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Training myself to run farther with Strava's API and an IoT dog feeder of M&Ms
- focusedone 2y agoThat's awesome! Do their recent API changes impact things like this?
- guzik 2y agoIt only affects 3rd party analytics, so it should not.
- vunderba 2y agoGood job hijacking your own pavlovian responses to run more. Personally, the low-tech solution of a plunger stuck to my forehead with a klondike bar dangling from the end has always worked for me. Related but if you're wanting to get into running (and have the environment for it) - I HIGHLY recommend favoring trail running over running streets/sidewalks. It's far better for your joints, it'll make you work harder since it'll absorb some of your energy, and it'll improve your proprioception.
- danielwmayer 2y agoThanks for the tips! I live in the middle of the concrete jungle that is LA so I instead have the kushiest moon-shoes I could find. As for the klondike bar I’ll have to train up my neck :)
- JAlexoid 2y ago> Personally, the low-tech solution of a plunger stuck to my forehead with a klondike bar dangling from the end has always worked for me. Or you could borrow someone's labrador retriever and have the dog pull you. They like to go real far and real fast... and you get to practice hard turns. > I HIGHLY recommend favoring trail running over running streets/sidewalks As a triathlete - I would add something: for me it's more a case of running on soil, over a hard surface. Trail running may take you to a stony path, which is as bad as pavement/concrete. But in the end it's training your running form to be the best it can be for running, that matters. Running uphill helps to naturally train a good form, even if it's significantly harder.
- vunderba 2y agoI completely agree. I used to live about 10 minutes from the beach, and I would do sprints up and down on the sand. There's not much that's more humbling than getting completely gassed after a whooping 60 seconds of running.
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago> Or you could borrow someone's labrador retriever and have the dog pull you. They like to go real far and real fast... and you get to practice hard turns. You only need to be concerned about hard turns if the dog is untrained, afterwards, they're the best running partners you could ask for. Come visit us at https://www.reddit.com/r/RunningWithDogs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RunningWithDogs/. Lots of suggestions for harnesses for the dog (mandatory, IMO) and waist leashes for the human (highly recommended). If you own the dog, they can be a great source of encouragement, too. They'll bounce with excitement any time there's a possibility of going for a run, and look at you with big, sad eyes when you instead sit on your phone. My old girl and I put in 20+ miles a week, 50 weeks a year, for a little over 8 years, or a little over 8,000 miles. That's a lot of M&Ms!
- imzadi 2y agoA few years ago I did Couch to 5k. I did all my running at a local park with hiking trails. I actually really enjoyed "running" at the park. After I finished the program, I signed up for a 5k that was run on a flat, paved trail. I finished it, but it beat me up so badly that I could barely walk for the next week.
- sandworm101 2y agoRunning in a flat/straight line is an artificial construct. Our bodies evolved for running on rough terrain. A slower trail run will do less injury yet burn more calories than any hard sidewalk.
- browningstreet 2y agoBut what did you do next?
- imzadi 2y agoTore my rotator cuff doing crossfit and had surgery and never really got back into fitness.
- the_sleaze_ 2y agoThis is obviously the real one true definition of "adult"
- com2kid 2y agoIt is also why a lot of people in the fitness industry don't like CrossFit. The rate of injuries is absurdly high. For the longest time (maybe still) CrossFit had very minimal certification requirements for their coaches, so while some coaches had a long history and knew how to train safely, a lot didn't. CrossFit did the community part really well, and then messed up the entire "train safely" part.
- browningstreet 2y ago
- fifilura 2y agoI am the opposite :) I run every day. I prefer long stretches of asphalt without any bends Job. But also, running in forests messes with my pace and focus somehow.
- petee 2y agoGreat idea! I was picturing a device you wear that feeds you as you run :)
- readthenotes1 2y agoSomething like that seems like it would require extensive in-house testing before I actually used it for real.
- bsimpson 2y agoReminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/HWceX64ZC8w?si=a-mm-DP4EKMmGhXy https://youtu.be/HWceX64ZC8w?si=a-mm-DP4EKMmGhXy Similar idea with origami ninja stars.
- Amorymeltzer 2y ago>I knew I had to get a food dispenser that I could control with Python, so I sought out to find the shittiest, most cheaply made looking IOT dog food dispenser on Amazon. My rationale was that it would have the worst security around whatever protocol it used to trigger the feeding, so I could easily capture and replay the feed command. Turns out it was unnecessary but I like the idea of actively looking for the worst of something. Also, having just recently set a repeating reminder to rotate the mattress, yes: >I now know that what being an adult really means is that most of your time is taken up by an ever-growing list of compulsory maintenance tasks that constitute the meager amount of control you exert over your own life.
- julianeon 2y agoThis is the kind of content I love. It does make me think: what else can you use Tuya devices & Python libraries to do? I've got exercise and food portions under control, but I'm interested in other applications.
- jeff_vader 2y agoI've done something similar but it was only a 7 segment display showing how much I ran. It sat on a shelf and it was pretty fun to watch number go up every time I came back to my apartment after a run. To make everything really simple I scraped my public profile directly from esp8266 controller (so there's no need for extra steps of setting up Strava app to gain access to the API). Worked relatively well.
- inanutshellus 2y ago> My adulthood litmus test has always been the following: > > If you know what date it is every day, you are an adult. Tangent - My definition of "adult" that I came up with as an early teen: "When I realize I'm looking in the _driver's seat_ of passing cars hoping to see pretty girls, that will mean I'm `an adult`.". Years later I had a palpable shock moment in which I glanced in a car and remembered coming up with the definition. "OH CRAP I'm an adult!" Felt like a "hoist by my own petard" moment.
- xandrius 2y agoI generally unbundle age and adulthood. For me the definition has always been "an adult owns up to their own mistakes". Which is the shorter version of "A child doesn't care about their mistakes, a teenager expects others to fix them and an adults own up to them". This allows me to categorise older people who I feel like don't act like adults.
- aradox66 2y agoThis is an adult's definition of an adult
- itishappy 2y agoMaybe defining "adult" is the definition for adult?
- aradox66 2y agoNah no way, as some of the above definitions show, children - or at least teenagers/"young adults" -clearly conjure definitions of the adult. There is definitely a difference though between defining an adult from the inside vs outside
- firecraker 2y agoOnly when trying to assert that you are not one
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- guyzero 2y agoA much improved successor to Tomatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJaDDO38kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJaDDO38kk
- NBJack 2y agoThis article is a work of art. Thank you for writing and sharing it. I too have struggled to find something that worked for me for consistent exercise (surprisingly, prepaying for training helped more than I expected), and now I don't want to lose momentum. Make no mistake though; I had a LOT of help from friends and family as well. Bonus points for Mord Fustang.
- larsrc 2y agoI recently found that store-brand peanut M&M's (my favourite) were just as good, half the price, and fair-trade! Win-win! When I joined my current job, I used M&M's as reward when learning the names and faces of the people there using memory cards. Also worked! Fortunately I've found that Belegarth fighting is so much fun that I need no extra carrot.
- pglevy 2y agoI go to the gym regularly but I probably should put something like this contraption between me and my family size bag of peanut M&Ms.
- johnfn 2y agoJust got back from a run! By far the most effective thing to motivate me to exercise, and run in particular, is the "VO2 Max" section of the Apple health app. It's a rough indication of your cardiovascular endurance, and the higher, the better. The real key is that, though, is that it basically works like an XP bar in a game: if you "grind" running, it goes up. If you don't, it doesn't. It's incredibly addicting to check the number every time you finish a run and see if it's ticked up slightly. It's also great because in some sense it is "real". If it goes up, I have an easier time on hikes, runs (obviously), playing sports, etc. The second thing that really got me into running is that I found that the most effective way to get VO2 Max to go up is to run in heart rate zone 4, also tracked on the Apple watch. Zone 4 is 80 - 90% of your maximum heart rate. It's not an all out sprint, but you'll be moving pretty fast. The reason it's so effective is best illustrated by contrast. In the past, I've tried tracking a number of metrics on my run: total miles, average speed, calories burned, whatever. But I found it psychologically draining to continuously try to top my fastest speed, and I inevitably had off days (or weeks or months) when the score I was measuring wouldn't go up. Obviously as you get faster, this happens more and more, and it gets easy to start wondering if you're even progressing. Heart rate is a much better measure, because in some sense this is compensated for. You don't have to continue to beat yourself every day (or fret that you're not) to get to 80% of your max heart rate, and on days when you're more exhausted, you'll hit a higher heart rate faster, so the effort is roughly the same. Also, Zone 4 is a great place to be. You're pushing yourself, but it's a sustainable sort of push. I often found that when I ran sprints I wanted to die. They were so psychologically demotivating that I would do anything to avoid them. Zone 4 is not like this. It's very manageable, and I wake up excited to do it! At this point, I want to run every day - I'm at the point where I have to force myself to stop sometimes because it's healthy to take rest days! Usual disclaimers apply, BTW. Don't do all your running in Zone 4, don't immediately go from no running to an hour of zone 4 every day, do a reasonable ramp up over a long period of time, etc etc.
- bagels 2y agoWhat is it measuring? VO2 max is usually measured with a mask that can measure the flow of gasses while running on a treadmil/stationary bike.
- iandanforth 2y agoIf you go this route consider this extra hack. Caffeine acts as a direct reinforcer. You can buy caffeinated chocolates and dispense those. This will augment the power of the treat.
- triceratops 2y ago> what being an adult really means is that most of your time is taken up by an ever-growing list of compulsory maintenance tasks that constitute the meager amount of contol you exert over your own life Truer words have never been said. It's absurd how much bureaucracy adults have to engage with just to exist.
- seizethecheese 2y agoThis is pretty cynical. It might ring true, but I don’t think truer words have never been spoken.
- srveale 2y agoWhat do you think are the truest words ever spoken? Maybe just something out of the top ten.
- triceratops 2y agoYou understand hyperbole, yes? It's a throwaway comment on a silly article about Pavlovian self-conditioning using an Internet-connected dog feeder.
- elliottkember 2y agoI recently saw a tweet about someone who put on a nicotine patch every time he went running and tricked himself into thinking he loved it. He was on his third marathon! https://x.com/WillManidis/status/1728860291457524073 https://x.com/WillManidis/status/1728860291457524073
- pinkmuffinere 2y agoWow this is fascinating! I wonder whether the net health impact is positive or negative, I’m tempted to do this myself
- pinkmuffinere 2y agoIt didn’t take long to think of some healthier options, which I’ll share here in case others think the same: - copy the m&m design (though I don’t like m&m’s) - do the same thing with beef jerky/trail mix/hummus/steak/treats like that - do the same thing, but use a good restaurant/coffee shop/board game/friend/TV show/hot tub/other experience
- vhcr 2y agoNicotine is probably healthier than beef jerky or steak.
- pinkmuffinere 2y agoThat seems to me like a remarkable claim — can you share a link that discusses this more?
- eadmund 2y agoNicotine’s fine. The issue with smoking and chewing tobacco is the delivery system, particularly smoking. It’s a shame, because pipe tobacco tastes and smells absolutely divine. I think it’s still worth it, but understand how others disagree.
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- nextworddev 2y agoTechies will do everything to get better at running, except putting in the miles
- eadmund 2y agoDoes anyone here have decent suggestions for a local-only IoT dog feeder? No server, no Internet access at all, just LAN.
- wolfgang42 2y agoFrom the fine article itself: > If you wanted to have this thing completely isolated though, you could have a no-outbound-internet subnet with this device on it so long as the device you are going to run the script on has line-of-sight. > You can do this because Tuya devices have a local-only protocol that tinytuya supports, so you can send commands just within your LAN.
- eadmund 2y agoI read the article. The bit you quote talks about putting the device in a firewalled subnet, because it is not a local-only device: it will try to dial out to a third party server, so it must be placed in a subnet which will block those attempts. I want a device which I can put on my network and which will not try to dial out to the world. This device is not that.
- nightowl_games 2y agoI started intermittent fasting where I would only eat breakfast after running on an elliptical for an hour. I got my butt to the gym pretty quick in the day because I was hungry