Technology Woes

Most of the time technology and I get along really well. Much of my time is spent working with technology and helping others use it. That’s the way I like it, me being the one to figure something out and help someone else use it. When it goes the other way and technology doesn’t work the way I expect it to, right or wrong, and I can’t figure out how to make it work I get frustrated.

Today I took a break from work to go for a run. My running companions are my iPhone with the Runkeeper app and my Pebble watch. Obviously I can and should run without these things, and just go for the enjoyment. However I love tracking and working to improve my running. Whether it’s to go faster or to go further or both. Being able to do better than I did before is a big motivator for me. Runkeeper does the hard work of tracking everything and while I’m running it displays how long I’ve been running, my average pace, and my distance.

Usually this whole process works perfect, today however and a few times in the past, the information doesn’t show up on my watch. Usually I don’t notice because I start my run and put my phone in my pocket and start out. It’s usually a little bit later when I look at my wrist to see and get my pace where I want it. Today my goal was to try and keep a pace of 5:00 min/km for as long as I could. I felt like I was running blind when I couldn’t easily see and keep track.

After my first km I stopped and tried to get it figured out. There is no reason I can figure out that causes this to not work when it does. Everything is still connected I was receiving email notifications right before I started. A big part of it is likely because I don’t fully understand how the connection works and how things need to be setup. It just usually works and I don’t worry about it. I tried restarting both the watch and the phone, disconnecting bluetooth and setting it back up again.

Finally after trying these things a few times I got it to work and started to go again. This time the problem seemed to be with Runkeeper though. The run it tracked showed further than I really went and as a result my pace was crazy fast. For a while it was showing 2:15 min/km which obviously wasn’t right. I ran another km anyway and then stopped and gave up on the run for today.

If anything though this helps me relate to the people I talk with each day. When one of them is displaying frustration trying to use something I’m glad that I’m able to help them figure things out and get things working for them.