It's time triathletes paved the way for another era of wearable innovation.
How Your Sleep Schedule Affects Others
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Forget about measuring sleep quality—how about a wearable that tells triathletes how our 8:00 p.m. bedtime and our 4:30 a.m. wake-up affect the people around us?
Suggested Metric: How annoying is your sleep schedule on a scale of "Your spouse can't start binge watching Game of Thrones past 7:00 p.m. because you'll fall asleep" to "If you flash your headlights through your neighbor's bedroom window at 5:10 a.m. one more time, they'll petition to have you evicted."
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Your Next TriathlonHow Hungry You Are
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Calories burned throughout the day is a useless data point for a triathlete. Just assume it's a lot. Maybe devices should give our family members an indication of how hungry we are instead so they know our mental state.
Suggested Metric: How hungry is mom/dad on a scale of, "Everyone hide until Tri-dad has been home for 30 minutes and has had a chance to empty the fridge" to "Kids, put away any toys that can fit into Tri-dad's mouth if you want to keep them."
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Your Next TriathlonCalories Consumed
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While we're on the subject of eating, I think it's time our wearables started giving us accurate measurements for the amount of calories we eat in a day. We don't need a formula as equally complicated as the Hermetic Code. Give us the honest truth about how much we're ingesting.
Suggested Metric: How much you ate today on a scale of "Sir, that entire pile of canned food was donated to feed the hungry" to "You put an all-you-can-eat buffet out of business."
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Your Next TriathlonDaily Feats
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Steps taken throughout the day is also boring for triathletes because we thrive on much bigger challenges, ones that would make lesser people crumble. Please, tracking devices, measure a real challenge for us.
Suggested Metric: "Today, triathlete, you traveled a distance equivalent to one-seventeenth the length of Marco Polo's journey through Asia and picked up a Strava section from New York to Timbuktu while doing it!"
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Your Next TriathlonWhat Strava Athlete You Are
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Speaking of Strava, similar to how people want to know what sports they're ideally suited for based on which ectomorph/endomorph/mesomorph body type they are, the app should also provide data on what type of Strava athlete you are.
Suggested Metrics: "Wind Doper Extraordinaire", "King of the Side of the Road Bathroom Breaks", "Hard Starter, Poor Finisher" and a personal favorite of mine, "Excellent Sprinter but Only After Wheel Sucking for an Entire Ride."
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Your Next TriathlonSwimming Metrics for Triathletes
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Triathlon-focused fitness trackers suitable for swimming seem woefully skewed towards accomplished swimmers. Meters swam, distance per stroke, strokes per length, swim golf... What triathlete monitors these data points when all they're focused on is getting to the other end of the pool? Hey fitness tracker manufacturers, how about some metrics for us age group triathletes who swim like French Bulldogs?! Mmmkay?
Suggested Metrics: How successful was your swim today on a scale of "Congrats, the lifeguard didn't even get off their perch this time" to "They're going to have to re-fill the pool because you're leaving with a third of it in your lungs."
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Your Next TriathlonResting Social Media Checker
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Resting heart rate is so 1990s. Any athlete worth their weight in epsom salts can tell you within a beat how many BPMs they're cranking out. A more useful stat would be a Resting Social Media Checker Tracker.
Suggested Metric: How many times today did you check for engagement on your latest Strava activity or your most recent Instagram workout pic? Or how often did you refresh YouTube for Triathlon Taren's latest vlog? We're talking on a scale of "My 14-year-old niece doesn't look at her iPhone this much" to "If you voted in an online contest every time you checked your phone you could have single-handedly ensured Clay Aiken won American Idol."
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Your Next TriathlonPeople Skills
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Voice recognition technology has been growing by leaps and bounds. I think there's an opportunity for fitness trackers to improve daily conversations between triathletes and non-triathletes all around the world by helping the former improve their "people skills."
Suggested Metric: Voice recognition that lets triathletes know how often they talked about triathlon with non-triathletes on a scale of "Dude, you've told me about your last IRONMAN a half-dozen times" to "In what world is it OK to tell a coworker about your saddle sores?!"
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