WARNING: This post kind of got away from me a little. Little all over the place. And since I don’t reread and edit before I post, I’m guessing I’m not going to fix it. Plus, I’ve got a deadline.

I’m a stat girl, a planner and very organized (in most aspects of life anyway). I read the box scores after every Bruins and Sox game, I spend MONTHS planning vacations and workouts (I’m much better at following the vacation plan than the workout), when it comes to work I’m organized to an almost psychotic degree (DO NOT move things around on me!). So when the activity tracker craze really kicked in the last couple of years, I’m like “sign me up!!”.  The problem with me is that I don’t have much of an attention span which generally makes the stat fan, planner, organizer useless.

The idea of an activity tracker appeals to me. Why? no idea. My job is either super active or completely sedentary. It’s nice to have a reminder to move around on a day when I’m at my desk all day. Apparently keeping a year round Triathlon training schedule isn’t enough?

I started a couple of years ago with a nice slim activity tracker. Now if you even half read the former sentence you have figured out that this tracker was not for me. I don’t want to bad mouth it as I’m sure it works for many people. I’ll just call it a “Mawbone” . This looked like a very sturdy bracelet. Very unassuming. It was kind of pretty at first. Navy blue and silver. I promptly started using it. That lasted like a week. I didn’t like the fact that it kind of looked like a medical alert bracelet. When you’re a little large you don’t really want to look like you may need medical attention at any time. It was just a bracelet without a screen. It would flash different sequences of lights that meant you should move, or you were sleeping or the batteries were low or you should dismantle that bomb. I don’t know. It was all very confusing to me. It probably would’ve made sense if I had read the directions. But then you don’t get paper directions anymore. It’s all on a website. And usually when I go to look something up I get distracted by other things on the web like the latest news (not really) and reality show blogs and shopping and well, anything shiny. Then I’m tired and need to take a nap. But my bracelet requires me to hit a button to track my sleep so now I don’t know if my nap was good or not. And the bracelet wasn’t as tiny as I thought. I still need to wear a watch for my job and it was just way too much. and just argh!! So the Mawbone was abandoned pretty quickly.

Next up was my beloved Garmin Forerunner 920 XT. Sigh. A lovely training watch. First one that can track all 3 sports without having to time your swim with the skiing activity (like 5 garmin wearers will get that). It also counts steps!! So you can wear it every day, all day! Except it’s GIANT! Not noticeable training or racing, but feels like you’re suddenly wearing a house arrest bracelet in daily life. It’s ok though 920XT, you still my boo.

And then I found the Garmin Vivoactive. I heart this watch. Cause it’s like a watch! but it also tracks activities! I can wear it biking, running and even swimming. I can get notifications. It also tracks my steps! Truthfully I just use it to track my steps and to you know, see what time it is. I’ve got Garmin Connect on my phone. I paid way too much money for the Garmin scale. I’ve got Connect synced with the scale and the Vivoactive and My Fitness Pal (food diet). I look at my Connect stats every night and analyze. Still have no idea what a SWOLF is. I keep meaning to look that up online. oops.  I’ve had it for almost 2 months and it’s helped me a lot with a little streak I have going.

Every year (ok, almost every year. Well, some years. Ok fine, like a couple years here and there) I start an exercise streak on Jan 1. How original! I’ve lasted only into March. once. That streak ended when I fell down the stairs. True story. Doing laundry is super dangerous. What qualifies as exercise to make it part of THE STREAK? It’s whatever you decide as your minimum. So for me, it’s 5,000 steps on office days plus CORE exercise. And 10,000 steps on work days plus CORE. I’m not talking like 1 billion sit ups or planking for 3 hours. I mean the minimum I let myself get away with is 25 sit ups. Sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? It is. Mostly. I’ve been dealing with a shoulder injury (100% healed now!) and some hip and lower back pain (75% healed!) so I’ve been limited on what I can do for Tri training. Plus I got a serious case of the whinys (85% healed!) where I just have been depressed about not being able to train so that when it comes to a workout I can power through, I don’t wanna! (insert foot stamp. but not too hard). I’ve just been pissy and poopy and a bit of a something else starting with a p and ending with y (meow). February 1 (as seems to be the trend) has seen me have a 180 in my attitude and I can’t wait to workout now! Well, not now. I’m watching The Challenge on Mtv (may they never drug test). But in general, I’m ready to get back at it full speed(ish. we know I’m not fast). And the stupid little STREAK has saved me from losing a ton of fitness. When I was unable to swim/bike/run, I was still obsessed with THE STREAK. But I’m also super forgetful. I had more than one evening when I was in bed and then “crap. I forgot about THE STREAK”.  And then I’d hop out of bed and bust out the sit ups. For reals. And the step counting. So obsessed. To a bit of an alarming degree. Even if I took the Vivoactive off to swim or bike (I only wear it for running), I still need the damn steps!!! I do get irritated when I’ve bike 20 miles and had a strength training session and then the damn thing buzzes at me to “Move!”. F U Vivo. YOU move.  But I’ll still get those steps. In fact, I’ve got 20 mins to run around my apartment. 900 steps short! See ya!