I was yelling at my watch.

To be more precise, I was yelling at the app that goes along with my watch, a nice, simple running GPS watch by TomTom. Most often I use it to track miles during a run. Occasionally I use it to do an interval workout, as it has an interval setting that allows me to listen for beeps instead of trying to run and look at my watch simultaneously. I was never very good at multitasking, especially when in motion.

There are other times when I use the watch to track a walk or a hike out of curiosity of distance, elevation, and occasionally, pace.

Which brings me back to yelling at my TomTom app.

There are lot of things you can do in this app. Each run records your route, your splits, elevation, overall pace. Nice information to have and sometimes helpful to look at.

But then it aggregates data into a cute little graphic that tells you one of three things:

• Running faster recently
• Running consistently
• Running slower recently

Usually I end up yelling at the watch when it tells me I’ve been running slower recently.

No shit, Sherlock.

I yell back at the watch that my last two sessions were WALKS and so of course they were slow. I yell back that it was an easy run day. I yell back that I’m in a recovery phase after a big race.

I yell back because the data lacks context.

In my personal life, data can be used as a tool. I get into trouble when I become obsessed with the data. When the data becomes a reflection of my self worth.

By no means have I perfected this ability to use data for information purposes only. But it’s one of those life lessons I continue to learn. The numbers by themselves don’t mean much. They always need context. And I’m getting better at providing the context, at seeing what matters most, and most importantly what’s in my power to change.

This morning, my TomTom app told me that I’m running faster recently and that my running distance is increasing. Of course my running distance is increasing — I’m in a build phase for a 15K. That I’m running faster recently means I haven’t used my watch to track a walk or hike in the last few days.

Context means everything. Even for the good things.