GET THAT SMART WATCH OFF MY LAWN!  

I was out for a nice ride on my bike this past weekend. I like to ride down the at the Edgewater Trail which is a paved trail close to where I live. It can be a very peaceful place to ride. Cyclists don’t have to worry about cars and there are mostly thick woods on each side of the nicely widened trail.  

Cycling and other forms of exercise are a great place for me to meditate. I can lose myself in my thoughts, a good podcast, or music depending on how the mood strikes me. With cycling the workout is typically longer. I can usually get in a nice full podcast with plenty of time to think after it ends and let it all sink in.  

My ride this past weekend was mostly this way until my technology began to fail and then I spent too much time trying to adjust to it and a lot of this was unnecessary! Of course, without my phone and my AirPods it would have been hard to listen to my podcast or my playlist if I had chosen to do that. What I did not need was my smart watch! 

Smart watch huh? Says who? At my halfway point I turned around and refueled. I paused my “smart” watch and thankfully I had not been paying too much attention to it most of the ride. When I hit “resume” on my watch is when the fun began. I noticed the watch kept pausing on its own. Looking back, I should have simply said oh well and kept riding. But the impatient side of me felt like if I had it on, I wanted it to work! I would flip my wrist over so I could see the touch screen better and hit “resume.” I would get in my aero bars and get back to my podcast and it would notify me via my airpods that it was paused again. After about 3-4 rounds of this fun and games I finally said the heck with it and just rode. This is what I should have been doing anyway. The “smart” watch wasn’t done. I have never had this happen before but every 30 seconds or so a command would come through my AirPods saying “segment 67 hard”. I’m not actually even sure if it said "hard,” “fart,” or what. In all seriousness it sounded like it could have been either of those words. I just know it was counting from 67 and was doing this every 30 seconds It would blast through my AirPods. So much for the peaceful finishing of the podcast.  

I have said before that my rides, runs, workouts, etc. are a great place to come up with content and as I was coming back listening to my watch update me every 30 seconds, I realized that this was one of those times. Why am I wearing this stupid thing? How much have they really helped us? Me? How much? I knew how far I was going. I know this trail. Did I need the GPS? Nope. I knew what effort I was going to ride. Did I really need the instant MPH to go faster or slower? Nope. I was barely paying attention to it? Did I need the heart rate to keep me in a zone? Nope. Like most smart watches the heart rate is often inaccurate anyway. Did I need the average speed at the end? Nope. That’s the worst in fact because all that does is make me compete against an imaginary speed my ego says I should do.  

What I really needed on this ride was to exercise and clear my head. I needed to get out of the indoor world of screen gazing and exercise my muscles, let my mind wander, and listen. The smart watch was the only thing getting in the way of this. I realized that for me I don’t need a GPS and a watch. Why? I know how far I’m going, and I know my effort. These things can be a major distraction. For me. I realized that there was plenty of fitness long before these things were invented! Do we really need instant information? I can remember the days of when I first was doing running events and endurance events. I had my trusty Casio watch. I did not have enough extra money to have the Ironman Timex watch yet so us budget folks had a Casio! And you know what? I got along just fine. I could know my distance by driving down the road in my car and looking for a landmark to remember the mileage. Do any of you old-timers remember doing that? Naturally if I was going for time my trusty Casio was more than capable.  

I’m sure these tools, like any new advances, serve their purpose for many. But for me, I (hope) I learned my lesson. I don’t need all the feedback. In fact, I need less. I determined after that for me these sports watches have two valuable pieces of feedback I can sees as useful: they do count steps and I do like to look at that at the end of the day (key…end of the day), and they are good for checking the heart rate (when they work). I do use this at times witch clients (when they have their watch on naturally!) to see how well they’ve recovered. But for the other stuff? You can keep it. I’m going shopping for a $9.99 Casio.