The (Thin) Red Line

The (Thin) Red Line
February 2015

You know you’ve seen them.  They are called Fit Bits or Jawbones or, in my case, the Garmin Vivo.  They are those plastic-banded, cheap watch-like looking gadgets worn on the wrist that keep track of your activity levels.  They cost about $100.  They track your mileage and steps.  They can even track your heart rate and monitor your sleep.

Or they can nag you to get off the couch and do something (other than grab a snack).  Now that I have strapped one on my wrist, at least part of my exercise consists of turning my head and glancing at the thing to make sure I don’t fall into the dreaded “red zone.”  Let me explain.

These gadgets not only track what you do (and you wear them all of the time), but if you don’t do ANYTHING, they like to give you a nudge.  Some do it by vibrating.  In my case, that would scare me to death.  If I’m watching a movie, I don’t want what feels like an electrical charge interrupting the plot line.  Luckily, the Garmin just displays a solid red line halfway across the screen with no good vibrations.  But if you don’t get up and walk around for at least a few minutes, the red line creeps across the entire screen with a series of red dashes, kind of like your mother yelling at you once, twice, three times to put away your shoes and, when you don’t, coming after you with a wooden spoon.  OK, that might be an exaggeration.  But that red line reminds you to do something.  For someone with inbred Jewish guilt, this device is the ideal way to be nagged – I mean encouraged – to be more active.

Recently I took a trip to Penn State to watch my beloved Rutgers Women’s Basketball team play.  It’s a 4-hour drive, and while riding on the fan club bus, I noticed the red line creeping across, taunting me.  I immediately got up and walked back and forth from the front to the back of the bus to make it disappear.  That exercise was witnessed by the other fans on the bus, most of whom rolled their eyes and silently wished I had traveled by car.  When we arrived at the arena, I took advantage of pre-game time to run up the many steps and do laps around the concourse to keep the red line at bay.  I knew I wouldn’t be active during the game or on the long ride home, so I made sure I got my exercise done as best I could.  When I traveled to Maryland for a recent road game, I noticed the specter of the red line around halftime, so up the long steps I ran, and down, and over, and through seats, and around the Comcast Center concourse until I had done enough to keep the red line from distracting me from the game.  I can only imagine the mileage the players must record while racing up and down the court.  Of course, most of them are charter members of what I like to refer to as "the No Bodyfat Club," with their young and athletic physiques.  I somehow missed that stage of life, but I am trying to make up for that now.

The device keeps track of the date and time, your miles, your steps, the calories you have burned (I think it is way too generous in that department), and how far you have to go to reach the goal it sets for you (based on the information you have entered on your age, weight, etc.) and by how many steps you have exceeded the goal for the day, assuming you did.  I think that is more likely to happen in the summer, when I can get out and walk more.  You even enter in a period of sleep, which I optimistically defined as 11:30 PM to 7:30 AM, an amount of sleep I can only dream about.  Since it kind of sleeps when I do, I’m not sure it tracks the steps I take on any of my trips to the bathroom, and even I haven’t checked it during the night, obsessive as I may be.  You can synch it on-line with your computer or phone and keep track of your activity level over a period of time.  I’m just taking it one day at a time and not creating a diary of every time I get up and move.

One of the benefits of using this device is that it will keep track of all activity – even in the pool.  Three times a week, I go to an aqua aerobics class, followed by an exhilarating hour of water volleyball, where I keep moving the entire time, even when I am not jumping up to hit the ball or slogging through water to retrieve an errant shot.  But my friend Angela and I have noticed that about 45 minutes into our volleyball game, the red line sometimes starts creeping across.  Are you kidding me?  This is non-stop action (except when you rotate to the left back position, which seems to be forgotten).  We both cry out, “No red line, no red line,” and begin to move furiously, coaxing the line to retract.  Instead, the dash shows up, heading to the side of complete inactivity, which confounds and aggravates us to no end.  Finally, by the time we are done playing and taking down the net, the line is solid.  So that’s when we do laps around the pool.  And by that I mean AROUND the pool.  Since we have no confidence that the line will go away IN the pool, we WALK AROUND the pool until it disappears.  It takes about two laps to make it go away.  Sure, we could try SWIMMING laps to see if that helps, but then I’d have to get my hair wet and that would never do.

So here’s the conundrum:  How can this thing say we need to move more when it actually records steps we take in the pool?  I mean, either we aren’t moving and no steps should be recorded, or we are moving, with steps increasing and red lines nowhere to be found.

One more thing:  This device is something that is intended to be worn continuously.  Since it has a watch and a date built in, that’s not a problem. I wear it in the shower, in the pool, on dry land – wherever I go.  The challenge for me will be to take it off.  Seriously, I can’t budge the thing.  I may have to have it surgically removed.  In the summer I’ll have a thick white line where the device will block the sun from hitting my left wrist.  Angela wisely found bracelets we can order on line to disguise the band if we are getting dressed up, and I can see why that would be a good thing to have.  I only hope if I get a bracelet, I can get THAT off, or I won’t know if I have the thin red line.