. Gotta go. I’ve got to get the bread out of the bread machine, put my cell phone on the charger, answer some email, set the DVR to record a show tonight, and transfer some files across the network. What’s that? High-tech? Not me! I’m old school!
