My watch can connect me to not just one, or two, but three global satellite networks. It can pinpoint my location down the exact spot I am standing on the earth right now – and all I can think is:  “Did the United States and Russia spend trillions of dollars/rubles in the mid-century Space Race to throw all these satellites into geosynchronous orbit so that Fiona from HR knows if she’s running 10 minutes 38 per mile or 10 minutes 37 seconds per mile in her local  Parkrun?”

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and proclaimed: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“. NASA didn’t ask him to check his watch to see if he’d run 0.01km or 0.02km. They just celebrated one foot placed in front of another. In the decades since we boldy went where no one has gone before we seem to have forgotten that running started with one simple purpose: to escape dinosaurs. 

In 2023 scientists revealed that one of our very earliest ancestors may have lived at the same time as dinosaurs ruled the earth. And while these early ancestors may have as much resemblance to modern man as Blackpool does to Monaco they must have shared the same thought as us when seeing a t-rex in Jurassic Park: run.

Because, if they hadn’t run, they wouldn’t have been our ancestors, and we’d be extinct after great-great-great-great-great-many-times-over-grandpa Todd became a dino snack.

Today, our watches can tell us our speed, location, our heart-rate, our pace. They can provide directions and maps, let us listen to music and even make an emergency call if we suddenly stop. 

But do you need to wear it? Is your life improved by having a graph of your perceived exertion level while jogging round a park? So, for this run, I want you try not wearing a watch. Don’t record your run. Or, if you fell you do need to record, add the details manually afterwards. 

Or, if you don’t wear a watch, then wear a watch. See if knowing your max heart rate is a sign of fitness or a critical early warning sign of catastrophic cardiac failure. Heart rate of 230 beats per minute after standing up? Maybe, just maybe, wearing a watch will save your life? In which case, I take everything I just said about how pointless they are back. Watches are great. Get your blood pressure checked.