Running before digital watches existed?

before anyone gets crazy, taught instead of thought. oops

Used the clock on the south gatehouse of central park reservoir when running the upper loop on the reservoir back then you, two overweight boxers and a lady, head always wrapped in a blue scarf (not JackieO) and walking her dustmop dog were the only ones on the path.

Never got fast enough to go two laps under 16mins ( I believe that would convert to about a 15:45 5Km ).

freeworld wrote:

I used to run with a club when I was younger.

Wouldn't carrying a club slow you down?

Reality Bath wrote:

I remember doing time trials on a 5+ mile course using the wall clock at my parent's house which had a second hand. I would wait for the the time to approach a 5-minute increment and... GO!!!

Lunging breathless back through the front door to catch the second hand was the tough part.

I would have put the clock outside where I could see it at start and finish.

A friend (before I knew him) used to run around the track for hours with the use of a wrestling clock.

That reminds me, I used to time myself with a wrestling clock one winter running the hallways in high school when it was too cold for running outside.

I remember some college coaches who would have really large clocks with a sweeping second hand placed or mounted near the track. You would look at the clock, and then start your interval; finish and look again. Hayward field had one of these clocks in the early 70s (East side I think).

On my runs from home in HS, I would start my hanhart analog stopwatch and place it in our mailbox (so I wouldn't have to carry it).

I ran with my dad's 1956 Gruen precision with a second hand. I still have it, actually. Interestingly, especially doing intervals with the team, it was pretty suspenseful watching that second hand move towards the 12 and everyone getting ready to launch at 12. Near the end of a long series we tried to will that second hand to slow down to give us more time to recover. That part was evil.

My dad had a stopwatch and one day in the summer before 7th grade, I took it up to the 440 yd track to see how fast I could do a mile. I hadn't trained any other than just playing sports like basketball, baseball, etc. I practically collapsed after 4 laps in 6 minutes flat and vowed never to run that far again. In junior high I did exactly that and only ran the 880 and a handful of 4 by 440s.

After 8th grade track, I knew I was going to run xc in high school so I had to start running longer. Still using the same stopwatch, I would measure out the distance of the course I was running by using a local county map and the conversion they gave.(1/2 inch=1 mile) Of course this had to be highly inaccurate. My first 10k race was 42:20 and by the end of the summer, I was down to 37:12. The following year I ran the same race as my first 10k and improved 7.5 minutes to a 34:50. It didn't matter that my favorite 4.3 mile route was really only 4 miles.

I had a water resistant Timex analog watch that I used my first 2 years of running ('80-'81). I used to wait until the minute hand hit a number (like the four, five etc) and the second hand hit the 12 and then I'd start. All I had to remember was where the minute hand started. But every run was waiting around a couple of minutes for that minute hand to land. I was stupid back then.

I would look at the time on my watch, stick it in the mailbox at the start of the run and finish at the mailbox and look at the watch again at the end of the run. I also had an odometer on my bike and measure the course after I ran.

My dad bought me a regular old stop watch like Nurmi had in 1970 and used to measure my courses with his car.

Man, how did people survive without Garmins?!!!!

Phishguy wrote:

Man, how did people survive without Garmins?!!!!

Before the domestication of Garmins in about 1400 BC people ate Chinese take-away and Bubble and Squeek. Garmins are expected to surpass beef cattle as the single largest source of animal protein for the human race by 2014.

We ran in black canvas Keds, with a shoestring wrapped around our wrists attached to stopwatch, on courses measured by an auto odometer.

Maybe Mr. Adkins can remember those times.

I stopped competing about 10 years ago, but still have the tendency to push myself if I have a watch, GPS etc (it's a really hard habit to break). When we moved to our new town I figured out some running routes and used a my Garmin to figure out the distances. Now that I know the distances I don't wear a watch I just choose how far I want to run. You probably know what you average pace is on easy day so its pretty easy estimate how long it will take for your run.

Ran with an Omega chronograph. Most road courses were measured by odometer. Lived near & trained on a lot of race courses in the Portland & Eugene areas, plus many running routes in Eugene are measured (Pre's, Amazon, etc.)

Some old timers used to reset their watch to noon when they started a run. If it read 1:30 when you finished, you knew you ran for 90 minutes.

I have measured distances varying from 2.7 to 8.2 miles around the area where I live.

That's all I need, I don't even use a watch anymore. That's one less thing to concern myself with.

"Simplify" - Thoreau

Heard through the grapevine wrote:

I remember timing my own interval workouts with an analog stopwatch I carried in my hand. And I'm not even that old! At that time there were digital watches, but they were expensive, like $50 and up.

The funny thing is, it's the other way around now. Digital watches are much cheaper than analog.

Dan

For me it was my parents' car-usually it was off, but I knew I was running about 5 miles. I wore a regular watch, started at 3:03, ended at 3:37, I just did 34:00 for 5 miles.

In practice our coach timed us so I never wore a watch.

Then chrono's came out. By time I was 19 or so (I'm 53) I was able to take a stab at how far I ran and be within a couple tenths.

I have a GPS watch now and I love it.