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Elite observations: A closer inspection of fitness gadgets

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Created on Tuesday, 07 December 2010 15:08

Written by Tommy Manning

By TOMMY MANNING

Editor’s note: Manning is a math teacher and cross country coach at Fountain Valley School who finished 18th this month in the World Mountain Running Championships. He will provide periodic tips — all of which can be found here on OutThereColorado.com.

Tis the holiday season and, with that, a lot of people are looking for electronic running gadgets.  Of these, the most popular are GPS devices, heart rate monitors and fancy watches. There are also pedometers and accelerometers.

Pedometers measure activity by counting steps. That is all they do. Pedometers do not measure activities such as cycling, swimming or weight training, and they cannot differentiate between running and walking.

So are pedometers good for runners? Probably not. Pedometers give a good indication of whether you are active during the day, but they don’t even estimate calories burned. Pedometers are good for older, less active people who are counting steps (hopefully 8,000-10,000 per day). If they are not taking that many steps, they should increase activity.

Accelerometers can be lumped in with pedometers. The main difference is accelerometers can estimate calories burned throughout the day. These gadgets are great for telling you whether you are active during the day but probably are not the best things for runners. Heart rate monitors are wonderful gadgets. If you use these correctly, they are probably the best gadgets for training. The problem is most people only estimate their maximum heart rate (HRmax) and train at estimated heart-rate zones. To get the most out of heart rate training, you need to know your true HRmax and 220 – age is NOT a good estimation. Let’s say, for example, a 30-year-old has a true HRmax of 200 instead of the estimated 190 and wanted to train at 60 percent and 80 percent of HRmax. This runner should be training at 120 and 160bpm, respectively. By using his estimated HRmax, he would train at 114 and 152bpm, respectively, and would not get the full benefit of HR zone training.

On the other hand, if the 30-year-old had a true HRmax of only 180, he should train at 108 and 144bpm. Training at the estimated HR zones would be overtraining and would lead to fatigue and/or injury. I trained with a heart rate monitor for years and stopped because I got to the point where every time I looked down at my watch, I could accurately predict my heart rate. It didn’t matter whether I was in the middle of a moderate run, a fast interval, or doing a long, slow, recovery run. So I stopped wearing it.

Previous entries

Tips to enjoying quick post-race recovery

Tips for long-term recovery after big event

Taking stock in the mental side to training

Variety key in training

Typical training plan

GPS devices, like Garmins, seem to be the "must have" gadgets these days. They are great because they can tell you how fast you are running, how many miles you have run and your elevation, among other things. But do we really need all of that information? I mean, does it really matter if you are running at 9:15 pace vs. 9:30 pace (or 7:15 vs. 7:30)? And do you really need to know exactly how many miles you ran down to the hundredth? I have a friend who wears a Garmin and if we run a 10-mile loop and come back to the car with a reading of 9.88 miles, for example, he will run another 100 yards or so passed the car and come back to make it a 10-mile run. That is exactly why I stopped wearing a Garmin because I noticed I was obsessing over the numbers and the data instead of focusing on running.

If we covered that run in 76 minutes and my friend ran an extra minute or 2, what’s the difference? Physiologically, my body got the same thing out of a 76-minute run vs. a 77-minute run. But GPS gadgets will definitely help some people. I have beginner runner friend who lacks motivation and has a hard time getting out the door. She bought a Garmin and uses it to monitor her mileage, pace, time run, etc. This data is her primary motivation now and she runs a lot more often with the Garmin.  Good for her! Isn’t that the point – to get out and run more often?  If these gadgets help you do that, then by all means use these gadgets and have fun running.