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Train with Data. Race without a Watch.
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Hello Friends!

I am doing some research for a talk that I am doing. After many years of triathlon training/racing, I have gone back and forth of wearing a watch during a race. Ironman races are a bit different than let's say a sprint or an Olympic for me, as I do like to see my watts on the bike for long course. Granted I don't like to blow up on the run.

This past month, I did a super sprint race without a watch. As they were counting us down, I was looking at the beautiful sunrise over the water, while everyone was looking at their watch. I had a very peaceful mindset heading into that race. I raced with heart. I do have IM 70.3 Lubbock in 4 weeks and thought about wearing the watch but covering it up with duck tape, to get "data."

My question for y'all, does anyone race without a watch? If you do, have you noticed a difference? How do you feel when you race with a watch and when you don't race with a watch?

If you have a race coming up in the next 6 weeks and you want to try without a watch, could you DM me or email me at jen@jenrulon.com. I would love to get some information from you.

Thanks in advanced and have a great rest of your week.

Jen

Jen Rulon
Chasing that Kona Dream since 1989
Last edited by: texasjen: May 30, 19 5:50
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Re: Train with Data. Race without a Watch. [texasjen] [ In reply to ]
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I race with a watch, but not "by" the watch. I hit the buttons for the different segments, but don't use it for pacing/time/etc. It's just for the numbers afterwards (Strava or it didn't happen. :P)

I don't do long distance races, so for me racing by feel is more than sufficient.
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Re: Train with Data. Race without a Watch. [texasjen] [ In reply to ]
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Hello, Jen -- we met at the Slowtwitch Kona party in 2017. I race without a watch, although I have a Garmin 800 on the bike and set it to show time of day or mileage. I might find it useful for course-based wattage as you'd get from Best Bike Splits, but the few times I wore a Garmin watch on the run, I spent too much effort worrying about my pace, HR, etc. I am unsure if I'd like it to see whether I am swimming/sighting straight. Sometimes I think I would like to have a map of my path in the water (Alcatraz in particular). LMK if you want to talk about it more.
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Re: Train with Data. Race without a Watch. [texasjen] [ In reply to ]
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I definitely prefer to race short stuff (oly/sprint) without data since those races are pretty much max effort from go to whoa. 70.3 and Ironman I like pace data but have had races where the watch failed and I had to go on RPE so it’s important to know from training what your RPE is for those paces. I don’t like racing with a HR strap because it chafes and I’m too poor to have a fancy wrist HR watch! I tried a power meter on the bike but just didn’t get good readings from it and so prefer pace with RPE for the most part.
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