Went all out on 100m this morning (Page 3)

Being a "better racer next year" (which many of those plans you are deriding, likely will achieve quite well) and "being as fast as you can be" are not necessarily the same thing.  Few people have the patience to do the latter, especially when there are other tracks that can make them a "better racer next year" than if they went about working on how to be as fast as they can be.  What you get to see, is people planning for the latter.  Willing to not worry if they don't completely maximize this year's results because their real goal is to be the best several years down the line.  Again, those two things are not necessarily inclusive of one another.

This is an area where that engineering sense you've mentioned may be helpful. Are the parameters you're watching the best to use to obtain the greatest outcome? When giving in to the desire to push all the time, what's being watched seems to be asking each day the question of if you went hard today. Is that the system you would design?

Don't wear a watch on those days.

I don't know if you are talking about swimming or running or biking anymore.......but I've NEVER seen a swim workout when the clock wasn't in play. I don't know why you would ever do that. I can see it for biking and running, but not swimming. Obviously the ONLY time it would be ok with a run or bike workout is an easy day.......doing intervals without a watch would be silly.

I know my kid doesn't do any bike workouts without a watch because it's virtually all interval work.  Maybe hill sessions he doesn't, but that'd be it.  The only time he gets on a bike without an absolute plan and structure is his mountain bike on trails......then he just rides.  His road/TT bikes are for work.

Me, on the other  hand......I'm perfectly happy to ride around aimlessly.

I wear the watch on lighter days too. I like having the data as well and if left to my own devices will tend to push into too much moderate. I'll look at it often, but have the goals inverted in that I need to stay below a certain effort level. These kinds of things are just taking in various ideas and using whatever works to accomplish the goals for the day. Some of this stuff does become easier to do when you have a better grasp on watching a little bigger picture. It's easier to accept backing down on the lighter days when I know it will help make the harder days that much better. I've also learned to just enjoy being out there on these days.

Pick a route you know the distance from your house.  Check the time when you leave and the time when you return.  Data. 

And, yes LB, I was talking about running.  You can often leave the watch at home for swimming, too, since most pools have a nice big pace clock to use. 

You mean people actually WEAR a watch while swimming?  Our pools have digital pace clocks....and it drives me nuts.  It starts at 000.0 and goes to 999.9, or something like that, and you have to count the seconds in front of the decimal and behind it....and I'm always lost.  It makes perfect sense to the kids though.....so I figure it's just because I'm old and need a minute and second hand.

Obviously, you go to a very fancy pool.  I live with the giant minute & second hand.  But I can only really keep track of the seconds anyway and just assume the minutes from my expected pace.  I figure it's because I'm old. 

You are a pox on our people. Unclean!

My pool has both - a standard pace clock (RED UP!) and a digital clock that just displays the time of day (including seconds).  Since I rarely wear contacts when I swim, the digital clock makes it easy to see the times and even better for taking a peek at the time during a longer interval so I can count by 100s and time.

The debate is actually less about your absolute speed, and more about how well you would make the transition from pool speed to OWS race speed. Clearly you've had no problems at all with the typical OWS issues, but i'd venture to say that most people here and elsewhere are less impressive in their OWS race day than they are in the pool, between the sighting, body contact, etc.

In your case, these issues were clearly not limiters, so you ended up doing better than most people expect, but in most cases, for those making a comeback to swimming, race OWS times can be slower than pool speed and overall performance, sometimes particularly so.