Early this year (2023), My family and I were facing an interesting issue. We were expecting an addition to our family with the arrival of our son in April/May and our house (our first) was reaching the maximum capacity that it could handle. Don’t get me wrong, we are very grateful for what we have worked to build and we have more than enough. We love the area we live in, our neighbors and our community.What do we love? Data!
Especially when the data is fun to aggregate and process. Finally some code!
I’ve been using a free Strava account for years now. It tracks my workouts and gives me some high-level information to share with friends and followers.
Desk Treadmill data For each workout that I have been recording with the hardware from the previous post, I’ve specifically been naming them “Desk Treadmill” such that I could easily aggregate them in the future.I will always admit that I love everything that is working for a fully remote company. I’ve battle tested the 2+ hr commute daily for longer than I cared to admit, and that time feels like a huge part of my life has been wasted. Working remotely has offered me time to focus on the things that matter, when they matter.
Focusing on work and the tasks at hand - with zero interruption - while also being able to inject random bouts of family time throughout the day that I would have otherwise not had the ability to do.Knowing that I wanted to have data about my use of the treadmill to backup my claims about how I perceived using it day-to-day was one of my goals. Another being, that as a cyclist and general Strava user, I knew that I already had the platform available for storing my data as well as had seen API access available (but had never used it before).
Now it was a matter of piecing the pipeline together.In the previous installment of the ongoing desk treadmill experiment (linked below), I mentioned that the circumstances of the treadmill I use today was probably not what the sane person would have done.
Rather I honestly had no intention of starting this experiment this year. Instead this experiment was a result of being in the right place at the right time and keeping the spirit of tinkering alive.
Right Place With my “Always Tinkering” mindset, I was browsing the marketplace one weekend and decided to browse the offerings for treadmills.