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Ed Tech Fitness Challenge of the Week – Hydrate!

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The school day gets busy and before you realize it, you’ve gone three hours without drinking anything. Or worse, the only thing you’ve had to drink is that cup of lukewarm coffee. This week’s challenge is to remember to drink water throughout the day.

Benefits of Proper Hydration

Drinking water throughout the day has lots of benefits. It helps your skin, it helps your brain function better, it can keep you from snacking (that’s a huge one for me), and it will help perform better when go to exercise.

I have an app on my phone called Watermaniac (Android only) that helps me remember to drink water during the day. iPhone users can use apps like WaterMinder for the same purpose. Of course, you could also just use Google Keep or your phone’s alarm function to set repeating reminders to drink water during the day.

How to Use Google Keep to Set Recurring Reminders

Google Keep is a versatile app that you can use on your desktop, on an Android phone, or on an iPhone. One of it’s many functions lets you create time-based and location-based reminders. Watch the following video to learn how to do both of those things.

Fancy Water Bottles!

You don’t need a fancy water bottle in order to stay hydrated, but having one will make you look like you’re on-trend. My partner has a fancy Hydro Flask water canteen that keeps water cold for hours or days or possibly months depending upon the hype that you read.

The Hydro Flask is way too pricey for this frugal New Englander so I just use the standard red Nalgeen bottle that I’ve had for years. The only thing fancy about my water bottle is the Ed Tech Fitness sticker that I slapped on it in the spring. If you want one of the stickers, send me an email with your address and I’ll send you one.

Back-to-School Fitness Challenges for Teachers

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Ready or not, back-to-school season is here! I hope that you’ve had a great summer of playing outside, exercising, and doing fun things! The transition from “summer mode” to “school mode” is when a lot of us lose our way with our good health and fitness habits. So to help all of us stay on track with good health and fitness habits I have created a calendar of Ed Tech Fitness challenges for August.

About Ed Tech Fitness Challenges

These are intended to be simple challenges that build good habits. They are not intended as a replacement for a structured diet and exercise plan. If you already have a structured diet and exercise plan, think of these as little bits of variety to throw in. If you don’t have a structured diet or exercise plan, think of these are simple building blocks.

Do these challenges to the best of your ability, whatever that ability might be. Doing something is better than doing nothing. If nothing else, doing these challenges will get you in the habit of thinking about your diet and exercise on a daily basis.

Challenge for the Week of August 5th

The first challenge on the calendar is to try some mindful breathing exercises.

Take a deep breath and relax as we get ready for the new school year. Taking just three to five minutes to breathe and focus only on breathing can be a great way to reset when things are getting stressful.

Stop, Think, Breathe offers guided breathing exercises on YouTube as well as in the form of free Android and iOS apps. Find the videos right here.

Calendar of August Challenges

If you’re a Google Calendar user, you can access the calendar and copy the challenges into your own calendar right here. Otherwise, you can view the calendar as embedded below.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical or fitness professional. Please consult your physician or a professional trainer if you have any questions about your ability to participate in an Ed Tech Fitness challenge.

Google Maps Now Has Real-time Bike Sharing Information

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Google Maps and Google’s My Maps tools are excellent for planning safe biking routes. Now Google Maps has another feature that could be an aid to those of us who enjoy riding bicycles.

Yesterday Google announced a new feature for the Google Maps mobile apps. The new feature provides real-time information about available bike shares in twenty four cities. If you live in one of the cities that is included in this update, you’ll be able to use the Google Maps mobile apps to find the nearest available bike sharing station and the number of bicycles available.

Unfortunately, bike sharing information is only available for 24 cities. The North American cities included in this update are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto. Hopefully, Google will continue to add to this list as there are many other cities that have public bike sharing systems. For example, Seattle has a good bike share system but isn’t included in the new update to Google Maps.

On the topic of bike sharing, the city of Seattle produced the following video about how to responsibly park your bike share bike.

Dear Amazon, This is What I Want on Prime Day

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Dear Amazon Algorithms,

I know that you don’t care about my needs and just want to extract money from me on your upcoming Prime Day. So to help you make it easy to get my money next week, I have made a list of the things that I would like to buy if you offer significant discounts on them next week.

Wahoo Speed and Cadence Sensors

I’m tired of having to swap the speed sensors and cadence sensors between my road bike and my time trial bike. But I’m also too cheap to purchase a second set at full price. If you can see to it that these are discounted on Prime Day, I’d be most grateful.

SUUNTO Spartan Trainer Wrist HR

I am quite happy with my Garmin Instinct fitness watch and plan to keep it forever or at least until Garmin’s planned obsolescence of it kicks in. I’d like to purchase the SUUNTO Spartan for my significant other who has recently committed herself to getting back into top cycling shape. We’d like to be able to do a comparison of these two fine watches without spending top dollar. Can you make this happen? Please.

Zipp 302 Wheels

You probably know from analyzing all of my search history, but I do covet a nice set of Zipp 302 wheels for my bicycle. I’m not so delusional to ask that you discount Zipp 303’s or Zipp 454 NSW’s on Prime Day, but if you could see it in your algorithmic heart to discount a set of Zipp 302 wheels on Prime Day I’ll take very good care of them and never ask for anything again (or at least until next Prime Day).

Thanks for considering my Prime Day wish list.

All the best for a most profitable Prime Day,

Richard

p.s. my mom told me that you know when I’m sleeping and when I’m awake? Can you ask Alexa if that’s true?

How to Use Strava to Plan Safe Biking and Running Routes

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Summer is here and it’s a great time to get outside for a run, a walk, or a bike ride. Before you head out on run or ride in a new area, take a look at public routes on Strava. And if you can’t find one, create your own safe running or biking route by using the route planning tools available on Strava.

Watch my video below to learn how to use the route planning tool in Strava. One of the features that you’ll see in the video that makes Strava a better route planning tool than Google Maps is the instant calculation of elevation changes. I also appreciate the estimate of the time to complete the route.

Learn more about how Strava works in my detailed overview of the app here.

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