The "joys" of technology.

admin 0 comments stress, Tracking Tools, Training, Training Program, Uncategorized

Jul 20

I wasn’t always a big fan of technology. Mostly it overwhelmed me, and I seemed to be doing fine without it. Then I married a techie. For our first Christmas I got a beautiful Canon SLR camera. Pocket Instamatics overwhelmed me, so this was a pretty big jump.

_	One day Tom came home with an early model of an MP3 Player. It was the size of a standard portable CD player, with about 1 gig of memory. I had no idea what to do with it. Over time I learned to use it, and it became a best friend. Then it broke. So Tom bought me a new iPod nano – the skinny one, with 2 gigs of memory. I was in love. Shortly after I got this little nano I began walking regularly. I learned to create playlists, and started to really enjoy this form of exercise. I thought it would be fun to get a pedometer and see how many steps I took a day.
I saw that Nike had this little sports tracker thing called a Nike+ iPod , and asked if it would work as a pedometer. I was told it would, so I bought it. It doesn’t. It did a great job of tracking my walks and telling me how far I’d gone and how fast I went. It also had nice people like Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong and Jenny Hadfield telling me I did a great job, exceeding my last personal best at something. Kinda cool. I was hooked.
	But it wasn’t a pedometer, so I also got a pedometer: The Omron HJ-720ITC Pocket Pedometer with Advanced Omron Health Management Software, which I adore, because it uploads everything onto my computer and keeps track of my steps, if I remember to put it on! I have, unfortunately, lost the program CD for it, so I can’t upload the info onto my new laptop, I have to keep turning on my old computer and uploading the info there. If I don’t do it regularly, the pedometer stops working.
Then I got out of the car one day after a workout at the gym and my iPod fell out of the car onto the driveway, and I stepped on it, breaking the screen. My best beloved husband then bought me a new square pink nano for Valentine’s day. I realized that I could also put my calendar, contacts, notes, and training schedule on this new iPod. I was in heaven! However, the written stuff didn’t always work. Sometimes I’d get up in the morning ready to head out, check my iPod for the day’s workout, and found I couldn’t access it. Sometimes it took as much as 4 hours of fiddling to get the text stuff to work, only to find that the next time I wanted it, it had disappeared again. The Nike stuff was still perfect, though, so I put up with the frustration of the text stuff and found ways to work around it.
	Shortly after this I got a Sports Instruments PRO 9 Heart Rate Monitor as I’d been reading in Phil Maffetone’s books about training with one for the fastest improvement and the greatest endurance for long races. I thought this would be a good thing, as I was planning on walking a marathon. I found it incredibly complicated to understand how to use the thing, so it sat on a shelf for a long time, and I walked the marathon without it.
My best beloved got frustrated with my frustration and got me an iPod touch as it had all the functionality I wanted, and the Nike tool was built in. For about 2 months I was in heaven. I hadn’t figured out the HR monitor yet, but the Nike+iPod was working like a dream. Very fun. All my training was at my fingertips, and I was a happy camper.

Then one day I lost my Nike sensor. I bought a new one that I couldn’t get to work. I replaced it with a second one, and then a third. Finally it was working.

I also got the HR monitor working, but the first day I used it “officially” I couldn’t get it to read my heart rate – making it somewhat less than useful.

Then I got the HR monitor working only to have the iPod stop speaking to me with it’s wonderfully encouraging voice feedback.

I got the voice feedback working, and now it won’t recognize my sensor.

The HR monitor is working like a charm.

I wonder if it’s worth it?

Maybe I should just go for a walk…

Darlene