Winning a Marathon with a 30,000-Won Digital Watch: A Wake-Up Call in the Era of Smartwatches

A top-tier Peruvian marathon runner is drawing attention after winning an international competition while wearing a low-cost digital watch priced at just 22 dollars (approximately 30,000 won).

The track and field specialized media outlet Runner's World reported on the 3rd (Korean time) that "Cristhian Pacheco won the Mexico City Marathon on August 1st with a time of 2 hours, 10 minutes, and 3 seconds while wearing Casio's F-91W model."

According to the outlet, the watch lacks common smartwatch features such as a Global Positioning System (GPS), heart rate monitoring, or pace tracking. Its stopwatch can only measure up to 59 minutes and 59 seconds, making it impossible to even directly measure a full marathon completion time.

Pacheco chose to wear a low-cost digital watch instead of a smartwatch to focus on his own sense of pacing rather than the information provided by gadgets.

After the race, he said, "The course was very complex, but I analyzed it thoroughly," adding, "From the 32km mark, my legs began to lose strength due to the steep slope and high altitude, and I tried to maintain the sense I developed through training."

This means that rather than relying on various data provided by smartwatches, he controlled his pace based on the instincts and feelings engraved in his body through training.

With his victory in this competition, Pacheco received a prize of 50,000 dollars, and coincidentally, an expensive smartwatch as a winning prize.

Recently in the marathon world, an increasing number of runners, like Pacheco, are lowering their dependency on smartwatches and focusing on their own physical conditions and senses.

This is because there have been cases where athletes' performance actually declined due to excessive reliance on information provided by smartwatches, and instances where race flow and balance collapsed from blindly trusting device data.

Currently, the vast majority of elite athletes run wearing lightweight, commercially available standard watches.

According to the Australian media outlet Lifehacker, Sabastian Sawe of Kenya, who won the April 2026 London Marathon by breaking the 2-hour barrier for the first time in human history with a world record of 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds, wore Garmin's Forerunner 55 (priced at 167 dollars).

Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia, who recorded the second-fastest time in history at 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 41 seconds, used the Coros Pace 3 (199 dollars).

Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda, who set the third-fastest time in history at 2 hours, 00 minutes, and 28 seconds, ran wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 (349 to 429 dollars).

The outlet explained, "Most elite athletes wear off-the-shelf products rather than cutting-edge latest models," adding, "This is because regulating one's own physical condition and pace independently, rather than depending on smartwatch functions, helps maintain athletic performance."

(Photo: Getty Images)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.