It’s fair to say that the best way to use any new tool is with an accompanying application of rationality and common sense. I mean, take vehicle parking sensors, the little bleeper is a brilliant assistant, but (I hope) you wouldn’t park without checking your wing mirrors.

Parking sensors aside, how often have you heard another runner (who had a respectable education, and holds down a good job) question the length of a road race, and occasionally the length of an athletics track, because their “watch says it’s short”?

The point being, technology can be a brilliant aid to our running, but it should be used to help guide us on our journey, rather than set our course.

A question of accuracy

So how accurate are GPS watches? Garmin claim that with a “strong signal” the GPS position reported by an outdoor watch can be accurate to three meters. Therefore, if your watch is recording a GPS location every second, and you do not pause an activity while standing still, your watch can record movement of up to 180 meters in one minute. Moreover, for those of us who run among tall buildings, under dense tree cover and bridges, or make sharp turns, GPS is often significantly inaccurate.

The docile athlete

Whilst an extreme over-reliance on GPS watches is harmless, and certainly gives me a good laugh, does it pose a broader question about whether technology and GPS watches in particular are beginning to regulate the behaviour of runners?

Indeed, the increasingly advanced function of GPS watches now advise us on rest, recovery, recommended sessions and even when to “MOVE!”. Although these functions can be useful, especially for those making their first steps as a runner, our watches are arguably moving from passive to active technologies.

These active or interventionist technologies prescribe self-control, obedience and conformance to rules, which some will adhere to over the advice of a coach or experienced club mate. Here, the advent of GPS watches, for all their brilliance, has arguably turned watches from machines designed for calculating time into disciplinarians that regulate time and the way we experience it.

No GPS can help you here…

Induced behaviours

Taken to an extreme, the constant feedback from our watches when we run, could be constructed as a form of social technology that is starting to effect how we run. Here, the greater emphasis on regulating and controlling our running time, through the often addictive qualities of data feedback, influences the way in which people act. There are many examples of these watch induced behaviours (WIBs), and I’ve listed a few common ones below:

The clock watcher: pushing too hard on a steady run, because 6:37 per mile doesn’t look quite as nice as a round 6:30.

The cruiser: not pushing hard enough on a session, because their watch says they’re ‘on pace’, when they might not be!

The obsessive: “I’ve done 13.7 miles, but it won’t hurt if I make it up to 14”

The plonka: misjudging a race by relying too heavily on the pace function of your watch. This one is for all those runners heading over to the Armagh 5km.

As Albert Einstein said “information isn’t knowledge”, and nor does it procure wisdom. Therefore, if you take anything from this article, please use your GPS watch, and its outputs, as a guideline not a barometer. Don’t believe the data, believe in yourself.

Some concluding thoughts

Satellite watches are amazing, don’t get me wrong. I personally use a GPS watch to log my miles and GPS technology is a wonderful tool that has helped countless runners simplify their training plans and run with a greater degree of flexibility.

The statistics and feedback that such technology provides also gives us a wealth of information that can enable runners to make more informed decisions, share their efforts with friends and in many cases push their bodies further with a greater degree of confidence.

However, I believe a drive toward ever more information, data and technology is not always the right choice, even when it appears to provide a solution to an existing problem.

Finally, on a personal note, I think technology can lessen the beautiful simplicity of running. Running takes us into a space of disconnection, where we cannot receive emails, instant messages or notifications, a place where we are alone with our own thoughts or the company of others. Therefore, does the increasing colonisation of this space with gadgets, perhaps detract from our wellbeing?

Jack Gray is a sub 29 minute 10km runner and a member of our Fast10 team for 2020. He is supported by Hoka One One. 

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A few months back I started to notice that a few buddies were wearing a nice watch brand, Coros. The Chinese company are based in California and started by signing up a few good American ultra running athletes, including speedster Hayden Hawks.

With Hayden raving about his new wrist wear I wanted to try it out, but mainly because it was super lightweight. No one wants heavy wrists when you’re running right?

So Coros gave me one of their Apex watches to test. Full disclosure, I got the watch for free but I’m not sponsored or paid by the brand. The words and opinions that follow are my own. I have been a TomTom athlete for many years, but they’ve stepped back from the fitness industry it seems.

The first impression

Looks aren’t everything, but they help right? This watch looks good. Getting it out of the box the first thing I noticed was just how light it was. Remembering back to my first Garmin Forerunner all those years ago, it felt like a lump on my wrist, but many GPS watches are built for lifestyle these days and the Coros Apex is no different.

Weighing in at only 57g and pretty thin too, it wears just like any everyday timepiece. The TomTom Adventurer was similar and I wore it everyday but when using some brands they feel more like a sports watch they you just put on just before you go for a run.

Setting things up

Getting the ball rolling was easier enough. There is just the Coros app and once installed it does most of the work for you. I charged it up over a couple of hours and was able to get out the door for a run. 

At first, and this my show my age a little, I was wary that there was only an app to update everything. Some of the other watches I have used just don’t sync with the app or I have lost data because the app has crashed. With the Coros app I’ve had no such problems.

It makes me wonder actually, how a relative newcomer to the industry can get their app and software so right at the first try, when the big boys already in the market have countless issues. Going on Twitter to find out if the Suunto app has crashed again is a regular task for some runners. 

The ability to customise the watch face, update firmware and look at my runs are all there. It syncs up to Strava straight away so I don’t really use their own interface for checking out the activities, but who does these days?

It seems Coros are pretty active in updating the firmware/software as well. At first there was no navigation ability for the watch but after a couple of months they had it live on the Apex and I was good to go. You get the impression that they want to keep improving the watches as they go along.

In the Jordanian desert and the lightweight watch does not hinder ability to eat crisps. Photo: James Vincent Photography

That battery…Wow

Now one thing that is a massive stand out feature for this watch is the battery life. It’s simply brilliant. It lasts for such a long time that at the start I kept losing the charging cable because it had been a week since I had used it.

Having run the Wicklow Way race in just over 12 hours recently I wasn’t even worried about charging the night before. Having a full charge at the start of the week and then the race itself only took the charge down to 44%.

Travelling to Jordan to run 650km in March I forgot the cable (just keep losing it) and the battery still lasted two and a half days! For backup I had a Suunto Peak Vertical and two TomTom adventurers but none could even last a full day. The Suunto actually lost a huge swath of the data from Jordan, which was infuriating.

As soon as I had the charging cable back for the Coros Apex it was an easy decision and I didn’t even need to carry a spare for those last few days. I knew the watch would last and be accurate.

Accuracy 

Funnily enough my teammate Dan Lawson had another brand of watch out in Jordan. Not only could it not even last a full day on ANY of the days, but it was also was running long on each day.

It would have been lovely to be as far along the trail as Dan’s watch said but we knew it wasn’t accurate. The Coros (and the TomTom Adventurer) always were. The Suunto, in the long battery life mode, just didn’t cut the mustard either. Only the Coros and the TomTom measured the distances accurately on every day. 

On a day to day basis I have had a couple of issues, with one run seeing me hit a two minute mile, but on the same day my wife’s Suunto 9 did exactly the same too. It was more than likely an issue with satellites or interference (or aliens) that affected both the watches.

Distance has been accurate, vertical has been accurate and, for the most part, the cadence too. Now onto the wrist mounted heart rate monitor…

Watch testing was hard work. Photo: Ry Webb

Put your heart into it

You were starting to think this was going to be all lovely, but then we get to wrist mounted heart rate monitors. I have yet to find a wrist heart rate monitor that I’m happy with. When working with TomTom it was one of the first and I often used the phrase “consistently inaccurate”.

Maybe in perfect conditions wrist HR can be excellent. You need a perfect wrist (whatever that means), the watch so tight you lose feeling in your hand and then the right level of warm/blood flow for it all to work. I honestly don’t think anyone has made a wrist HR that I would be happy with…yet (which could be due to metal from old wrist surgery too).

Speaking to Coros they are clearly intent on improving every aspect of their watch going forward and I would not count against them improving that wrist HR in the future, but for me, it’s not good enough. 

I use a chest bluetooth HR strap and nine times out of 10 it’s excellent. Sometimes the watch struggles to find the strap, but I think that is often due to it being a cheap bluetooth strap I got from Decathlon. 

In summary

To avoid waffling on, I’ll summarise. I love this watch. It’s super lightweight, accurate and has the best battery life I have ever seen in a GPS watch. The app is swish, it syncs easily and you get the impression the company want to keep improving their product, rather than constantly releasing other watches (although they have a couple other products).

The only downside is the wrist based HR measurement. It just doesn’t work for me so I cannot endorse it, but I do have a piece of metal in my scaphoid bone that might just mean I’m incompatible with all brands.

They also sponsor some pretty cool male and female athletes like Hayden Hawks, Camille Herron, Harry Jones and Alice Wright and I must say I like that as well. They seem to be pretty savvy on that front. 

Anyone who supports Camille’s 24hr world record like Coros did (with a limited edition watch) is going to win favour with me.

So I’m recommending this watch. It’s pretty darn good. They have given us a code for an extra watch strap if you buy one on coros.com. It’s “ultrabritton” funnily enough. 

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I was an old-fashioned runner for years and years. While everyone around me was investing in GPS watches and other wearable technology, I was still using a wristwatch and guessing my weekly mileage! And if I’m perfectly honest, it didn’t do me any harm. But I finally succumbed when I received a GPS watch for my birthday at the start of 2015 and from there I never looked back.

I still reserve that the best way to improve in running is to get out there and run, but I must admit that there are some benefits to such devices, for both the elite and recreational runners.

Let’s start with the basics: a GPS watch uses satellites to triangulate your position, and with that enables your distance and speed to be recorded.

That alone provides a more accurate determination of your weekly mileage and is a useful method for recording runs and sessions. Many athletes keep a running diary but for me it’s an unnecessary task since all the information is there, in one convenient place. All you need to do is remember to do is put your watch on charge now and then, and put it on in the morning!

Further advanvements

GPS watches can do so much more than that now though. Many come with heart rate monitoring as standard, which adds a new dimension to the analytics of running.

If (and this is a big if!) the information is accurate and used correctly it can optimise your training and even racing program. But caution should be exercised (no pun intended!), because not only can the data prove inaccurate (especially the use of a heart rate strap which can incorrectly ascertain HR), but also relies on specific HR analysis, conducted in a VO2/lactate test.

These can prove costly and may be seen as an unnecessary expense to many athletes, especially as it only takes a “snapshot” of what fitness you are currently operating at. Fitness changes throughout the year and with that so will your HR zones. There are tests that can be conducted without specialist equipment, which can provide good estimates and “up to the minute” indicators of fitness, and I would recommend these for athletes interested in training using this method.

Once you have your HR zones, an athlete simply stays within these boundaries for their sessions and easy runs, according to what energy system one is trying to optimise. The advantage of HR training is that it takes into account external factors such as stress, fatigue and illness. So if you are not fully fit on a particular day, you may be operating within the desired HR zone but running slower than you normally would.

RELATED: Common heart rate training pitfalls

Psychologically that is beneficial; I can vouch that it is frustrating to not meet time targets for training! I am soon to have a VO2/lactate test and look forward to seeing the results, but whether I use it to its full capacity or not remains to be seen. The theory behind it is hugely promising but there is a significant margin for error and requires an investment of time to fully exploit, which is a premium when it comes to having a full-time job!

Furthermore, the use of this technology is limited when it comes to middle-distance running; the real benefits of it lie in marathon and ultra running. Rates of calorie consumption can be accurately calculated in association with the fitness tests, and the information from that can be used to develop effective nutrition plans for racing and everyday life.

Other technology

There is more technology to consider for runners. Many will be familiar with the Nike “Breaking2” event, where Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese attempted to break the 2-hour barrier for the Marathon, using specific lightweight clothing, runners acting as pacemakers and the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% “super shoe”.

The 4% refers to Nike’s claim that the shoes will make runners 4% more efficient compared to Nike’s previous fastest marathon shoe. The debate will lie with the evidence to that claim.

This point introduces another interesting point that is gait analysis. Used correctly it can improve running efficiency and in the long-term reduce injury risk.

However, speaking from experience it can cause more problems than it solves. Attempting to correct one’s gait can apply more load to different muscles and so great care is required to not overload. The process takes time, which is a problem because athletes are inherently impatient and are hesitant to reduce their training, even if it’s of benefit long-term.

Moving forward or backwards?

So has the technology I’ve highlighted meant that running and athletics have taken a step back in progression? I certainly believe that some of the equipment is useful, but whether I’d invest my own money into it is a different story. In the case of the Nike Vaporfly trainers that’s off the table anyway, but if they were I still wouldn’t.

I believe an athlete can become over-dependent on these sorts of technologies, believing that they hold the key to progression and success. And whilst that might be partly true in a sport of fractional gains but it’s important to never take one’s eye of the real performance enhancer that is the running itself! If technology can ultimately make you train more effectively, then it’s worth it.

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