I bought an IOT dog food dispenser, filled it with M&Ms, and made a script checks the Strava API to see if I ran a sufficient distance. If I did,

Pavlov's Half Marathon: Training Myself to Run More with Classical Conditioning

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2024-12-01 03:30:04

I bought an IOT dog food dispenser, filled it with M&Ms, and made a script checks the Strava API to see if I ran a sufficient distance. If I did, I got a reward like the good boy I was.

This ended up being far and away the most effective running program I have ever implemented for myself. I now run long distances regularly, recently completed a half marathon (13.1 miles), and don't even use the M&M dispenser anymore. Kind of like how your dog still sits even though you don't give him a treat for doing so anymore!

Well, turns out this is wrong. 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 contol you exert over your own life. And I still don't even know what the date is! Turns out that was merely my justification for being a terrible planner and meeting attender - *child at heart*!

Part of understanding that I am now an adult meant readjusting what it means to exercise. I love going to the gym and spending a long time there, but I found myself doing it less and less, mostly because big blocks of time stopped presenting themselves to me. Running is like a goldfish, though. It will grow to the size of its bowl, plus it was always right outside my doorstep. So it was time to become a runner.