Letter to my virtual running coach
Dear Runkeeper,
Yes, I am feeling tired or down. And no, I won’t run this weekend. Instead I’ll be spread on my sofa, eating bacon and eggs, drinking a beer or five, watching Youtubes like “Best Slam Dunks of All Times” and contemplating the futility of human existence. I might even get bedsores and, honestly, be ok with it.
Oh, please, spare me the whole “I’m disappointed”, “I thought we had a deal” act.
After all, you know exactly how much distance I covered in the past three months: 23 miles, 7.3 periodical per month, divided per 5 runs in total (thanks a lot for sharing the record with all my Facebook friends, btw). Average speed: 6 minutes and 43 seconds per kilometer. Not exactly the kind of performance that you kept pushing for with your notifications.
“Look at you, setting goals. Nice work!” you wrote to me when I first downloaded the app. Seriously? When you recorded my despicable weight at my venerable age, you surely knew my chance of making it was the same of Donald Trump learning the Chopin nocturnes by memory.
“We’re in this together, Cosimo!” you kept saying. Were we? I was the one who had to get out of the house at 7pm to run in the smog, cars accelerating to knock me over at crossroads, weirdoes screaming “Faggot!” at me just because I wore long socks and my dad’s college tracksuit. I was the one whose kidney failed midway through the run and had to march the rest of the path as a bayonetted soldier. And, sorry, where were you when the house keys that I had cleverly slipped in my socks began to cut through the flesh, leaving horrifying scratches on my right ankle?
It’s still kind of nice that you treated me like a dumb three-years old boy, thinking that a pop-up message on my phone reading: “See… You got out there and did it!” would be enough to motivate me to do it again. The hard truth is that after that run, while lying torpid under the shower, I was making a mental calendar of the days in which I would have been justified not to get out there again.
Actually, I want to thank you. For a moment I thought I was going to make it. I thought I was going to find the self-discipline to run all the way to my other self, one that while peeing can look down and see the tip of his penis instead of an inflated skin balloon.
It was indeed a moment though. Nice but fleeting. So, dear Runkeeper virtual coach, this time I have to openly disagree with you: it is definitely too late to “get back on track”. In fact, it is just the right time to say goodbye forever to your annoying presence.
No hard feelings,
Cosimo
P.S. Stop sending the 25% discount coupon on the running hat.