Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Power Of The Street Team

Today I dropped my 35th pound - thanks to LoseIt, RunKeeper, and a great set of friends. Tools are good, data might be even better, but having a set of people that get you out of bed and onto the road, as commerical says, is priceless.

Using RunKeeper’s Street Team, you can set up challenges, like number of miles or calories. Our team has mix of swimmers, runners, walkers, and bicyclists, so we agreed on Events; whoever has the most events in a month wins. If you don’t think that everyone of us looks at the RunKeeper stats every morning to see what the totals are, you’re crazy.

So, instead of getting a celebratory pizza for losing the 35 pounds, I grabbed my running shoes and hit the pavement for my second event of the day as a big ‘thank you’ to my teammates. Because after they’re done cursing me, they’ll hit the pavement or hop on a bike and thank me right back…..

Friday, September 16, 2011

Withings

Reed said today "I think I need a Withings scale".

A Withings scale can post your weight and body fat to RunKeeper.  That's important.  It's not an Activity, but it's still important.

Also, it's data.  And data is good for one thing: obsessing over.

I asked Reed why he wanted a Withings scale.  To become a slave to one more bit of data.

We crave our data overlords.  We must submit to it all.

And the Activities.  Oh, the Activities.

Welcome

There is nothing cooler than Three Wolves (1,600+ 5-star Amazon ratings cannot be wrong).  Enough said.

Reed said we should have a blog about our disease, and we should call it "Three Wolves".  In checking for the availability of the name, I accidentally made it.  So now we have it.

What's that?  You're concerned about our disease?  Gee, thanks.  Yes, we have a disease.  It's terrible.  It results in dangerous and unhealthy competition, risky behavior, and generally Bad Stuff.  It's even gang related.  We are a gang.  A "street team", if you will.

We are four people (Andy, Reed, Matt, and Kelley) addicted to RunKeeper.  We must have the Activities.  At all costs.  And we must obsess over times and routes and weight and calories and heart rates.  And the Activities, oh, the Activities.  Sure, we've all done two-a-days (well, some of us), but what about the three-a-days - when will we do that?   Four-a-days?  One giant, continuous, orgasmic activity?  How does RunKeeper count that?  It can't be as one.  That will never do.

How ill can one become? Follow this blog and you'll see.