Making Sense Of Technology In Running
With technology now pervasive in running and coaching, community and human connections are still the key variable for success.
Advances in biomedical science, data science and sports science in the past 20 plus years has been impressive. Combined with the burgeoning growth of personal health monitoring, technology devices being increasingly able to process more data real time along with lowering costs, the result has been the ubiquitous availability of sophisticated technology to be at the disposal of the everyday athlete.
The convergence of personalised healthcare and an awareness of the power of a holistic healthcare approach where physiological, biomechanical, mental and environmental factors are increasingly considered in performance improvement sees us at the doorway of Industry 4.0 and the next wave of frontier exploration.
For dedicated runners, your familiarity with smart watches, including the current favourites that include Garmin, Apple Watch, Suunto, fitbit and any smart phone has shown an easy relationship with sophisticated technology in the quest for improvement. Combined with the proliferation of online coaching, there now are a multitude of avenues to chose from in one’s pursuit of exploring one’s potential.
Marketing Innovation:
The range of options and levels of technology for the data driven runner and coach is immense. With the convergence of GPS technology, advances in the accuracy and miniaturisation of micro sensors and the now decades of scientific research from sports specialised universities such as Loughborough in the UK, UCLA’s kinesiology department and the Australia Institute of Sports (‘AIS’) amongst many other performance research centres, we are now at a stage where the science is available to improve performance. How we leverage such knowledge and technology becomes a deeper ethical issue.
With high stakes now involved in professional sports through its commercialisation, the impact of technology on fairness of access was recently brought to the fore with the controversy and thus need for World Athletics to clarify on shoe technology rules in the wake of Kipchoge’s multiple carbon plated running shoe in Vienna on 12 October 2019.
The thin line of balancing ethical appropriateness and the understandable human desire to challenge and reach our potential, and then to re-challenge those benchmarks is a mindset that this dedicated readership understands. In innovation focused Singapore, the smart city has embraced enthusiastically the digital age, and combining it with running and fitness is natural for us.
Promising Innovation:
The ability to access technology to improve our performance limits has created a burgeoning global industry. Some of the interesting stand out innovations that prevail in professional sports include innovations that embrace advanced measurement capabilities, real time data analysis and instantaneous feedback where your fitness device can be a virtual coach during your training session or race.
Real time diagnosis and insights that seek to make sense of multiple independent variables in key physiological areas has advanced at Usain Bolt like speed in the last 20 years. The confluence of cloud-based computing, GPS satellite communications and engineering advances with micro-sensors now being cheap and incredibly accurate all combined with data-processing at speed as the glue that binds the data input available to generate insights. Data science has allowed more complex algorithms to be developed and embedded into our smart devices, such that our smart watch can now be a virtual Olympic coach.
Smart Coaching:
Smart coaching can be summarised as the use of real-time data analysis and the resultant insights to guide real-time athletic reaction and then drive any recommended effort adjustments given set goals. Whilst early models of digital technology gave fundamental dashboard data on basics like Heart rate, distance, elevation and latterly, VO2 max, technological advances now see optimal personalised VO2 max measurements predicted based on your warm-up.
Professional team sports have been strong adopters of next level technology, in part due to the money available, fueled by media and sponsorship funding and demanding fans which create a cycle of aspiration and ambition. Data science companies like Catapult Sports, Athos and WHOOP represent some of the leaders in integrating movement tracking via tri-axial accelerometers (i.e.: inertial measurements), gyroscopes (to measure rotation) and magnetometers (to measure direction).
This technology builds upon the fundamental physiological and speed data that runners have used for decades, with the core being heart rate, distance and speed. Whilst early coaching pioneers like Arthur Lydiard, Percy Cerutty and Franz Stampfl intuitively knew that these independent variables were the keys to efficient training and so running success, they lacked real-time and accurate measurement devices that we can all now buy at our favourite sports store.
Technical Constraint vs Technical Emancipation:
The widespread adoption of such state-of -the-art technology has allowed diagnostic session-based data collection to be gathered real time, with fashionable ease. This has put athletes at the centre of attention, allowing for personalised coaching. Thus technology, knowledge and coaching can now be leveraged across borders and be on-call during a live training session. The result is that previously elite-level coaching excellence that was only available to national athletes is now within reach, virtue of the cloud coaching specific applications.
Some interesting examples that leverage the cloud and ubiquitous data capture technology includes myolympiccoach.com, which is helmed by Venezuela’s # 1 marathoner, national record holder and 2016 Olympian Luis Orta. Orta has training through virtual interaction over 100 athletes to PBs with many of those athletes scattered around the world.
A similar local example is “Coached” which blends a similar platform that leverages technology to enable distance-based coaching but supplements it with face-to-face training. The human interaction and the psychological dimensions of running improvement can’t be imparted by a device or artificial intelligence and so such in-person coaching is for many students a critical requirement for true engagement.
Revisiting Our Running Goals:
The running and general sporting community’s ecosystem has a wide spectrum of participation motivations. If the pinnacle is the Olympic Games and the professional running circuit through its prestigious money races, the other end of the spectrum is perhaps the new-to-running “jogger” who just bought is first pair of training shoes.
How do we understand if there are common values across a sport that has such diverse participation and resource differences? Who can be our role models, and are they and their lessons always more naturally from the professional end of the spectrum?
The year 2020 has already been a milestone for humanity. A year that has seen our running aspirations curtailed through the unprecedented restrictions from the dark cloud of a viral terror that is unseen yet omnipresent. With widespread stay-at home restrictions in place across nearly all countries, our views on the role of exercise and sports has understandably come into question.
Modern $$$port vs. Running Bare:
The hibernation of all professional sports these few months has without doubt created a void in many lives and TV screens. The difficult to fathom tussle between the Professional Footballers, their agents, clubs and administrators regarding salaries has been a particularly materialistic interchange focused on different views of value measurement and importance to society. With the existential threats the coronavirus has delivered, our return to simplicity and the base needs of exercising to keep physically and mentally healthy has for many been a revelation in truly valuing what is important to us.
So, whilst professional sports is now a global industry and one that creates and supports many associated industries with a product marketing-centric focus to fuel sales, this commercial focus leaves a footprint on earth that can’t be easily smoothened with the tide. The impact of money, media and technology on role models has seen a spotlight that has exposed some rough edges and attitudes that perhaps have been previously hidden.
So whether it is the reluctance of gilded footballers to take a pay cut, or the slow out-of-the blocks reaction of the International Olympic Committee to postpone the 2020 Olympics due to sponsorship interests, sporting administrators and some professional athletes have understandably been scrutinised for their values and community spirit. Against this background of self-interest and how professional sport is viewed, the importance of exercise (and running) has perhaps taken on heightened importance.
Exercise Circuit Breakers:
With gyms, running tracks and playing fields inaccessible and team-based sport suspended, governments the world over have notably allowed for outdoor exercise to continue during Covid-19. What this has meant is given all the restrictions, RUNNING has been the go-to option for most. Whilst the evidence is perhaps anecdotal given data capture challenges, this writers’ various networks has seen the pandemic situation result in more people consciously taking up running, planning their runs with greater anticipation and embracing that daily connection with the outdoors.
Running during the pandemic restrictions has for all been an adventure without the goal of a diarised future event. But the void of a targeted banner race has instead been replaced by an elemental engagement with running for the sake of health, sanity and balance. Times and measurement perhaps matter less and for many new runners, with the only real purpose being self-care.
Existential Running:
So, returning to technology and its role in our running lives, how can we reconcile the two during these extraordinary times? With the heightened awareness of the fragility of communities, our interconnectedness with nature and each other globally has been laid bare for reflection. Our fascination with technology and the advances and control it can bring us contrasts against the toll of our rush to optimise performance and perhaps the latest non-biodegradable running fashion imposes on our fragile ecosystem.
Runners perhaps best understand the elemental aspects of how our bodies and minds are core to our well-being. Our lung capacity is central to driving our performance and treasuring such is now central to our longevity. Running free in challenging times to exercise our basic needs is the gift that running delivers, unlocking our potential whilst building our resilience in the ultimate race of life.
Our simplified existence these months has been juxtaposed with the clear complexities and uncertainties that lie ahead. Our ability to use technology to better predict the future is now at the core of daily news reports, with predictive models and key performance indicators guiding national and individual decisions and behaviours.
Using technology as a guidepost directed by factual data is what has helped so many modern-day runners. Those that look beyond the technology and realise we are part of a that race will perhaps appreciate that our collective efforts in advancing with cohesion is the ultimate prize. By using technology and innovation to deepen our sustainable engagement with running and wider communities, us runners can help continue to balance ourselves with those around us and with nature.
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Technology Innovators in Sport: A selection of interesting technology players and their key features:
This article was published in the June-July 2020 edition of RUN Magazine Singapore, through BoldInkMedia Pte Ltd.