iRun, iCost a lot.

I often wonder how cavepeople did it. Like, how did they train for marathons without maps and heart rate monitors? And they would have had to bring musicians with them, since they didn't have portable music players. Can you imagine how fit you'd have to be to be a drummer in that scenario?

I used to think running was cheap. Slap on a pair of running shoes and off you go. No membership required. But this has actually turned out to be the most expensive athletic endeavour I have ever undertaken.

Running 40-50k a week requires a significant quantity of apparel. First of all, you can only wear something once before it stinks to high heaven. And all this stuff is made of high-tech polyester fabric which must be air-dried. So if you're doing laundry once a week, you need five of everything. Five bras, five pairs of pants and shirts in each length (short, medium and long). Don't even get me started on shoes.

But that's nothing compared to the electronic requirements. Back in my more casual running days all I needed was my walkman. Remember those? The ones that played tapes? Mine even had a GRAPHIC EQUALIZER. I went through a brief period where I tried running with a discman but that was pretty fu-fu....fufufufufu...fu-fu-fuuuuuuuuuu....futile.

Then along came MP3 players. They didn't skip! And they were light! But you need a computer to load stuff onto them, so that's a pretty significant total expense. Then somewhere along the line it became necessary for me to monitor my heart rate and time my runs. Back then, a Polar was a pricey little gadget for what it did.

Fast forward to today. My girlfriend coerced me into signing up for a marathon training clinic "just for fun". While we're at it, let's pour hot sauce on our eyeballs and snort wasabi powder! Wheeee!

We are nearly halfway through the program, and I am deeply ashamed at how much money I have spent on gadgetry. It started innocently enough with an iTouch, which is essentially a tiny computer not much bigger than a credit card. I ran with it once, and realized that the little darling would not mix well with sweat and rain.

So my dear husband bought me an iShuffle, an adorable little thing that just clips inconspicuously onto your hem. But when he tried to download stuff onto it, our laptop crapped out. So we had to buy a new laptop that could handle our new iGadgets.

Not two days later, my Polar heart rate monitor died. I saw this as a sign that I should buy a Garmin Forerunner 405, so that satellites in outer space could track my route, pace and distance and plot it all against my heart rate and load it all onto my computer before I even sit down to stretch afterwards. Seriously, how did cavepeople do it without satellites?

Only problem is, I am horribly technologically inept. The user manuals for all these things could fill the library of congress. I may have a shiny new laptop that can handle all the gadgetry, but my three remaining brain cells cannot. Lucky for me I have the ultimate gadget that figures all this stuff out while I sit there and drool blankly. It is called Jonas and everyone should have one.