This past weekend, I did a 5K time trial on the track. Afterward, I got a good reminder that even the best watches are not infallible.
As you can see above, after my watch recorded me running a 5K in 18:48, it informed me that I’m capable of a 19:02 5K.
I’m not sharing this to hate on Garmin or any other device. Honestly, it’s amazing how far all of these devices have come in the past 5-10 years. The fact that Garmin could predict my 5K time relatively closely simply based on information gathered by a device that fits on my wrist is pretty astounding. For the record, it was predicting somewhere just over 19:00 before I ran that 5K time trial so it was close based on nothing but my training leading up to this.
However, some people take what their watches tell them as gospel. Whether it’s a race prediction, what they should be doing with their training or how well rested or stressed they are, they figure that the watch has all the answers.
Don’t fall for this trap. While the watches are amazing, they aren’t perfect. If you wake up feeling exhausted but your watch says you got great sleep and you’re fully rested, what should you believe? If every indication is that you’re capable of one time but your watch says something else, what should you believe?
I’ve found the watch to be a good sanity check. If I’m getting mixed signals from my body, I might reference the watch as another data point. Not the final word but just another data point to consider among the mixed messages. Sometimes, I’ll look at the watch and it tells me one thing while I’m trying to convince myself of another. This is when I do a check of my assumptions to determine if I’m trying to convince myself of something I want instead of truly listening to my body.
However, I will not rely solely on the watch to tell me how I’m feeling. I would strongly encourage you to do the same. It’s another data point, something to reference and consider, but not the ultimate, infallible truth.