Like every athletic endeavor, running is complicated. We are not all professional athletes, whose every minute is dedicated to improving and maintaining our physical performance. We have small children and dogs and sometimes don’t get much sleep. We have work schedules and sometimes drink wine and squeeze in a run before lunch. All can interfere with our training plans.
Even at a very granular level, heart rate training can be messy. High temperatures, stress at work, or even the wrong song on my playlist can make my heart beat faster. Training by tracking your heart rate (also called “zone training,” which refers to different heart rate zones) is popular, but it’s also confusing. As Baker points out, even stressing about being in the wrong heart rate zone can spike you out of the right one.
I asked Baker if the Pixel Watch 3 might have picked up indicators that I was overtraining, and that’s why it recommended a very slow run. “Possibly,” he said, doubtfully. “If you don’t feel hungry, or you’re lethargic, or you’ve missed your period — those are all signs of overtraining. But recreational runners aren’t really overtraining unless something’s really wrong.”
That was two weeks of wasted training. I was running my sprint at about a 14-minute pace when I should have been running my tempo intervals at an 8-minute pace—something I probably would have done if Fitbit hadn’t told me otherwise. I can build custom runs in the app, but I wish it was easier to plug in my desired pace into Fitbit’s suggested workouts than build runs from scratch. After all, the point is that the AI coach makes running easier, not harder.
At this point, like most things AI-related, the AI coach is more of a fun toy than anything else. It gave me structure and motivation. But it’s so easy to get lost. “Another tool that people have in their toolbox, and that’s a good one!” Baker said. “But now you’re playing on the computer and you’re confused. This is a good starting point, but you should probably also consult a professional. Good news for all of us—artificial intelligence is not going to replace human coaches just yet. It still takes one more person to point out that maybe all you need is a nap and a snack.
