Understanding Running Timer

If the only feature you used on your running watch were the chronometer, it still would be useful. These days, however, the good running watches have more sophisticated features built into them that can help you in other ways. One feature that a lot of racers use is the lap counter. Don’t let the name fool you—it’s not designed to be used only on the track. You can use it anytime you want to check and record your splits en route to the finish of a run.
Say you’re running in your local Fourth of July five mile race. You start your watch when the race begins.
When you pass the one-mile mark, you hit the lap feature. The watch records the intermediate time. At the two-mile mark, you do the same thing. Again, the watch records your intermediate time. Most of the good watches will then show the elapsed time since the last time you hit the lap feature and so on at every mile marker until the finish.
This feature is useful for two reasons. Many of us aren’t geniuses when it comes to quick calculation, especially when we’re trying to concentrate on running fast. The lap feature does the calculating for you. Say you passed the one-mile mark in 8:30. You hit the lap feature and carry on to the two-mile mark, where you hit the lap feature again. Immediately, the watch lets you know that your two-mile split of 17:10 means that it took you 8:40 to cover the second mile. Uh oh—you were hoping to run 8:30 miles the whole way. You gradually pick up the pace, and at the three-mile mark, you see that you ran your last mile in 8:20. You relax a bit and run 8:30s for the last two miles and meet your goal. After the race, you can retrieve your splits from your watch and write them in your training log. This type of recording is a good way to analyze your running to see how you might do better. For example, if your splits show that your first mile is always 20 seconds faster than the rest, and your last mile is your slowest, then you know that you’re starting your races too quickly and could improve your overall time if you pace yourself better. Or your splits might show that your middle miles are your slowest, so you need to work more on concentrating hard in the middle of a race, when it seems that the finish line is an eternity away.