I had the great pleasure once again to represent Team Running Free at this year's Sporting Life 10K along side with my avid weekend warrior group of friends. Aside from the Scotiabank Waterfront race in mid-October, this particular race down Yonge Street is my favourite perennial measuring stick of the progress that I have made from a year-to-year basis. I have become increasingly prepared and well equipped for each of these runs as each year passes and these kind of morning rituals are extremely helpful leading up to the even more important races. Case and point: the Barrie Half-Marathon that is coming up in two weeks time.

However, I was not completely prepared. I had finished a late night shift from my casual part-time work the day prior. I also left the house without my almighty important GPS watch in the morning. Systemically, I turn to plan B which is using my iPhone to track the running data for this race.

The first five kilometres was nothing but a straight downhill down on Yonge Street. Without thinking too much, I bolted out of the start line with speed and let the gravity take care of the rest. The flaw is that by manually engaging start on the Strava phone app, I lose concentration and placed my phone into my shorts pocket with the zipper 1/4 zipped up. Bad move. Just briefly after crossing Yonge and Eglinton, my Bluetooth wireless earbuds lose connection and my music was gone. "Oh it's just a bad connection" - so I thought. Kept pushing the power button and volume buttons; no reaction. Thats when unnecessary adrenaline rush kicked in with guilt. "Should I keep going? Or turn back?" That notion of uncertainty essentially carried on throughout the remainder of the race. I went to the conclusion that I may as well run faster to the finish line so that I can find out what to do next when finished. That's when I realized I was at the 7K mark, I think where the second water station is? The speed was constant with not as many obstruction while the elevation is now flat.

And soon enough, I managed to push my way into the finish line - of course not knowing my official race time and not so much of satisfaction had things gone the way they were supposed to be.

The next steps were asking strangers and my buddies with iPhones to borrow their phone and use "Find My Phone" app. At first, my heart sank as the first two locations tracked of my phone was gradually shifted southbound. "Fuck, somebody must've stolen it for sure" - so I thought. That's when I decided to remotely set it into Lost Mode and call my phone soon after to test my luck. To my delight, that person picked up the phone and responded. "We have your phone and meet us down at Princess Gate!" Major sigh of relief but still angsty. Let my main group momentarily to go to the specific area where the person said to meet. Alas, there was the person, a wife and husband with their kids, stroller and all. "My husband tried to get you but you were too fast to catch up!" she exclaimed. I guess that's where I might have gotten too carried away when I was running downhill.

My takeaway: always activate your iCloud / Google account so that you can remotely locate your phone. If you have a valid iCloud account, simply login to "Find my Phone" app whereas for Android users, login your Google credentials to the official "Android Device Manager" app.

After the scary episode, I looked up my results on sportstats.ca and looks like a new PB and slashing 2 minutes from last year. ​

My takeaway: always activate your iCloud / Google account so that you can remotely locate your phone. If you have a valid iCloud account, simply login to "Find my Phone" app whereas for Android users, login your Google credentials to the official "Android Device Manager" app.

After the scary episode, I looked up my results on sportstats.ca and looks like a new PB and slashing 2 minutes from last year. ​