The first challenge I propose is something I’ve called Watch Free Wednesday (WfW).

The idea is that runners try running without their watches on Wednesdays. Why? Firstly, you can choose any day of the week that you like, it’s just that Wednesday sounds good. The principle remains the same: choose one day during your week and run without a watch on that day. From experience, I think that there’s a lot of power in running without a watch from time to time. I don’t think I’m alone if I say that I’ve been on a great run in the past, only to finish and look down to see that my watch thinks my performance was ‘poor’. Is it really necessary for our watches to intrude our psyche and have a say in how we feel about our run? I also don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’ve had runs where my watch buzzes to give me splits mid-run and I go from feeling groovy and in tune with my body to feeling like I should be going quicker as my pace is too slow. Again, is this intrusion necessary during every run? I don’t think so. At the end of the day, we all know what an easy run feels like. We just have to be honest with ourselves.

As well as being a way of tuning back in a little with our bodies, not wearing a watch also allows us to do something else that’s perhaps just as important. It forces us to do something that’s uncomfortable to many of us: to run without tracking our run and sharing it with the wider world. External validation is something that, as runners, I think is a slippery slope. I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t ran because it will ‘look good’ on Strava at times in the past. And, yet again, I don’t think that I’m alone here. I think that doing things for external validation is unsustainable in the long term and that, ultimately, we need to find a more meaningful reason as to ‘why’ we run. By running without a watch, you’re doing something that might make you uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it’s the impermanence of things that makes life so beautiful, right? So, we don’t need a digital log of a run for it to be a good run. In fact, I think that not logging a run makes it feel all that more special. It’s a subtle act that can help us find our intrinsic motivations and move away from the extrinsic.

So, I propose that we all try this, at least just the once. I think that one watch free run is enough to realise just how fun and liberating it is. I’ve certainly loved how free I feel without a watch and, hopefully, others will be able to find some more joy in their running by doing this too.