Everybody is obsessed with times and watching the time on their watch go up, me included, but I was wondering what effect that being aware of your time (whilst running) has on a runners performance. I tested this a couple months back for a 12 mile run (completely avoided looking at the time, just distance) and I like expected I went a lot faster than i usually would.
Perhaps Zatopek had it right because he ran 20 every night in the army and when he wanted to go faster he ran 100m repeats. Of course he had no idea how fast he was going so perhaps complete ignorance of time is a good thing.
Any theories?