My coach just got me to PR in my mile without using a watch

Constantly looking at your watch every 200 or 400 meters does distract you, whether you know it or not. What's the point in having a watch on if you have a coach or somebody calling out splits? Just hit the times you need to at 400, 800, and 1200, then go balls out the last lap.

If you are in high school, you are constantly improving. The mile is more aerobic based than you think. Not having a watch probably did absolutely nothing to help your time, another 6 months of consistent training had everything to do with it.

Watches should only be used for workouts, when you are going for a specific time. During a race, the only thing you need to concentrate on is pushing yourself to the limit, whether the time is there or not.

Not monitoring your time caused you to go by feel, and thus to focus somewhat more. Too, by having no lap times, you turned off the dialogue that we all have with what we're "supposed" to run, or to be able to run. I had this same experience in a small local 5K this past spring. My Garmin crapped out during my warmup, so I hit the starting line with clean wrists--no watch, no nothing--and had to just......RUN.

I passed the first mile in the lead at 6:07--about 15-20 seconds a mile faster than I'm "supposed" to do it, because I always run conservative races and negative split. Well, glory be: I kept right on and won the damned race in 19:28, a master's PR (I'm 50). I never held myself back. I just ran like crazy. A good lesson to learn.

Yep, you can focus more on running by feel without adding in ultimately useless data.

You probably ran a 1600 and not a mile, and your coach may have lied to you to boost your confidence.

-the voice of doubt, the big "O"

Or maybe the fact that your pr's are from last spring and you have shown basic improvement over the last 6 months???

Are you from Louisiana Tech?

obamacon wrote:

and your coach may have lied to you to boost your confidence.

-the voice of doubt, the big "O"

I find that if you run backwards while wearing a watch it is less disruptive to the process of reading split times - therefore it should follow logically that more psychic energy can be used to focus on the race. This is something I hope Allan Webb will try in 2009.

That is the oldest trick in the book. I have used that one against my middle distance runners in track. The trick is to make sure noone else times the group so you can cheat and noone will know it. This helps a runners confidence and can get them to break out of a slump. Im 99% sure that you didn't PR. Its an old coaching tool and it works. Congrats on your fake PR.

yaa.. wrote:

Watches should only be used for workouts...

Amen, brother! No more timing of races. We'll just pick winners and losers and not worry about a silly thing like time.

I had a similar thing happen a few years back during these local weds night summer runs. Once a year they have a no watch night and you predict your time and the closest gets some cash. I picked a time I had never run before and never thought I'd run this night. I even exceeded that predicted time and pr'ed that night.

not as fun as the 32 game

everyone on the distance team runs a 200, the person closest to 32 seconds wins the money

the winner from last time picks the order

uh_no wrote:

not as fun as the 32 game

everyone on the distance team runs a 200, the person closest to 32 seconds wins the money

the winner from last time picks the order

that's not fun

well said Coach V. I tend to agree with this possibility. I think what the coach did was a good idea, but since there is no verification of the times (i.e. no one else timing - how do we know if the times were ligit?)

this reminds me of those basketball programs that do a timed 3 mile or something like it and the players really think they just ran 3 miles in 15 - something. I watched one D1 college program doing theirs...the first two miles or so were on the golf course - it ended on the track. the only problem is, i timed their last mile on the track and no one ran much under 6:00

so they either went out at sub 5:00 pace for the first 2 miles (not likely) or they weren't running a real 3 mile course - (since i run this route all the time i can tell you it wasn't 3 miles). But no one can tell them that.

southern guy wrote:

My PR's are 9:56/4:45/2:09.

Those are some slick PR's for a chick. Well done.

southern guy wrote:

Taking off the watch did something for us, but I'm not really sure what. Does anybody have any answers?

This is too easy. It's the weight issue. Those big Garmins weigh a ton.