GPS watches aren’t just for rec runners

Eric Golberg, the lead coach of sport conditioning with the University of Alberta’s Sport Performance Centre in Edmonton, said t hat in recent years, he’s seen a rise in technology used for running, particularly when it comes to monitoring technologies such as global positioning system ( gps) watches and affiliated apps.

“This is a boom for the general runner. We’re in it right now or have been in the last five to 10 years,” Golberg says.

Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, an elite middle-distance runner who this summer became the first Canadian woman to run under four minutes for the 1,500m, self identifies as a “low-tech” runner. However, she still uses a gps watch for training to track her longer runs and to time herself on the track. Her current model is the Garmin Forerunner 235, which she pairs with a chest-strap heart-rate monitor and syncs with the Garmin Connect app.

DeBues- St a f ford ’s f a t her, Ja mes St a f ford , represented Canada at four World Cross Country Championships in the 1980s. DeBues-St afford says it’s remarkable to talk with him about the methods he used to determine how far he ran in the era before gps watches. Stafford would use a piece of string to plot out a route on a map, then measure the string and make a distance calculation based on the scale of the map.

“It’s pretty cool that we have a gps on our wrists now that can tell us instantaneously how far we’re running, what pace we’re doing,” DeBues-Stafford says. “It’s such a convenient thing that has been introduced in running.”

Basic gps watches tell athletes their distance, pace and time, while more advanced watches use infrared light to read heart rate, which allows the devices to estimate a runner’s maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) and give feedback about the optimal amount of recovery needed after a workout.

DeBues-Stafford says t hat , as an elite runner with a coach and support team, she mostly worries about tracking distance and time and lets her team make decisions about when she needs to recover and when she needs to push hard – even if her watch advises against it.

“Sometimes you need to train when you’re not fully recovered. And that’s kind of the point,” she says.

Trent Stellingwerff, the sports science, sports medicine and innovation lead with Athletics Canada, says gps watches that automatically sync with apps such as Garmin Connect or TrainingPeaks allow coaches to become better informed about t heir at hletes’ t raining. That’s particularly important for distance athletes, many of whom log long, easy kilometres without a coach present. Stellingwerff estimates most distance running coaches directly observe less than 20 per cent of their athletes’ runs.

“The coach isn’t t here, a nd there can be massive disconnect between what the coach thinks the athlete’s doing versus what the athlete’s actually doing,” he says. “That’s where technology can sometimes step in.”

With technology, coaches can log into an app or website and see how many kilometres their athletes logged, at what speed and at what effort.

“The coach at their house can look on a website and say, ‘Oh, cool, for 80 per cent of t hat t ra ining I ca n’t see, I now at least have something that indicates that the athlete is on track and doing what I hope they’re doing,’” Stellingwerff says.