Fitness tracker intervenes in surfer’s existential crisis thus averting a new instalment of quit-lit!

WHOOP strap is a wordless drill sergeant, a heartless bastard who doesn't care for wearer's apathy or excuses.

WHOOP, my dear WHOOP, I reflected as I stood on the beach in the rain, lashed by wind, feeling cold and tired and wretched.

There was nobody in the water. It was two foot at best, a south wind hammering down the remnants of a north-east swell. Surfing, in this instance, was a hopeless business. A terrible return on investment.

And here I was, ready to surf, a pretty pink surfboard made by Matt Biolos wrapped under an arm, a hell of a surfboard, mostly unused despite it being six months old.

Six months earlier, I’d started to fall out of love with the game or at least my version of surfing: find a window in the city crowds of soft-tops, SUPS and VALS across the two, sometimes, three banks on my beach, catch three waves, avoid trouble if I could although sometimes this was not possible and come home exercised and a with little sun on my face.

Surfing had gotten real old.

Six or seven surfs a week had turned into four turned and then into three.

A flat spell came and I didn’t surf for six days. It was the longest time I’d had out of the water since I was a kid back when I couldn’t get to the beach unless I rode twenty miles.

Is this how it ends, I wondered?

Not with a bang but with the gentlest whimper?

No grand “I quit!” gestures, no rage against the dying of the light, but going gently into the post-surf phase.

Around that time, I got the WHOOP sent to me. The app told me how little I was sleeping, and how poorly, noted the times I got up and cruised to kitchen or bathroom, offered pretty good advice on when to train and when to take it a little easier.

But more than that, the data collected provided a picture of how my body reacted when I surfed, the heart spikes on a wave, the meditative lows between sets, the slightly elevated rate on the paddle back out, and all backed by a strain figure that demonstrated how hard I pushed myself during a surf.

And the wildest thing?

It made me want to surf, however grim the conditions, however dense the crowd.

A wordless drill sergeant, a heartless bastard who didn’t care for my apathy.

My new master. 

It filled my glass with surf and now I drink again, fast, defiantly, just to watch the numbers soar.

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