A lot of what I consider my daily life is only possible thanks to particular pieces of technology. Therefore my reliance on these gadgets is incredibly high so when one fails or in this case failure after failure I get incredibly frustrated.

I decided to go and run a steady 15 miles this morning, so packed my plastic drop bag with the essentials; water and some Twix’s. It was already feeling like it would rain heavy so I warned my wife I might come back early as I didn’t want to run in the rain today.

I dropped my bag near my usual lamppost and opened up RunKeeper. “start activity” I placed it in my pocket “activity stopped” dammit. So I pulled it out and did it again, put it in my pocket and accidentally pressed the button for a distance update. “3.95 miles” well considering I had taken 2 steps that may be a little off. So after trying nearly 8 times and just not getting RunKeeper working through a combination of user input error and poor GPS signal I thought I might just run at home. So my wife circled back and picked me up (at least the iPhone worked to make a call!).

Arriving home I thought I would jump straight on the treadmill. My wife then brought the AppleTV in from the other room and plugged it in. At least I could listen to some movies while I ran, something to pass the time. However Plex decided to be a total pain in the ass and not work, frustrated I decided to turn to the radio.

Listening to the radio poses one problem though I am reliant on the presenter given time updates so I can figure out how far I have ran. Thanks to the new BBCR1 morning presenter these time updates never happened.

So frustrated that RunKeeper had failed, then Plex, then the radio had failed me I was getting frustrated. I had no idea how long I had been running or how far I had ran. I am used to receiving feedback through audio so when I lose that I lose motivation.

So unmotivated and frustrated I just decided to call it a day. So I sat on the treadmill and ate a snack size Twix and Grayson stole a packet of Maltesers and we cheered ourselves up through chocolate.

Now there are solutions to all these problems but when you are already annoyed you don’t think clearly. So next time I will just try and be more prepared.