Why you need a GPS watch as a trail runner ? #Strava

 Of course it is not obligatory, but if you wanted to perform, gain time, discover, in 2026, actually it is !

High Performance  

I am telling you why right now. Let's talk trail running. First, if you were running without a watch, it is freedom, fantastic, adventure, you get lost, you learn trouble shooting, you go by feel, nanana. Great, good on you. Except that you absolutely do not know what you are doing. Yeah you listen to your body. What we are doing, either high performance or ultra trail running, is nothing but natural. You can try listening to your body, but it's signals that you can observe by feel, are totally different from reality. Very different ! Even the simple sense of time is skewed ! Your sense of speed, effort, your thirst, your hunger, your energy levels, are all skewed. Or I could say screwed. There is nothing natural about what we do. Going out every day. Running in hail and wind covering the same routes day and night. Running on terrain, that if you fall you die. In case of a natural living, would you do that ? You go on a route maybe 3 to 4 times, than you change to discover more, to find out stuff. No you are a runner, for decades on end, you might go 4 times a week on the same route. When doing sky running, you run on mountain ledges that if you caught a toe, you would drop 500m down ! Or during the last Milfont trail I completed, we were cruising on a crest, with knee deep snow, in shorts and t-shirt and if you slip, well RIP on you man. No, there is nothing natural, so go by feel is totally inappropriate. Also 90% of people when telling them go easy, go do a recovery jog, they do way harder than it should be !

Also we are busy. Logging our runs is hard on paper. It i a fantastic practice, but it is annoying and can be time consuming. Journalling night time and including your run in it is character building and life altering. But when you are doing it with a watch, like Garmin / Suunto / Coros, your data is backed up. Your totals are logged. Your weekly miles and elevation is logged. Your heart rates are logged. You can draw conclusions. Did I train well, did I train properly, did I train too much or too little. What sort of base did I have before ? How long was the preparation, how long of a recovery did I have before  ? I mean you can draw all sorts of conclusions. What can be measured, can be improved. 

First is volume. Your total yearly running volume. You might have net even realized, because your training did not change at all, but you did 5 big treks during summer time, so you have 200more training hours that year. It might have fatigued you for the end of year races, but giving you power speed and resistance for the spring cross country season. You could see, okay, this year I did 150 hours of strength training and 100hours of cycling in addition. I might have done 25000m less running elevation gain in total, but added in 80000m of cycling and mountain biking elevation gain. 

Then there are the special stats of heart rate and speed and pace. What is your monthly average pace, what is your yearly average pace. What is your monthly or yearly average heart rate and what is the time you spent that year in what heart rate zone. 

Once you understood how your app, or your website works, in a matter of seconds you can pull that data. I find that Suunto did a fantastic job with their APP. How silmple it is to pull data is just astonishing. No fussy menus and never ending sub menus or clicking through multiple tabs and so. You click on calendar, can arrange it monthly, yearly, weekly, get elevation gain, distance or HR data, whatever you want. 

Then there is strava. In case of racing, that is 100% the best inventions of the 21st century. You can do so many freckin' things with it ! First of all, you can pull races and launch a flyby. So you can see how a race unfolds in a live moving manner. What ? Yes you can see a map the moving spots, highlighting runners, just like in a video game. 
Then you can see the segment completion list. So who run, what segments at what pace and what time. Strava can be a professional tool and not just a Facebook for runners. It is not only to scroll through and give kudos. 
If you ran a race, that is the best, as you can create your own segments of ups and downs, aid stations to aid station, or however you wanted. Then you can see who performed how on each segments. 
I mean, that data is golden. Look at some old old Western States videos. People were writing paper letters to race organizers, asking them to send them by paper letter, the split times of the winner at the aid stations ! What ? Of course, we did not have cell phones before the 2000s ! People were counting elevation lines on paper maps, to understand what sort of climbing is done during a race, to be able to mimic the same in their own backyard !
You can also see how people are training and what they are doing. You can see Walmsley, Killian and others doing ridiculous things. So you understand that even pro athletes get carried away by the call of the adventure and because of their love for the sports and mountains. 

Then there is the Adventure part 

First of all in most watches, even mid range, there is a map. So you don't need phone anymore. Also there is the possibility to create and upload tracks in seconds. Even 5 years ago, it was a pain to do it. I always lost bluetooth sync, I had to reboot my watch and my phone to upload anything on it. The app's track creation function was broken 5 times out of 10 , had to go to openrunner, Gaia or other solutions. Garmin Basecamp got discontinued, all the external apps became only paid. 

Right now you got a Coros or Suunto, you can create and upload a track on a very usable map, in seconds ! Create your own adventure anytime anywhere. That is awesome ! 
I move a lot around for work but I Can have 2 hours off midday in the middle of nowhere. I can create a route and discover, or find a segment and challange myself on it. I can find heat map of local runners, to see what are the best routes, to not to get carried in to the local gangs area in Marseille. You would think it is a joke but not. If you get out in the wrong are from the Calanques, like la Cayolle, you might find you car burnt out !

So yes, not having a phone, but a GPS track on your watch, that is a giant advantage !