Day 27: Watch the watch

I decided to try an experiment during this morning's four-miler: I didn't look at my watch once. Not when I got to the first mile, or the halfway point, or the spot where the trail spits out of Russell Field and I usually speed up if I want to trim a few seconds off during the last thousand feet. Only when I finished did I glance down at my wrist, and of course I was much slower than on Tuesday. But that's the point -- no need to be fast; I just need to get the miles in, and build up my endurance. (If I was training for a 5K or something, things would be different.)

So later today, when I saw on the web that the snazzy Nike+ unit (which hooks up to your iPod and gives you all kinds of statistics on your running, since it uses an accelerometer to measure as you go along) was on sale from some catalog outfit, I demurred. If I shouldn't be looking at my watch, I shouldn't be dealing with a million other statistics. I do, however, have a heart-rate monitor, although I haven't used it to figure out my actual maximum heart rate, and in fact I have hardly used it at all... although when we were in Casper on the bike trip, and I wore it for the first time, the reading indicated that, according to the laws of probability, I should have been dead. If I get a little more serious, I'll be able to use the monitor to see whether I pass the Goldilocks test: too fast, too slow, or just right.

Running, like so many other things, is just a numbers racket.

Speaking of which, "Bette Midler" was revealed yesterday to be none other than the redoubtable, motorcycle-riding, Volpe-orbiting Robert J. Armstrong, whose full name I am announcing in recognition of his inexplicable tendency to yell out my entire name in public, which is in fact the only thing I have ever asked him not to do. So there!