Above Average Jogger

Let’s talk tech. Specifically, the gear I strap to my body before I go wheeze around Toronto at a pace that only I find acceptable.

Fair warning: this is not a complicated setup. There are no custom dashboards, no heart rate zones named after Tour de France stages, no $800 GPS watch that also texts your emergency contact when your cadence drops. This is a returning runner’s tech stack, and it reflects that energy accordingly.

The Watch: Apple Watch SE

I am, for better or worse, an Apple ecosystem human. iPhone, AirPods, the whole thing. Resistance was never really an option.

It wasn’t always this way. My first running watch was a Garmin, back when Garmin watches came with a proprietary charging dock the size of a small satellite dish that only worked with that exact model. It was great, honestly. Did exactly what I needed, no subscription fees, no drama. It just… eventually died. Not from a fall or a swim or anything dramatic. The battery just quietly gave up, the way we all will someday, and started lasting about fifteen minutes per charge. A watch that dies before your warmup is not a watch. It is a bracelet.

Then came the Fossil experiment. Yes, I tried a Fossil smartwatch. It worked with Strava and iPhone, which seemed promising. It did not work in the sense of actually being good. After one particularly grim run where the data was, let’s say, creative, I rage-bought an Apple Watch SE and have not looked back since.

The SE is the move for most people. You could absolutely spend more and get one of the fancier models with ECG readings and crash detection and whatever else. If you want that, go for it. But if you’re a normal person who wants GPS tracking, workout data, and the ability to ignore texts mid-run, the SE does the job without making your credit card cry.

The AirPods: Just Let Them Cook

Not much to explain here. AirPods. They exist. They are fine. They work.

One thing worth noting: I run with noise cancelling off. This is not an audiophile choice. This is a survival choice. Toronto roads are not a controlled environment. Cars exist. Cyclists exist. People who do not look where they are going exist. You want to hear the world around you, or at least enough of it to avoid becoming a cautionary tale.

Strava: The Only Social Network I Actually Use

I have been using Strava for years. Before Strava, I was on the Nike Running app, back when that was the thing to do. Eventually Strava just got better, and the switch happened naturally, the way you switch from a place you used to like to a place that is actually good.

Strava does everything I need. It tracks runs. It logs other workouts. It lets me feel briefly competitive with people who are significantly faster than me, which is both motivating and humbling in a way I cannot fully explain. Highly recommend.

What’s Next

That’s the full stack. Apple Watch SE, AirPods, Strava. Three things. It fits on a Post-it note and it gets the job done.

That said, I am not ruling out upgrades this year. The watch could probably use a refresh. The headphones, maybe. And honestly, my running kit in general is overdue for a rethink, because a lot of it is from a previous era of my life where I was a different shape and had different ideas about what constituted appropriate athletic wear.

But that’s a future AJ problem. For now, the stack holds.