Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Athletic Adventures Part 2 : World's First Strava'd Shopping Experience

In the first installment of this series, I described in brief how I got rid of 70 kgs of dust on my bike and spent a whole sleepless night thinking about a training plan. 

This week, I've upped the ambitiousness a notch up. 

That's right. 

In what might be a world's first for any Indian, I broke into my normal training regimen with a walk through the city block with my wife. The world's first bit is where I went ahead and strava'd the whole experience. 

With GPS and smart watches these days, I argue that husbands need to do more to monitor their health. And when I say health, I just don't mean cholesterol, BP etc. I mean real time transients. Because what goes on in real-time transients is what you don't see, and what you don't see is what might actually put a dent in your life later on.

On this particular instance, the wife whispers in your ear 'let's go on a stroll dear' which you later realize is a cover for mentally capturing items that must, key word must, be bought from retail outlets that dot the walking course. 

We now have data for what this obstacle avoidance workout might be like. 

Initially, things started out for me with a relaxed and elated feeling that this might be a normal walk. With great expectations, I hit "record" on my watch. 

Until a few garment shops came into view and what was a nice outdoor workout quickly turned shape and form into an indoor, potentially disastrous monetary heart attack.

The next few moments as I say were pure dread, with the observation of high prices on some of the tags I was shown and the unstoppable magnetic power of human desire tugging at the credit card which was hidden deep inside three layers of my clothing. 

The instinctual tactic at this point was to slowly increase pace and walk away from this retail outlet before I lost three layers of my clothing and the credit card. 

These moments have been perfectly captured with the spike in heart rate and pace upon realization of what's going on.  Observe the little squiggly in the GPS waypoints and the labeled spikes in walking pace.





Oh...and the last spike in heart rate was not from the near brush with shopping. As I was intently focused on the great escape and whilst looking back sometime during those crucial seconds to see how far I had made it, I collided hard with a street sign in front of me. 

As I sit with a big bump on my head, I stop my breath to think about the enormity of this all. 

This was my first week of training.  I think it's going to be a tough season ahead.... 

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