Sans Technology

Some days technology is just not for you. Today is one of those days.

Right now I a sitting in Moore River and I have realised I have forgotten my phone. 3 days without my phone, I am not entirely sure what I am going to do. I assume it is possible to survive that period without a permanent connection to the outside world, but I have never really planned on finding out. I guess I will have to now.

In all seriousness though, I think it will be quite nice not having the phone for a few days. I am still very much connected via my laptop, so can be reached if anything dire occurs, but not being constantly connected is going to a welcome break I suspect.

No, while the phone is a pain, the bigger technology related issue today came when I got to training this morning and realised I had forgotten my Garmin. I had taken it off to charge it overnight and forgotten to grab it in the morning. Without my GPS I had no way of recording the session. How would I let people know just how hard I had worked!!! As they say, if it isn't on Strava it didn't happen.

A bit more importantly than Strava (perhaps) was the fact that I wouldn't have a way to measure the length of my intervals, or the intensity I was going at. Normally I would have just headed home and got the watch (it would only have cost me 10 minutes) then gone back to training, but this morning I knew I was on a tight schedule so didn't really have time to lose. Fine, I figured, I would just have to do it without.

Without the handy Garmin I was forced to do the session my perceived effort and by counting strokes. Now I would love this post to be one of those ones where I realised that without being bound by my Garmin I found a new freedom and enjoyment of the session which then led me to realise that we let ourselves too often be tied down my technology. I wish it was one of those posts, but it isn't. To be honest, I was not a fan of being without the technology. I got through the session and it was a useful bit of work, but I can't help but feel that the session wasn't quite bang on. Without the data at hand I suspect I struggled to get the session exactly right. Better than not having a session at all for sure, but not ideal either and a little frustrating.

Rather, this post is about not having things go to plan and making it work anyway. The easy option this morning would have been to go home and get the watch and then cut the session short, an option that I very nearly took. However, then I thought about it some more and realised that I had another option. With a bit of thought and persistence it would be possible to get the full session in (or something like it) which is exactly what I did.

Still wish I had my technology though.