Money For Nothing?

      Yesterday I heard a radio story on BBC about Strava Mules. (Strava is a phone app that tracks your running and cycling with GPS, and allows you to share with, compete with, and track (audit) your friends.) According to the BBC, a Strava Mule is someone who carries a phone belonging to another person so they can record a run or ride and the phone’s owner gets credit. It’s a way to get bragging rights without having to put out the effort.

      I could loan my phone to some young flatbelly cyclist and send the data to my brother and tell him it was me, but I doubt he would be impressed. He’s too smart. He’d know right away it was too fast to be me.

      Why would someone do that, I wondered. Not – why would they carry someone else’s phone – but – why would they want someone else to run for them? What’s the point of being a runner or cyclist if you don’t do your own miles?

      Is this so they can convince their friends they’re much faster than they really are? As in, did you notice my blistering pace last week?

      Are they motivated the same as people who buy likes on social media, going for image over substance?

      Are they looking for an alibi? As in – “I couldn’t have robbed the bank,” or “cheated on my spouse” – I was running, and here is data to prove it. Their Strava Mule could send texts and take photos during the run for even more evidence.

      The BBC said Mules in London charge forty pence per mile to complete a marathon. That would be about fifty cents per mile in the USA, or $13 for an entire marathon. I can’t imagine someone running an entire marathon just to earn $13, but if they’d planned to run the marathon anyway, why not earn back some of their entry fee? They could carry a dozen phones in their fanny pack to not only cover their own entry fee but make a profit.

      I mentioned my new discovery to Cyndi, telling her I finally discovered a way to monetize my daily runs.

      “Are you still running?”

      “Well, no. Nowadays I walk.”

      “And do you go out walking daily?”

      “Not exactly. Mostly. But that’s not my point. Had I been a Strava Mule from the very beginning of my running career, I could have earned as much as $19,000 by now. Assuming both Strava and cell phones existed in 1978 when I started. And that doesn’t include the money I could’ve earned from cycling miles.”

      At that point, one of us might have mentioned that all of my miles since 1978 have been too slow for anyone to want recorded on their Strava database. But then it occurred to me that endurance athletes are supposed to take rest days, or at least low intensity days, to let their body recover from all those workouts. Most don’t want to take days off and most don’t. It feels counterproductive even when we know it helps, even when a coach insists that we do it.

      So maybe I could be their Strava Mule for those rest days and they could show the data to their coach, “Here, see how slow I was going, very low intensity.” Then they’d get credit for following the coach’s orders all while really running another speed workout on the sly.

      I realize recording slow data is a niche market, at best, but if anyone out there who might be reading this is interested, let me know. I’m available to record some low intensity miles for you. Fifty cents per mile, one dollar minimum.

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“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.”
Psalm 119:32