As I was doing a tempo run, my Blackberry was still in my hand, beeping and vibrating incessantly. Then I just realized, gosh I am nailed to this thing practically all day, even while doing a tempo run at 5:00/km. It somehow inspired me to do a complete rundown of allthe wonderful things I do with this fun device within the bounds of my athletic lifestyle.
Bold.
4:30 am : There is nothing remotely fun or enjoyable about waking up at 4:30 am in the morning. The people who hang at Fiamma are still dancing the night, or rather morning, away. But the alarm on my Blackberry Bold 9700 is loud and clear. Its funky media player gets to play my long-standing alarm song, a haunting track entitled "Missing You" by a Korean boy duo called Fly To The Sky. Shame. I am awake now.
For real. 4:45 am: After a quick shower, I send a quick good morning message over Blackberry Messenger or BBM to Ultramarathoner Abby. Since we're both on BBM, we're saving a ton on SMS costs. No need to drop 80 bucks for 5 days of free texting. This is real-time, one-to-sawa chat till you drop mania.
4:50 am : Before I leave for the house, I send out a quick blast with the Twitter app on my BB : "Leaving for a long ride with the team at Bugarin, on the way to Shell Marcos Highway. Sleepy as heck."
5:10 am I arrive early and no one is really there yet. Worried that we may end up starting way late (possibly because everyone was still asleep. Great) I proceed to check on the team via our Blackberry group in BBM. Everyone is wired in, all the time. They can't say " I didn't get your text, sorry". Think Takbo.ph Shoutbox during its 2008-2009 heyday. One blast and everyone gets the message. Curious mystery of the universe - everyone seems to be 5 minutes away. Coincidence?
7:13 am : As we traverse the picturesque route along the provincial capitol of Rizal, I feel like I'm freeze-framed in one of those pricey Paete master paintings. The place is beautiful, reminds me why I even bother waking up at 4:30 am in the first place. Suddenly, my moment of Zen is interrupted when I hear a loud explosion. Thankfully, it's not of the artillery kind. More like the sound of a tire's interior surrendering to the treacherous terrain. Wilnar cops a flat, and we all huddle over. While we're working on it, I decide to encapsulate this curious moment in time by snapping a quick photo, and in one click it's instantly shared to my 2,108 "friends" on Facebook even if we're in the middle of nowhere. Ahhh, the wonders of modern techology.
Fun flat times.
10:30 am : Strong ride so far. We were able to tag along with some manong cyclists, and the ensuing frenetic pace results in an early lunch for us at the famous cyclists' pansitan in Laguna. In the spirit of showcasing the grub our hungry group would be inhaling in a bit, I take more photos and in an instant the rest of our inggit team back home receives it on our BB group. Yum.
12:00 noon : After a lung-busting ride back home (our lomi-loaded tummies didn't exactly help traversing those steep inclines) I remove my BB from it's ziplocked home in my back pocket ( yes, the 9700 is small enough to fit there without being too cumbersome) and my TPB buds tell me on our BBM group that they just arrived in Bataan for the latest BDM test run. They take photos at the "sacred KM 0 monument", instantly invoking all those fun, painful memories from last year. My turn to be inggit.
Inggit in real time. 2:00 pm : I'm off to swim in a bit but decided to drop by the mall to look for goggles. I am not particularly crazy about the Aquasphere XP Seal goggles I'm currently using. They leak a lot, and the only way not to have a leak is to seal it real tight. Only problem with this is that once you take them off, your face looks like you just got into a fight with Pacquiao over some hottie at Republiq. My teammate had reco'd some fancy ones but the name evades me.I recall discussing it over a text discussion but how will I navigate through that muck, sort of in a rush already. Madami daming text yun. Good thing I have Blackberry's latest software, dubbed OS6, installed on my smartphone. It has this really cool yet powerful feature called Universal Search that has a lot of practical benefits. So going back, I had already forgotten the brand but I do remember that we had engaged in a conversation about those goggles. I type "goggles" into the universal search box located on the main screen and voila, every single text, bbm, email, video, music file with something even remotely close to sounding like "goggles" props up. By putting forth very specific search parameters, I was able to find the exact conversation where we had talked about it. The brand turned out to be a Zoggs Flex Predator, and that little tool saved me the hassle of a phone call. Nice.
2:30 pm : I'm at the mall but I have no idea where I'm going to buy a pair. I do know that Chris Sports (yes, the same people behind Epic Relay) had a branch here, but apparently they transferred and even the guards don't know where it is (sheesh). Good thing I'm always connected with my BB, and I was able to successfully google the fact that the branch had transferred to Building B. No wonder the Building A guards had no idea. (x_x)
2:33 pm : In related news, my phone is vibrating every 10 seconds while the Endure Multisport peeps are sharing merienda pics and buzzing about Noelle's latest skirmish with the 6 week marathon man/pro perv dude on her fan page. Juicy.
3:00 pm : At the pool finally. However, my boss texts me to check my email, very urgent. I'm instantly jarred by her terse tone. Hala, what could it be? Am i going to get fired? Roasted? Best part about my Bold 9700 is that it supports push email, which means I get my email in real-time. So instead of having to suffer through the ignominy of a restless swim, I have instant access to that scary, urgent email that says... .. I just got a raise. Yahoooo.
4:00 pm : More or less finished an easy 1k in an hour. Still slow. I'm going to meet a friend in a bit, planning to buy his old wheelset. Burn. Anyway I'm on the way to Makati but I run out of load. Damn Globe. I don't want to go through the hassle of loading, I'm late already. What am I going to do? Thank goodness the guy is on BBM pala I nearly forgot.I don't need no load, what a lucky break.
4:30 pm : I snap the wheels on my bike to try it out, butI don't want to make a rash decision. I snap a photo and send it to my teammates. Good buy? Upgradeitis mania? The chorus from the gallery, predictably, says BUY. Thanks guys. Lol.
It's a go!
5:00 pm : An alarm goes off on my home screen. Good thing Blackberry's OS6 has this thing where it links with your Facebook Calendar app, and I see all the relevant birthdays right on my homescreen, even linking their Facebook pictures to my phone contact list. Awesome, it's Rico V's bday. I wonder where he will feed me. Liempo? Hmmm.
6:00 pm : I'm back at home for a run. And this where the whole epiphany begins. I realize that I'm so hooked on this thing that I'm running while I'm doing my tempo run, I still have my BB in hand. Why? Beats me. Maybe I just couldn't let go of my connectivity to the world. Or my proclivity to constantly share the otherwise mundane details of my life, and have people actually care about it, is too juicy to resist. Think of it as a real-time diary. Maybe one day I can look back and see precisely how my life unraveled one day at a time, all through the eyes of my BB. Having a good wind behind me, I nail my tempo run, perhaps the best I've ran in months. Hmmm. Well, I could tell people about it, but given the form I'm currently at they'd never believe me. Nothing like cold, hard evidence. Splash.
Don't judge me, I trained for 6 weeks to do this.
8:40 pm : Exuberant after a strong workout, I receive a BBM from Ultramarathoner Abby. She wants to catch the LFS at Shang, this Love and other Drugs seems interesting. As we're planning on the fly, I text CTCM for the latest movie sked. Nyak, I have no load. Shoot. I'm already in EDSA. Good thing I downloaded the Flixter app on my phone, I can check for local movie skeds using the Blackberry network. Whew. Where would I be without this thing?
After outlining just how much it helps my life so much easier on a daily basis, hey, you tell me.