I’ve been able to sleep in for months and months since Christmas Eve eve, but this morning it was back to reality. Mom woke me up at 4, and I went and hid in a pile of blankets in a dark corner of the living room and hoped she would forget about me when she left for her run. It was cold and dark out there… and it was RAINING. The plan was going well, and I think that Mom was starting to forget about me when she tricked me! She put food in my bowl, and held out the spoon for me to lick clean. Without thinking I came out of my hiding nest and licked the spoon, and had my face buried in my bowl before I realized my blunder. Dag-nabbit! Busted! Now I had to run.
Mom has a treadmill in the garage, but the treadmill scares the pants off me. Usually when it rains she’ll run on the treadmill and all I have to do is walk in and out of the garage to check on her every 10 seconds, and bark a warning that treadmills are dangerous. But this year, since I have 2000 miles to run, Mom insisted that we both run outside in the cold and the wet.
I have a system that automatically tracks my miles. It’s called “Mom,” and once every week or two it automatically goes through all of my data (Garmin for runs, screen shots from Charity Miles for walks and if I were ever to run on the treadmill, photos of the treadmill console at the end of my run). Then my Mom automatically does a bulk upload of all that data into a spreadsheet that tallies my miles, tells me how many miles I have to go to reach my goal, and pays $1/mile to my service person for every mile I run. It’s expensive, but it’s a pretty great system. I used to have trouble with electronics because I don’t have pockets and my wrists are too small. But ever since I started using Mom, my user experience has been great. And she automatically uploads all my data into the different challenge trackers that I’m a part of. I highly recommend you use an automated system like Mom.
I don’t know what dogs used to do before Moms were invented. Dogs can’t drive routes to measure the mileage like in the olden days. Not even humans track miles like that anymore anyway because they have phones and wearables that do the measuring and data dumping for them. Maybe someday the Mom technology will be as good as those human whiz-bang electronics and you won’t have to drag it on a rope behind you like a millstone. Whether you use a Mom, or a fit bit, or a Garmin, or pencil and paper to measure your miles, let’s let the devices do their job, and we runners can just enjoy the run.
-Oscar the Data Hound
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