Intro
Digital innovations throughout history have thrust mankind to new heights in just about every aspect. We are seeing new advancements in technology daily pushing the human limit of capabilities further and further. One-way new tech is doing this is shown throughout the world of sports, specifically track running. Running is one of the easiest sports to see progression in human evolution through the stats that it produces. Unlike other sports, track running has fewer “skill” based aspects for biased opinions to be involved in the debates of “who is better than who?”. It is all just based on the facts where there is a very clear line of who beat who on any given day. Someone who can run a 4-minute mile in a race is better than someone who can run a 5-minute mile.
Background
Track running dates back centuries ago as men would honor their Greek Gods by showing off their athletic abilities. From 776 BC, the ancient games were held in Olympia every four years for almost twelve centuries. Additional athletic events were gradually added, including more categories such as the discus, javelin, and broad jump- all still present in today’s sport. The first modernized Olympic games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896.
Since then the sport of running has taken off proving to push the boundaries of what people think is physically possible to the limit. Scientists and athletes for years believed that running a sub-four-minute mile was physically impossible until 1954 when Roger Bannister became the first person to break the four-minute barrier. Just ten years later Jim Ryun becomes the first high schooler to go under four minutes in the mile. Today there are over 1600+ athletes who have broken the four-minute barrier with 50+ athletes just in the NCAA last year running under four. Just last week 8 men from the University of Washington all ran under four minutes in the same race with the winning time being 3:51!
The marathon was one of the first events in Olympic history to be run. Just like the four-minute mile scientists and athletes were unsure if it was humanly possible for anyone to break two hours in the marathon (4:35 per mile for 26.2 miles). This was believed until 2019 when Eliud Kipchoge star struck the running world and ran a marathon in 1 hour 59 minutes and 40 seconds. Kipchoge is still the only person to have gone under this barrier, but it is only a matter of time until the next person does the same.
The question that comes to mind is how does something like running a sub-four-minute mile go from seemingly physically impossible to having almost 100+ people do it in one year just fifty years later. There are several factors that come into play here with digital innovations in watches playing a big role in answering this question.
Watch Innovation
Heart rate watches have changed the world of running by providing runners with real-time feedback on their physiological performance. This has allowed runners to train more effectively, set more realistic goals, and track their progress.
Before the advent of heart rate monitors, runners relied on subjective methods to gauge their intensity, such as perceived exertion or pace. With heart rate watches, runners can now measure their heart rate and determine if they are working at the right intensity for their goals.
Moreover, heart rate watches have also made it easier for runners to track their progress over time. By measuring heart rate during training and races, runners can see how their fitness is improving and make adjustments to their training if needed. This has helped runners to perform at their best and reach their full potential.
Heart rate is not where the innovation of these watches has stopped for helping performance as they can also track your sleep. Most high-tech watches nowadays only need about 30 minutes of charge time every couple of days allowing the user to wear them while sleeping as well! This allows the watch to calculate total fatigue for athletes to adjust training as needed. With the stats from hours of sleep, workload, and average resting heart rate a watch can give recommendations on adjustments that can be taken to help an athlete know when their body is ready to perform at its max potential.
Another trait that watches have brought to the table is GPS. With GPS watches runners can now see their distance and pace in real-time and be able to adjust paces as needed throughout a run. There are several different paces that runners train at to maximize their performance. These paces are calculated based on their most recent races. As a runner, having a GPS watch has helped me take more control of my training by being able to see when I am going too fast and when in a run, I need to pick up the pace. GPS watches have also changed the way that runners participate in races. With GPS technology, races can now be accurately timed and measured, which has improved the accuracy and fairness of race results. Additionally, GPS watches have made it possible for runners to participate in virtual races, which have become increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusion
Watches have revolutionized the way runners train and have brought new insight into certain heart rate zones athletes should be in when training. With technology being able to gauge fatigue athletes and coaches can now play around with different training philosophies to see live results on whether an athlete is improving or not.
Sources
Only 1,497 humans have ever broken the 4-minute mile – and I’m one of them – CBC Sports
The gun goes off and immediately I tuck behind my two pacemakers, Darryl Fillion and Matt Kerr. Darryl has the task of taking us through the first 800 metres in 1:58 and 2:27-2:28 at the 1,000 mark before Matt takes over for the next 200 to get me to bell lap.
Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier (Published 2019)
In Vienna, the Kenyan achieved a milestone once believed to be unattainable. But his time, 1:59:40, will not be recognized as a world record. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Is The Sub-4-Minute Mile Still Special? – Citius Mag
A strange phenomenon seems to be occurring in the NCAA this winter. Middle-distance men are breaking four minutes in the mile at an astronomically higher rate than they used to.
https://en.as.com/other_sports/where-did-track-and-field-originate-n/ https://www.runnersworld.com/gear/a32320870/garmin-gps-watch-features-enhance-run/
Chase, I’m glad you focused your blog on something personal to you and discovered how digital innovation has impacted an interest of yours. I also love to run, and although I am not on a professional or collegiate team, I train pretty regularly. I ran the NYC marathon this past fall and decided to run purely on feeling, neglecting the beneficial technology accessible in my Strava app. As a result, I went flying for the first 7/8, but by the last 4-5 miles I put myself into a position that would take me out of contention for qualification for the Boston marathon. If I had abided by the direction of my app or watch, I would have made a qualifying time. This proves on a lesser scale your point.
Hi Chase! I like how you gave some history about the topic, and it was nice to see how technology changed track so much from the start to today. You mentioned how GPS and how this relates to tracking running on watches. One of the questions that I have is, is there some way that the different terrain is accounted for when tracking with watches and the GPS? I feel like the terrain would change a lot of different factors like heart rate and speed depending on whether the runner is going uphill or downhill the whole time. I used to use an apple watch while swimming, and I think it’s great that smartwatches can also adapt to a different environment like being in water.
With some of the older watches, I do not think so. However, on my watch which is a Garmin, there is an app you can download that connects to your watch after your activities and will tell you more stats which include elevation. You can definitely see a resemblance when you comapre your heartrate time stamps to the elevation gain on a run. Same can be said about pace. When the elevation plot map on my phone from my run shows elevation you can also see my heartrate spike if I keep the same pace. However, if I decide to slow down on a hill you will usually see a more steady heartrate but the pace becoming slower. Hope this answered your question!
Great post. I love the historical perspective as well as the emphasis on more modern tools. These types of posts are particularly valuable coming from those who have experience in the phenomenon they are writing about. nice work!
Very good post Chase. I like how you used the historical perspective of the sport to show how fast the trajectory of the sport has changed. Mentioning how no one had ran a 4 minute mile until the 1950s was a really crazy concept considering how many people have done that now. This feat specifically shows a good example of how sport, specifically track, has been stride for stride with the growth of technology. The new technology such as GPS and heart rate trackers has greatly increased the effectiveness of training and thats something I wouldnt have imagined to be the case. I wonder where the sport will go in some years when even more technology will be available to assist training and competition.
Great post Chase. I think being able to track your runs and actually see your progress is so important in this sport both mentally and physically. Now you can see your heart rate throughout a run and gage when you should be pushing harder or hold back a bit. I don’t know if your watch does this but a lot of running apps will let you add notes at the end of your run about the terrain you ran on, weather conditions, what you ate that day, etc. so you can go back and see what changes to make in your training and daily life to make you a better athlete. I’m curious to know if having a GPS watch is a requirement as a college runner or are there still people on your team that use regular stopwatches.
Great post Chase. I really enjoyed reading about the impact of watch innovation on track running. The historical context of the sport showing just how fast this technology has been able to truly change and improve the sport is very interesting. I think it would have been great to learn more about how different training philosophies have been impacted by the use of these watches.
Hey Chase, great job with this post! I’m aware of your track history and how you compete, so it was neat reading more about that topic and how it relates to our class and new technology. I also liked how many sources and data you used in this post.
One of the reasons I love discussing AI is because of how many aspects of our lives can affect us. I feel like most people’s initial thoughts when thinking of AI are thoughts like “faster computers,” “a better Google,” or high-tech advancements relating to space travel and more. However, the coolest part of all this to me is how much it affects day-to-day things like running. Your talk on heart monitors is a great example of this.
Hi Chase, I love this choice for the topic of your blog post! It’s very interesting to me how the heart rate watches have changed the way that runners train and how much it has affected the overall performance in the sport over the years. Also, I love how you added some history as it illustrated how much track has changed as a result of these technological advancements. Overall, I really enjoyed reading your post!
Nice post, Chase! I love how you mentioned the history and background of track and running, it really put into perspective how far we’ve come in terms of the link between tech and sports. I always knew smart watches had an impact on sports and how people train, work-out, etc. on a day-to-day basis, but never quite thought about the strong impact it had on the track sport as a whole. It is interesting to learn how track runners are able to anticipate when they will be at their max potential when performing using the stats and info provided by these watches. I wonder how much further this technology will progress and am interested in seeing the impact on the sport.
Great post Chase! I loved how you explained the history of track and how modern technology has been able to advance the sport. I am curious if you’ve noticed that having the technology and information readily available has ever messed with your headspace? For example, if the garmin is giving you a low body battery (but you feel great) do you ever feel the placebo effect? Or if there are other metrics that effect your mentality I’d be curious to hear about those too!
Loved this post and thought it was really neat that you wrote about something that you are passionate about! Great job!
Great post, Chase! I was drawn to your post when you mentioned the Panathenaic Stadium. Sidenote – I had the chance to run a few laps around the track in the Panathenaic Stadium when I visited Greece during the summer. I could only imagine how it felt to run in that stadium when it was once full of spectators.
I never really considered improvements in technology within training watches before simply because I thought we hit an innovation plateau. I thought we reached a point where improvements in the watch are simply cosmetic at this point, but your post proved that wrong. The part about metrics that help understand athlete fatigue was particularly interesting because that was never a metric I considered that could have been added. Watches have clearly evolved more than just storing data about you throughout the day, they can also improve and suggest training splits. Thank you for writing about something you are passionate about! I enjoyed reading your post!