A Week Without a Watch

Walking around naked

When we travel, I have a small bag to put all the different charging cords, USB A/C plugs and various doodads required by our digital world. Recently we went to the Adirondacks for a week of curiosity, adventures, and celebrations. After our 6.5-hour drive, we arrived at our lodging, unpacked, and discovered with a big UH-OH that the electronics bag was still sitting safely at home on top of my office shelf. The night before we left was a high-strung aggravation due to what we call “The neighbor situation” and in the morning I did not do my usual walkabout the house as my feet were on fire to get the hell out of dodge.

After a few “oh shits” I regrouped with identifying what was truly essential.

1) USB outlet

2) Small power brick

Thankfully I had my DSLR charging cord with me.

There are no office stores in the area (it’s a wilderness area with small hamlets scattered about). Even though we were in Lake Placid, there was no Staples or equivalent. So, I marched off to Walgreens to see what options awaited me there. Since they are also the local FedEx store I had high hopes.

Luckily, they had exactly what I needed. That was $50 I didn’t need to spend, but at least now I can leave the darn cord in the bag and pack it at the beginning, not the end.

The one thing we could not replace was the silly proprietary charging cord for our Garmin watches.

And thus became “The Week Without a Watch” or “The Week Outside of Time” or “The Week without Data” (GASP!)

But it’s just a watch you say…

Yes, it does tell time. And not having the time of day at a glance on my wrist was weird. Not nearly as weird as having exactly zero data or tracking.

If I don’t have data, did the week even exist?

It very much did exist.

It was weird. Even in a good way.

To set the stage – all the things that get tracked on the watch include:

• Steps

• Body battery

• Weekly intensity minutes

• Workout activities (and a deep dive of related stats)

• Hydration

• Heart rate variability

• Sleep

• Recovery

• Heart rate

• Stress level

• Calories burned (but the thing is egregiously wrong anyway)

And in all seriousness, I do look at this stuff every day. Not in an obsessive optimizer Type A way, but in a general “what do trends look like” way.

Is the data aligned or misaligned with how I actually feel?

This is the main inquiry I use it for and as a trend over time vs an in-the-moment epiphany.

What would a week which included a long bike ride and a challenging hike look like without “data”?

How it unfolded

The first day or so I felt naked. Like where is my watch? I think I am missing an appendage! That kind of naked. What the hell time is it? Is this bike ride harder than I think? Easier? Am I tired? Fatigued? Or does any of this matter anyway?

Just keep pedaling.

I’d say take a break, but it was black fly and raging gnat season. Any stopping was met with a swarm and welt-size bug bites in the few small patches of exposed skin. At one point while composing a shot with my camera while sweating and being swarmed by the bugs I fantasized that I was a renown photographer on location in the deep jungle. If AI can enjoy a good hallucination, so can I!

The next day was a fun day of play at The Wild Center. Beyond the time sensitive nature of being first at the Otter presentation, we had zero need to know time or anything else for that matter. I set an alarm on my phone and allowed my ten-year-old self to get lost in the woods, exhibits, and trolls.

After several years of tracking sleep data, it is really odd to wake up and wonder “how did I sleep?”. What a stupid question that I really had outsourced to my watch. Partly this happened because it is only recently that I have dialed in what works to sleep well in menopause. Since several years of hellacious sleep/non-sleep trauma still resides in my psyche, my self-trust as it relates to sleep is tenuous.

The real question is – How do I feel? How did I sleep? Or in this case of happy exhaustion – How bizarre were my dreams?

At least better than recent dreams at home. I am still trying to right myself from the one in which I drowned (and they call deep dream-filled sleep restful?!?)

What about activity data?

The last few years of aforementioned peri/menopause hell have presented so many challenges to feeling well as an active human. I’ve written about some on trail perils here and here. And with some distance, I do believe after last year’s backpacking trip it took me months and months longer to recover than I was willing to admit.

In fact it is only recently that I feel any ability to exert, experience fatigue, rest, recover and feel some OOMPH in recovery – like real “get up and go” on a tempered level. I share that here but remember…shhhh don’t jinx me.

Because of this I have watched my Garmin data while hiking and been bewildered. Am I actually dying or does it just feel like it? Why the hell is my heart rate 170+? And why do my legs feel like concrete going uphill?

I have tried to strategize my way through it. Drink every 15-20 minutes, eat something every 60-90 minutes. Sit down at certain intervals. While all this can be valuable – drink before you’re thirsty, eat before you’re hungry – it had been consuming my thoughts and stealing my joy when combined with feeling horrible.

So, on this trip and hiking, I just hiked. Yes it was a hard 7 miles and 2000’ elevation gain. It was hot. We were covered in long pants, sleeves, hat and bug nets. But I had only my perceived level of exertion to go on. Feel my body and make choices.

I had trail stats from my hiking app, but no personal data, and it did not matter at all.

In the end…

By the end of the trip, I neither noticed nor cared that I was not wearing a watch. I felt freed from manually tracking anything (recording cups of water gets old). I slept well, felt well, and experienced a better bike ride and hike than I have in a very long time. In fact, at the summit of the hike, I lay on the rock in the sun saying, “I am just so damn happy at this moment!”

Does this mean I will give up my watch entirely? Unlikely. I do like trends and wonder if they match up with how I feel in my body. I like knowing what different paces feel like and find it valuable for planning.

What I will do differently is to stop looking at it. Doing an activity? Click activity mode and return to the clock screen. Sleep with it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depends on my mood.

It was a great reminder that the wisdom held in how I feel and what I notice is FAR MORE VALUABLE than any data point.

A reminder that I can use a tool (or not), and it really does not matter. It is not a crisis to go without all of it (except for a map).

And sometimes living outside the constraints of time and data is the most freeing thing to do.

What tools/tech do you find yourself constrained by without even noticing? Comment below…