Independence or break!

After all, why do we do all this anyway?

On the banks of the Ipiranga River, preparing to start his training for any marathon, Dom Nishi I looks disconsolately at his dead GPS watch, without battery.

What to do? Would you run just like that, without knowing exactly the distance covered, the heartbeats counted, the stride metrics, relative effort, incline and, worse, without being able to upload training with the route traveled on Strava? Would it be worth so much effort without having such results to see and show everyone? How would you track your training progress?

For a moment, this noble amateur athlete hesitated. Without the GPS, he stopped the training that hadn’t even started and started heading to the exit of the park to go home. Well, it was just a practice, what would be missing if I didn’t do it? In addition, if he decided to put manual information on Strava, he might have to deal with people questioning whether this training was really done, without proper GPS recording. He depended on the GPS record, it wouldn’t be worth training like that, he thought.

Suddenly he hears a familiar sound. U-hu-hu… U-hu-hu… down the street, outside the park, he sees a skinny jogger pass by in a white tank top, short shorts, long curly, flowing hair… it was Roberto Losada , the dog from Ipiranga, a runner for decades, known in the neighborhood by everyone. Of course, he had no GPS, no headphones, no cadence sensor on his shoes and no worries about these things… he was just running around, as he has been doing for the last century.

And a kind of obvious light appeared in her mind. That’s what matters. Run!! Like Professor Losada!! The proposed training would come out, with or without a GPS watch! I would run like the ancient Phoenicians, Finns or Africans!!

The duration of the training he would measure by the movement of the sun and the beginning of the night since it was late afternoon. The speed would be as much as his breath took and his legs tolerated. The distance he would estimate by the turns taken on that route. The other metrics… well, does he really need to know the radius of the stride length, the cadence of steps per minute or elevation gain? Dom Nishi I then solemnly declares to his friends (in fact, there was no one there, but it was nice to register in the stories): “If it is for the good of my body and the general happiness of my training, I am ready and I STAY to continue my training!! !”

After all, it’s either that or break in the test I was training for! And when the crash comes, there is no electronic equipment to push or help you to the finish line. And continuing that historic moment, Dom Nishi I raises his battery-free GPS and shouts to all who heard him at that historic moment (well, in fact he was still alone there in the middle of the park, but a good photoshop of the selfie mixing a frame of the Pedro Américo solved this question):

“INDEPENDENCE OR BREACH!!!”