People occasionally ask why I don’t wear a running watch.
Some assume I’m old school. Others think I simply don’t care about pace or distance. The truth is much simpler.
After more than fifty years of running, I’ve learned to trust my body more than I trust my wrist.
That wasn’t always my philosophy. It was earned one mile at a time through marathons, ultramarathons, cross-country adventures, spectacular successes, miserable failures, and countless days when my body became my only coach. Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking a device how I felt and started asking myself.
Every now and then, I discover that one of history’s great endurance athletes arrived at the same conclusion.
Five-time Tour de France champion Miguel Induráin raced without heart-rate monitors, power meters, or apps reminding him when to eat. He carried ham sandwiches wrapped in foil, bananas, rice pudding, and years of experience. If he forgot to eat before a climb, he paid the price. If he ignored the signals his body was sending, the mountain punished him.
His greatest technology wasn’t attached to his handlebars.
It was awareness.
That resonates deeply with me.
Over the years, I gradually stripped away almost every gadget from my own training.
No GPS watch.
No earbuds.
No music.
No podcasts.
No pace alerts.
Just me.
My breathing.
My footsteps.
The quiet rhythm of moving through the world.
I developed my own internal compass: Power. Rhythm. Flow. Grace.
Those four words tell me far more than a screen ever could. They aren’t numbers. They’re sensations. When all four come together, I know I’m running well whether I’m covering a mile in six minutes or sixteen.
The older I become, the more valuable that conversation becomes.
People often ask me, “How far did you run today?”
I usually smile and answer, “Far enough.”
The real question isn’t how many miles I covered.
It’s whether I was present for them.
Modern technology is remarkable. GPS watches, heart-rate monitors, nutrition science, and power meters have helped athletes perform at extraordinary levels. I appreciate good science, and I don’t dismiss these tools.
But tools make poor masters.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve become so busy measuring our bodies that we’ve forgotten how to feel them.
The watch tells us when to speed up.
The app tells us when to eat.
The earbuds tell us what to hear.
Eventually, we stop listening to the one voice that has been with us since birth.
Our own.
This has very little to do with running.
It’s about life.
We spend so much time looking outward for instruction that we forget another source of wisdom has been quietly waiting all along—experience, intuition, awareness. Running simply taught me how to hear that voice again.
We’re living in an age that wants to measure everything: our steps, our sleep, our heart rate, our productivity, even our happiness. Numbers have their place. They can inform us. They can guide us.
But not everything that matters can be measured.
And not everything that can be measured matters.
Whether I’m running along the beaches of Belize, riding my old bicycle down a quiet road, or simply walking through town, I’m practicing something far more important than fitness.
I’m practicing awareness.
Technology has its place.
I own gadgets.
I appreciate science.
But every now and then I intentionally leave them behind—not because they’re bad, but because I don’t want them speaking louder than my own body.
After tens of thousands of miles, I’ve learned a simple truth.
The body never lies.

The challenge is learning to become quiet enough to hear what it’s been telling us all along.

Don’t Limit Your Challenges ~ Challenge Your Limits