How often do you hear people say… “If it isn’t on Garmin Connect or Strava, did you even workout?”.  What a crazy thought… your body doesn’t know if you capture any data, but it does know if you worked out.

When I got to the pool for my swim this evening, and pushed the workout button on my Garmin watch, the screen went black.  It took me a few seconds to realize, but then the penny dropped; my watch was out of battery.  There I was, all ready to get into the pool, and no way to record any data from my swim.

Several years ago, this would have really frustrated me.  I might even have gone back home to fetch my watch.  These days however, I am very different. So this evening, I shrugged my shoulders and got into the pool.  I had a 2,000 yard swim to do and the biggest problem I faced, was the need to count lengths.  I didn’t have my watch, to count the lengths for me.

This actually turned out to be a good thing.  I found myself concentrating on my swim, much more than normal.  On a straight 2,000 yard swim, it is easy for my mind to wander.  I then lose focus on my swim technique, and the workout becomes less effective.  This was far from the case this evening, as I stayed “in the zone” for the whole swim. It felt great.

I ended up using the wall clock to estimate my total time for the swim, and that was good enough for me.  No stroke rate data, no pace per 100 yards data… nothing.  I remembered that my body doesn’t know that my watch died. Regardless of the lack of data, I know that I had one of my better swims of the past few months and my body does too.