Why I Ran Paris Marathon Without my Garmin Watch

And the valuable lesson I learned

You might be thinking that I’ve completely lost my marbles when I tell you that I made the conscious decision to run Paris marathon last Sunday without my Garmin watch. My beloved watch stayed at home, not even making it into the suitcase to ensure there was zero wiggle room for a last-minute wobble or temptation to “just wear it and not look at it”. I was all in, fully committed to what many of my peers and pupils (I teach running for a living) consider tantamount to insanity.

So why did I decide to commit this crime to modern running?

For two reasons it’s taken me a really long time of running to reach.

Because I wanted to feel safe, and I wanted to feel free. Free from any constraints, any pressure, all distractions. Free to be left completely to my own devices, unsupervised, unobserved, and unchecked . Safe because feeling all these things makes me feel safe. I wanted to just run safe and free.

I had so much freedom as a child growing up, I was fortunate enough to enjoy what we’d now call an “unsupervised play-based childhood”. I spent my formative years having adventures, exploring, and interacting with friends and our surroundings of corn fields, haystacks, woods, dirt tracks, farms and rivers filled with long black slimy eels. We built dens and fires, and imagined we were Secret Warlord Agents and Charlie’s Angels.  

I learned to ride a horse and a scrambler motor bike, discovering I was adept at falling off both (many times), but dogmatically getting right back on time and time again (a useful skill to have as an endurance runner).

I had the autonomy to see where the day might take me and the independence to make choices and to take risks, experimenting with dodgy friendships, cigarettes and alcohol. As a result, I developed many lifelong skills such as resilience, adaptability, confidence, and feeling safe in my judgments of people and situations, trusting my instinct if something didn’t feel right and finely tuning the ability to problem solve without a mobile phone or the internet.

In the early days of my running (which I’ve written about here), I spent a significant amount of time enjoying running without a watch and I do think this is why I initially fell in love with running so much; it was reminiscent of the joy of self-containment I’d experienced growing up.

As Garmin and GPS watches developed and advanced in their technology, I felt an element of restraint that, whilst it appeared to be the new norm in the running world, was unfamiliar and repressive to the spontaneity that is an integral part of my personality, and my running style.

My instincts of running free were slowly being choked, my courage to be impulsive was being goaded into measuring my pace, my heart rate and distance. There was an expectation that I had to conform to this way of thinking, like being observed and graded by a teacher- a snapshot of who you are forever captured by a number.

Running without my watch meant I could run on instinct, to listen to my body, to enjoy the freedom of being unobserved, unmonitored, and ungraded.

“But how will you know if you’ve gone out too fast or too slow, or if you’re hitting the mile markers within the expectations that you and Garmin have set yourself?” were just a few of the questions that I was repeatedly asked when I told other runners what I was intending to do at Paris marathon. 

But as I explained to my doubters, whilst we like the idea of our pace revolving around numbers, we can lose the ability to tune into our own instincts, to adapt to the environment, to adjust expectations whilst simultaneously solving problems with confident decisions in challenging conditions and unpredictable race day factors we simply can’t control.

Race Day

I ran with caution at the start due to the sheer number of runners as they jostled for position. A few stumbled as they tried to pass slower runners, or miss the hazards of discarded clothing, all eagerly looking at their watches, attempting to establish the rhythm of their pace, aligning data with their perceived effort and fixed marathon speed. Meanwhile I just ran and watched the carnival unfold, mentally reinforcing my plan of action for my race.

The Paris city air was oppressive and the humidity heavy, the weather unseasonably warm and without my watch to divide us I felt an immediate intuitive connection with my body’s signals as I settled into my familiar “marathon pace” (this is my 10^th). Instinctively I began making new race strategy decisions within the first 5km based on how my body was feeling, deciding to walk through the water stations and drink water, which is something that I never usually do.  

As I ran, I focused on blocking out the incessant ambulance tritone siren, the “devils’ interval”, a purposeful combination of notes that are seemingly designed to create a chilling and foreboding atmosphere as the vehicles screech through the crowds, commanding passage through the throng of runners, like Moses’ parting of the Red Sea.

It’s hard to ignore the feeling of being part of a weird apocalypse as you pass runners who have collapsed by the road side, feeling grateful that it’s not you who has the distinctive brown hue of diarrhoea running down the back of your legs, runners who are limping or being physically held up and supported by their running buddy, shuffling in pain as opposed to running with glory. By the way, am I selling running a marathon to you yet?

And whilst I kept my head, I noticed that there was not a clock in sight, it was as though some magical time wizard had hidden them all from my view. We were diverted from the river path of the Seine, that usually draws us into the mouth of the longest tunnel en route; 1km of suffocating darkness filled with the beats of drum and bass and bright strobe lighting. I strangely missed this iconic rite of passage; this disappointment was short lived though as many more Paris tunnels unfolded with sharp declines and biting inclines.

Sometimes you just grit your teeth and get on with the job in hand, it hurts beyond the descriptive words of pain, agony, torment, torture- 2km can feel like 200 miles and even harder having to weave through the horde of runners who concede defeat and surrender to the race. But I turned the corner, and the now recognisable finish line was in sight. I saw my Husband Jamie before I heard him shout my name, and I grinned as I crossed the finish line.

I’d done it. I’d survived what, at times, felt like being part of a real life Waking Dead game. I had run a marathon without my smart watch.

As I slowly walked to collect my medal and t-shirt, having the freedom to look around at the crowds, the tears and the joy of collective runners, not waiting in anticipation for my experience to be marked, I became aware of what I’d actually achieved. My accomplishment wasn’t in correlation with a number; there wasn’t a numerical grade that influenced or impacted the day’s performance, I was able to give myself simply, but significantly, my own recognition for a good run where I had used my knowledge and experience to tough it out to the end.

Regardless of how many times you’ve crossed a finish line, it’s still an innate compulsion to look at your watch and to either feel elation at a number that you never thought you’d achieve or be faced with a crushing disappointment leaving you dispirited, despondent and heavy-hearted despite everything you’ve just done.  

I didn’t find out my time until I was back in the hotel room with a cup of tea. But this run was never about time for me, it had been about doing what is integral to me and not being coerced into fitting in with the norm. About reuniting my brain and my body, and letting them communicate directly instead of through a tiny dictating interpreter on my wrist.

 And if you’re thinking that’s all well and good, but maybe you could have run faster if you’d had your watch to give you feedback on your pace, I’ll never know and I am more than content with that. But my educated guess is that I likely would have seen my pace in those first few miles and ended up panic reacting to the data which wasn’t my “predicted” marathon pace because the conditions were tough.

Whatever the result, I’m proud I held my nerve to run off my intuition alone, and I know it was right. It almost always is.