Nokia challenge update …

Nokia’s Sports Tracker service won the 2009 Best Something Award for IT Genius. So my feelings of frustration have mutated into a deep sense of shame and stupidity. If millions of other people around the world can co-ordinate their phone, get the HR monitor to work and upload their training diaries, why can’t I?

But I genuinely have just spent the past two hours, biting my nails and trying to get my phone to talk to my computer, with little success. The only consistent thing in this relationship between my new Nokia and me, is the pulsing light which really could work as a guiding beacon for anything from pigeons to aeroplanes.

To be fair, I did manage to get the phone to work for a Sunday mountain bike jaunt in Groenkloof, Pretoria, and it did a marvellous job. Tucked away in my Camelbak it pulsed quietly, recording my every heartbeat, including a triumphant climb up Onion Hill. The Polar belt didn’t slip an inch, a comfortable reminder that every moment I tried to cheat and slow, was being recorded with technological precision.

While still pulsing, my Nokia recorded fascinating information in a series of lists and spiky graphs showing my speed, power, altitude and effort. It kindly told me that I’d worked solidly at 100%, the GPS plotted my areas of intense activity and those moments when I’d stopped to admire the view. The graphs analysed my speed vs time, and then my distance and altitude — information that’s far too mathematical for me to understand, but made me feel very Lance Armstrong.

But this feeling of invincibility has steadily slipped away as I now sit at my desk, trying to upload this marvellous information to my online Sportstracker profile. And after two hours I’m back to feeling frustrated and stupid. Photos that we took en-route aren’t saved. My computer keeps looking for software to download. And the record of my valiant climb and series of falls remains locked into the software on my phone.

Grrrr

https://sportracker.nokia.com — Nokia Challenge SA