A 1990’s Mindset: Trusting Yourself More (On the Run and in Life)

There I was, sitting at Great Wolf Lodge, kids happily feral somewhere behind me, and no way to get in touch with my husband.

No texts. No “where are you?”No checking in.

Just… waiting.

And in that quiet, slightly uncomfortable space, it hit me: this is how it used to be.

You waited. You trusted. You assumed things would work out.

Because most of the time, they did.

There was something about not having constant access—to people, to updates, to reassurance—that forced you to be a little more patient. A little more optimistic. A little more grounded in the belief that things didn’t need to be monitored every second to be okay.

And weirdly enough, that thought followed me straight into my running life.

When more data isn’t actually better

Running today is saturated with data. Watches, apps, metrics, graphs, scores, trends. We know more than ever before—pace, heart rate, HRV, sleep quality, recovery status, readiness scores.

And yet… more information doesn’t always mean more confidence.

Sometimes it does the opposite.

This past week, I was sick. The kind of sick where your body aches, your head feels heavy, and getting out of bed feels optional at best. I did carline drop-off because #iykyk, wore my watch like I always do, and then proceeded to not work out, not walk, not do much of anything.

But I kept waiting for my watch to tell me I was sick.

I expected poor sleep alerts. Elevated heart rate warnings. HRV in the gutter. Something official. Something validating.

And it never came.

According to my watch? Everything was… fine.

Which made me pause.

Because for two solid days, I felt absolutely awful. I didn’t need a device to confirm that. I knew it. My body knew it.

So why was I questioning myself?

If I trust my body when I’m sick…

…why don’t I trust it when I’m strong?

Why do so many runners feel confident saying, “I’m definitely sick,” without checking a metric—but hesitate to believe, “I’m fit,” unless a watch, chart, or race result confirms it?

We’ve trained ourselves to outsource trust.

Trust in effort. Trust in feel. Trust in intuition built over weeks and months of consistent training.

Data can be helpful. I’m not anti-watch. I wear mine daily. But somewhere along the way, we’ve let numbers override lived experience. We’ve started believing that if something isn’t validated by a device, it might not be real.

And that’s a problem.

Running by feel isn’t outdated—it’s powerful

There’s something deeply grounding about going out for a run without chasing numbers. Feeling effort. Adjusting in real time. Trusting that your body knows what to do because you’ve taught it how.

It doesn’t mean ignoring data forever. It means not letting it be the only voice in the conversation.

Just like at Great Wolf Lodge—sometimes you don’t need constant updates to know things will work out. Sometimes you just wait. And trust. And let things unfold.

Here’s to a little less monitoring and a little more believing

Here’s to trusting more. To doing more without data. To believing that your body is smarter than you give it credit for.

Here’s to remembering that fitness isn’t fragile, effort matters, and you don’t need permission from a watch to believe in yourself.

Here’s to a very 1990’s rest of the year—Less tracking. More trusting. And the quiet confidence that it’s all going to work out.