Wearable Fitness

Krugman points out one benefit of the wearable fitness trackers that are getting popular but misses another.  The immediacy thing has been doable for some time now in the form of pedometers.  What the newer electronic devices that couple to apps on on your phone gives you is not just the inability to fool yourself but also introduces a game element, including competition with yourself and others.

People [generally] have more fun running 5 km in a race than they do on their own.  If I walk 15k steps a day: so what?  If I'm involved in a work-week challenge with friends and family: I can win!  Also, this adds the guilt element: other people will know if you're a slug.  The more automated the tracking and notifications are the more likely people are to do them.

I am reminded of the fitness program in "Ready Player One".  He was a slug who did little exercise and ate pizza, but the program, which could not be uninstalled for a month (iirc) wouldn't let him online until he had exercised.

We generally recognize that fitness is more fun when it is a game, but not all people are going to be good/capable of all games.  Personal trackers that monitor steps, fitness level, heartrate, allow anyone to play the fitness game.

How to Feel Better About Your Run

So I ran Broad Street last weekend (like a chump).  My chip time was 1:57:31 (because I'm slow and 10 miles is a long damned way...also there was a ~5 min bathroom break in there).  For those who are passably good at math that translates to an average pace of 11:45.  Not great, though better than last year despite not properly training and having sprained my ankle pretty badly ~3 months before.  Also I know the last mile was right around 9 min from the clocks at miles 9 and the finish.  Then I checked Map My Run:

10.58 miles in 1:54:13, or 10:47 pace

Now I may have missed turning it off for as many as 200 m past the finish line, and clearly my bathroom break was auto-paused away--not 5 min, but it was probably another 1-2 min before I actually stopped it after the finish.  But most of that added distance is because we didn't run a straight line down the street, cutting all the corners as short as possible, and over a 10 mile stretch little wiggles here and there (water breaks, finding shade, swinging wide to get more space) add up to nearly half a mile over the nominal race distance.  Now I don't know what the error is on those numbers but based on comparisons to my bike computer (which I trust to better than 95% confidence), it's pretty good.

10:47 is quite a bit better pace than 11:45.

One Wouldn't Think It Hard To Measure

Color me Rad "5k" run was this past weekend in Philly.  It was fun, but it was short...very short...maybe 2.5 miles instead of 3.1 short.  I realize that it was a fun, untimed run, but is it really that hard to lay out a course that clocks in at (close to) 5k?  It can be done fast and free online, at places like this or someone could have walked it with a decent gps device.  As easy as it is to do this, and as much as it said "5k" throughout, that the race was about a full kilometer short was just...weird.