For the month of November, we’re featuring stories from BAMRs who share what they are (mostly) grateful for. Gratitude doesn’t have to come in a beautifully wrapped gift box once everything in your life is perfect; you can find gratitude in the imperfect, too. Today we hear from Jacki Correll and her love/sometimes hate relationship with technology.
Most of the time I’m incredibly grateful for all of the smart technology that surrounds me. With my smartphone, smartwatch, and smart house, I feel efficient, connected, and powerful. There’s really nothing like sitting in a pub in London when your smarthouse alerts your smartwatch that there’s an intruder at your home 3,716 miles away. Scary? No, because within seconds, you’re able to determine, by using your smartphone to open the security camera app, that the “intruder” is merely one of your teenagers who has decided to play hooky from school in your absence. I didn’t even have to put down my pint to broadcast, “Having a nice day off, are we, Ferris?” through the home intercom system.
Thanks, technology, for allowing us to take running selfies
On top of helping me to thwart teenage shenanigans, my smartphone also greatly improves my running experience. It allows me to find safe running routes in an unfamiliar town, order a new pair of shoes for next day delivery, play any song or podcast I could want, and even locate my oft misplaced earbuds with just a few taps.
Better yet, instead of worrying about losing my car key out on the trail, I now have the ability to run keyless because I can use my smartphone to unlock my car doors, a feature that works great…at least until, unbeknownst to me, my sweaty butt types in an incorrect passcode too many times over the course of 10 miles and locks me out of my phone altogether. I can use my phone to control my smart house, too, although who is controlling whom is up for debate.
I’m not ashamed to say that my smart house often outsmarts me and usually at the most inopportune times. When the smoke detector batteries were running low, the smart house helpfully alerted me (at 4 a.m.) of the need to replace them. When I removed the detector to make the swap with fresh batteries, the smart house called the fire department! There I am, clad in tattered pajamas, perched precariously on a step stool in the foyer, trying to figure out how to cancel the distress call, when my tallest son stumbles out of his room bleary-eyed, and effortlessly reaches up to re-affix the detector to the ceiling, silencing the screeching just as my phone starts to ring. It was the alarm company verifying the need for assistance before the fire trucks were dispatched because the smart house did not detect any smoke.
This liquor cabinet works part time as a bouncer
This is at odds with the way it handles dying batteries in the locks on the liquor cabinet, however. I didn’t discover those needed replacing until I was hosting girls’ night and the smart house acted like a bouncer who’d just been handed fake IDs. I stared dumbly at the cabinet for a minute, willing it to grant us access because c’mon man, we’re legal, and then I remembered the stash of overstocked booze from a holiday party that was still on the floor in the back of my closet. This is probably the only time I’ve outsmarted the smart house. Victory tasted like tequila, limes, and salt.
My smart house also seems a bit judgy about what I watch on television. Despite subscribing to several streaming services, on evenings when I finally have time to watch a show, it only gives me basic channels like PBS—or sometimes no television at all. My family has come upon me more than once, sitting in front of a blank large screen tv, watching Netflix on my phone, and teased “Hey Boomer, need some help?”
Originally, I loved that my smart house could be paired with my smartwatch to lock and unlock the front door, but I’ve been refused entry so many times when there’s a smart house software update needed that I now keep a physical key on my person anytime I go out. If smart technology is the future, why does it make me feel like a latchkey kid from 1985?
A well-timed gift at the beginning of the training cycle for my first ever marathon, my smartwatch is the piece of smart technology that gives me the least amount of trouble. Not only does it allow me to run without my phone and still be able to make an emergency call or play music, it also gives me all of this running data, in real time, right on my wrist. Is my heart rate too high, my cadence too low, or my pacing just right? I know within seconds, making me feel like I have my own personal running coach on every single run. I love being able to comb through the data post run to track my progress and discover where there is room for improvement.
I remember excitedly setting out on my first ever 16-mile training run—just my smartwatch and me—chugging along, almost at mile 13, feeling energized and free…until the watch flashed a quick “low power warning” before it died, leaving me to finish the last grueling 5k with no data and no music. If you run a 16 miler and don’t have data to prove it, did you really run a 16 miler? The answer to that is yes, of course, just without all the educational data.
The same thing happened to me just a few weekends ago at mile 4 of The Amica Newport Half Marathon. Thankfully this time I was with my Best Running Friends (BRFs) who had mileage and pacing stats to share with me, but for the week afterward, when I usually enjoy my watch telling me to relax and recover, it was just constantly reminding me that all my workouts were “lighter than my usual effort” because it didn’t know I had just run a half marathon. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough, and I was tempted during several workouts that week to push harder than I knew I should just to remind that watch who’s the BAMR. Reason and experience prevailed so I recovered smartly, no thanks to my smartwatch.
Enjoying the views instead of staring at a smartwatch
On the upside, my dead smartwatch did force me to concede control of the pace to others on race day, leaving me to just enjoy the scenic 13.1 miles along the rocky Rhode Island coast with my brilliantly hilarious BRFs. We kept each other motivated and in the moment by pointing out gorgeous cliffside mansions, laughing at creative race signs, and singing snippets of random 90s hip hop songs that popped into our heads. For that experience I will always be grateful, but I’ll be honest: I really wish my smartwatch wouldn’t have been so dumb.
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