Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

How does a teenager rebel in a sun-worshiping and ultra-athletic family? By refusing to exercise. I love Ms. Jen’s recollections of her family and how she recoiled from exercise in her teen years:

• My Day with Nokia’s Sports Tracker – Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen

Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad – my mom’s second husband. My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at every darned opportunity.

Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!

By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.

When she was asked to review Nokia’s Sport Tracker with her shiny Nokia N82, she resisted, but eventually took it with her on errands… errands that she ran in her car:

I dropped off the dogs at my brother’s house, turned the GPS on, started the Sports Tracker app, took a photo and off I went. As I took the photos, I sent them up to my Flickr photostream via ShoZu, so that each of the photos sent to Flickr would be mapped automatically. When I finished the whole errand lap, I turned off the Sports Tracker and asked it to send the collected data to its mothership.

Amusingly, Sports Tracker wanted to know what type of exercise I was doing – Other, as it does not list car travel in LA as a form of exertion (ha!). The other amusing parts that ShoZu or Lifeblog could not perform for me was to inform me that I had traveled a total of 110 km in 3 hours 19 minutes and 34 seconds. My top speed was 130 km/h (hee hee hee) and my top altitude was 41 meters (Orange), the low was near the beach in Sunset / HB.

I was more interested how Sports Tracker performed in walking conditions because it’s harder for GPS data to track a slow moving object. Additionally, it would be nice to know how it handled “urban canyons,” which are areas of the city that are surrounded by huge buildings, so it is more difficult to get a signal.

Even more interesting is Ms. Jen’s ability to continue rebelling against her family right down to the point of reviewing the Sports Tracker with her car instead of her feet. It makes me wonder about myself. What part of my own personality is just rebelling against my family? Has bingeing turned into just another way for me to rebel against my grandmother? I need to think about this for a bit…