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When you’re new or returning to running, the last thing you need is one more barrier. Shoes, appropriate clothes, sweat-resistant sunscreen: These things are hard to do without. But those running watches that it seems like everyone else is using? You don’t need one, and certainly not on your first day. You don’t even need to run with your phone.
It’s off how “fitness” has become almost synonymous with tracking fitness. How many steps are you taking? How many calories are you burning? How many minutes per mile was your pace when you went jogging this morning? What was your heart rate? Each of these numbers can be worth tracking…sometimes, in some contexts. Heart rate training, for example, has its uses.
But you don’t need to know any of this. You can just go for a run, and the results are recorded in the very fibers of your muscles. Your heart and lungs know how hard they worked, and they are in the process of adapting so that they’ll be able to serve you better next time. This process does not require you, at any point, to look at numbers on a screen. So do you need a Garmin, a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, or any of their kin? Absolutely not.
What a running watch provides, and how to do without
I may seem like a hypocrite going for runs with three watches on (look, these reviews and comparisons don’t write themselves), but in the past I’ve gone years at a time without regularly wearing a device. Most of the time, I don’t feel like strength workouts need any kind of wrist-based tracking at all. And there have been times I actually took a watch off to go for a run—see the photo up top where I have a watch-shaped indent on my wrist. Not every workouts needs to be tracked.
When I do a watch-less run, I have a vague idea of time and mileage, but no precise numbers. My brain is empty of thoughts except for “don’t go too fast” and “turn around when I get to the main road.” Now I’ll discuss the data I’m not getting from a running watch when I do that, and how to go without it.
Distance
The watch tells you: how far you’ve gone. Want to run 3 miles? Turn around when your watch says 1.5. You can also add up your miles at the end of the week.
How to do without: Measure a route beforehand. This doesn’t need to be precise. You can use Google Maps (right-click and select “measure distance,” or just plan a walking route through the normal interface). For a nicer interface, use an app like Footpath. The free version lets you measure routes but not save them; honestly, creating a route and then taking a screenshot is good enough for our purposes here. If you’re going to pay for an app with route planning, you might as well get Strava—but more on that later.
You can plan the route before you go, and then when you’ve finished the route, you know you’ve done your mileage. It can be handy to have a few routes on hand for common distances you like to run. There’s a 5-mile loop at my local park, for example, and I know exactly where to jog in my neighborhood if I want a 2-miler.
Tracking mileage over the course of the week is even easier. To keep track of distance from day to day, you can keep a note in your phone, or add it to your training journal. Want more analytics without having to download an app? Our resident marathoner Meredith Dietz has a spreadsheet you can download.
Time
The watch tells you: how long you’ve been running.
How to do without: In the olden days, you’d use a regular (non-smart) watch to track time, or even just look at the clock before you leave home and then again when you come back. Where a watch-user knows that their run was 32 minutes and five seconds, you are free from worrying about such minutia and can be happy to know that you were running for about half an hour.
You can also use a stopwatch on your phone to track the time, if you really want to know. You can also just estimate from your mileage: That three-mile route will take about 30 minutes if you run at a 10:00 pace.
Pace
The watch tells you: how many minutes it’s taken you to run each mile; also, what pace you are going right now.
How to do without: Go by feel. If you’re a beginner, the exact pace doesn’t matter; do easy runs at a speed that feels easy. Do faster intervals at a pace that feels challenging but doesn’t leave you gassed. The exact numbers aren’t important.
If you’re an experienced runner, use that experience! How do you feel when you’re running 10-minute miles? 8-minute miles? Run at an effort level that feels right for the programmed run, and every now and then you can run a race or time yourself on a track to recalibrate. For track intervals, use that old-fashioned stopwatch I mentioned above. That’s the traditional way, anyhow.
Heart rate
The watch tells you: your current heart rate, and maybe the “zone” you’re in.
How to do without: Honestly, if you’re a beginner, don’t use heart rate at all. Heart rate can be a useful number once you have a pretty good handle on what your personal heart rate is at different effort levels. But the way most watches and apps calculate heart rate is with an error-prone formula that often sets the zones too high or too low.
As a beginner, the only thing that really matters is that you do your easy runs at an easy pace, not a gut-busting breakneck speed that ends up being unsustainable. So, go with perceived effort here too. Do you feel like you could keep this up almost forever? Like you could talk on the phone with only a little bit of heavy breathing? That’s the famous “zone 2.” See, you didn’t need a heart rate monitor after all.
If you’re an experienced runner, you probably get more use out of pace data than heart rate data, anyway—but you can always use a chest strap connected to your phone if you’d like the numbers.
COOSPO Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap H6M, Bluetooth ANT+ Heart Rate Monitor Chest Sensor with 400H Battery, HRM Works with Strava/Wahoo Fitness/Polar Beat/Peloton/Zwift/DDP Yoga App
Coaching, sometimes
Not all watches have this feature, and even among people who have running watches, not everyone uses the coaching. But yes, some watches and some apps provide a running plan, telling you how many miles, at what pace, to run each day. They may also give you guided runs, with a coach in your ear telling you when to speed up and slow down.
Without a watch, you’re on your own for this stuff. But you can also find a plan online that’s not tied to any particular app. Hal Higdon says I’m running 3 miles on Tuesday? Well then, I’ll go out on Tuesday and run (roughly, approximately) 3 miles.
How I’ve trained without a running watch
Putting all of this together, here’s what it looked like for me last year, a time that was largely watch-free as I returned to running after taking time off. First, I started my running habit by getting consistent with my morning walk (30 minutes, so about 1.5 miles.) Over the course of a week, I started adding some bits of running to my walk, slowing down when I got winded or uncontrollably itchy, and after about two weeks, I was running pretty much the whole 1.5 miles in relative comfort. The following week, I started adding a little mileage—doing 2 miles most morning instead of 1.5.
This worked beautifully as a gentle re-introduction to running, and honestly? I don’t think I would have done it this way if I were wearing a watch. It would have been demoralizing to see that my “running” pace was so much slower than what I was used to seeing when I was in better shape. But once I was in the habit, it was easy to add mileage.
After that introductory period, I collected a few neighborhood routes into a mental library. I’d put on my sun visor and headphones when I went out with the kids to wait for the bus, and as soon as they left I’d turn and head off on one of my 3-mile (usually) routes.
I kept track of my mileage in a notebook. Three miles, five times a week, is 15 miles. If I missed a morning or if I wanted to add more time on my feet, I’d add another run in the evening or on a weekend day, usually heading to a nearby park where I knew the mileage of my favorite trails and roads. If I wanted to try a new route, I’d sometimes pick an album that is about as long as I’d like my run to be (many are around 45 minutes, which is perfect) and take note of which song occurs at the halfway point. When I hear that song, I turn around. That’s a 45-minute run in the books—in the ballpark of four miles or so.
Can I use my phone instead of a running watch?
You sure can! If you’re looking at that list above and thinking “aww, I wish I had that data,” wish no more! There are tons of running apps that can track distance, duration, and pace in real time, even speaking up through your headphones to let you know your split times each mile.
Pros of phone based running apps
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No need to buy special equipment like a watch.
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Numbers are available anytime you want to pull your phone out and look at them.
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You’re probably bringing your phone anyway to listen to music.
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You’ll get a map of your run after the fact (thanks to your phone’s GPS).
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The app will keep track of your mileage over time.
Cons of phone based running apps
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You may not want to see all those numbers, especially if the thought of logging a “bad” average pace makes you rush warmups or skip walking breaks.
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GPS tracking on phones is not always as accurate as the tracking on watches (but this depends on your phone).
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GPS tracking tends to run a phone’s battery down faster than if you weren’t using the GPS.
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No heart-rate tracking, if that’s a thing you want (unless you use a chest strap and pair it to your phone with Bluetooth).
I enjoy the guidance I get from running apps if I’m doing a specific workout—like one I tried recently that involved segments of 0.6, 0.5, and 0.35 miles. No way was I going to track that manually, but the pleasant voice in my ear told me exactly when to start and stop each interval, and cued me to speed up or slow down if I was getting off pace.
If you do decide to get a running watch later on, they’ll have the same features as the phone apps, but with better battery life and an easier way to view the numbers.
What are the best running apps to use if you don’t have a phone?
The classic is Strava. In fact, if the community aspect of a running app or watch is what’s most important to you, you’ll definitely want to get on Strava. People who log their runs on a Garmin or another device will often upload to Strava so they can have everything in one place. But you can also “record” a run from the Strava app directly, no extra device needed. Just beware that the social features can end up revealing your location, so dip into the privacy settings to make sure you aren’t sharing more than you intend.
If you have an iPhone, the best simple running app (thanks to an update earlier this year) is the built-in Fitness app. This used to only manage data from the Apple Watch, but has since turned into a nice standalone fitness app.
Other popular running apps include MapMyRun, Runkeeper, Adidas Running (formerly Runtastic), and Nike Run Club. There are also some general fitness apps that can track running data, like Polar Beat and Intervals Pro.
How do you track mileage when running without a watch?
Measure or estimate the length of each run, ideally by measuring on a tool like Google Maps or Footpath. (In the olden days, we would sometimes drive a route and use the odometer.)
Add up your mileage over time by keeping notes on a calendar (paper or digital), a notebook (paper or digital), or any other way you’d keep track of a running tally.
How do you pace yourself when running without a watch?
By paying attention to your body. For an easy or “zone 2” pace, you’ll want to feel like you’re breathing easy and like you can keep going forever. Faster paces might feel harder, but they’ll still be sustainable enough that you can make it the entire distance you intend, without collapsing into a heap by the end. You’ll learn over time what each appropriate pace feels like.
On guided runs, offered by many running apps, the coach or narrator will help you figure out the right effort level. They might ask you to aim for a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, or they might describe in words how your body should feel when you’re at a given pace.
Do I need a watch to run a marathon?
You don’t make it to the start line of a marathon without having a decent amount of running experience under your belt. And these days, when you’ve been running regularly for the amount of time it takes to build a base and then train for a marathon…you’ll probably have already given in to the temptation to buy a running watch.
But it’s not necessary in any way. You can do your training by mapping out routes ahead of time, gauging your pace based on how you feel, and writing down your weekly mileage in a notebook. This is how almost everybody trained until running watches became more accessible about 10 or 15 years ago. The race organizers are keeping track of your time (there’s a chip in your bib, usually), and they’ll post mile markers along the course so you know where you are.
On race day, you probably won’t want to use your running app; it drains battery, and you’ll be out there a long time. Instead, you can pace yourself by wearing a basic stopwatch and comparing your time at each mile marker with pre-calculated split times. Sound complicated? It’s not—just grab one of these temporary tattoos that has them all calculated for you.
What is the best running watch for beginners?
Once you’ve gotten the hang of running, you may eventually decide it’s time to shop for a watch. Fortunately, we have a guide to the best watches for runners here, and I even have a shortlist of the best running watches under $250. Currently the Coros Pace 4 looks like the best of the bunch to me, while my colleague Meredith enjoys her Garmin Forerunner 165.
