Nike+ Running Attachment for the iPod
Anybody in London who knows me probably knows that I run a fair bit. Most of my old friends from Australia would probably laugh at the thought, it just wasn’t me. It’s not that I was neccessarily unfit nor unhealthy, it’s just that most exercise was limited to the gym or a sport and the very notion of “going for a run” filled me with dread.
So what changed?
In short, I got the Nike+ attachment for my iPod nano and a properly fitted pair of shoes. I think the difficulty I had with running was the lack of motivation because unlike cycling you don’t really build up enough speed to get the adrenalin running, there is no real sense of danger. There also isn’t much else to concentrate on apart from the scenery going past relatively slowly and the sound of your own lungs gasping for air.
The Nike+ changed things on that front in a couple of ways. Most obviously, I could now setup a soundtrack to run to and offer a bit of a distraction. Sure you could do that with just an iPod, but now my playlist was interrupted sporadically with the likes of Lance Armstrong telling me how far I had to go and how quickly I was doing it. When I returned from the run I could then sync my iPod with the Nike Running website and upload my data, and here’s the kicker. That new graph I saw every time I synced my iPod gave me some motivation as I could now measure my improvements almost effortlessly with something other than a set of scales. I’ve had difficulty relating this to other people, but everyone I’ve talked into buying a Nike+ has agreed. It’s having some performance metrics to regularly measure yourself against that changes that it from being just “going for a run” into being some kind of challenge. Combine that with some good music to distract you from the effort your expending and it now seemed quite easy.
Gradual Improvement
It wasn’t as though I suddenly became a good runner though, it’s just that I could now get some enjoyment out of it and it wasn’t completely draining mentally. When I first started I’d run about 1.5km–2km, in dashes of about 500m–800m. After each little dash I’d be exhausted and would walk a few hundred metres to get my breath back and start again. That little circuit used to take around 18 minutes.
Most runs I’d manage to shave a few seconds off the previous one, at first it was just the time resting between sprints that was getting shorter but before too long the sprints themselves started getting longer. Within a month I’d managed to increase the distance up to 5km which I was running in about 30 minutes.
Training with others
I now love running by myself, it’s a great way to clear your heard and leave the stress of the day behind. But it’s also good to have a training partner at times, someone to help push you a bit further than you might go by yourself. When I first got my Nike+ I wasn’t working and was running in the middle of the day, so finding someone to run with was hard. This is where the other killer punch from the Nike+ comes in. Via the Nike Running website you can issue challenges for friends or family that also have a Nike+, so that is exactly what I did.
Even though I was living in London, I could now race against a friend back in Melbourne. We had to see who could run the furthest over 30 days, and the nike+ and Nike Running site kept track of it all for us. Each time you sync a run you can see where you are relative to the other person (or people!) you’re in the challenge against. It’s proven to be yet another great way to stay motivated each month, by setting challenges on who can run the furthest, the fastest, the most often, and more.
The Problems
It’s not a 100% perfect system though. First, you need to have a supported iPod. Second you’re supposed to have compatible pair of Nike shoes; thankfully some other companies have come out with attachments to let you use it with other brands of runners. Third, it’s not 100% accurate. You’re meant to calibrate it based on your running speed but I’ve found when comparing it with friends that it’s not as easy to do as it seems. Of all those I’ve compared it with, mine has always been the most accurate and I’m not entirely sure why. From all the various reading I’ve done it seems the sensor needs to lay as flat as possible, and your tempo needs to be relatively consistent. I guess I’ve been fortunate that mine is normally accurate to within a hundred metres over a half marathon, whereas my friends were out by about 15% in opposite directions.
That’s not a huge problem if it’s just a training aide for getting fit, but when training for a race of that distance it meant that one friend had spent weeks over-training and the other not nearly enough.
The Benefits
Despite the issues, I really can’t recommend this little gadget enough. It’s an amazing motivator and it’s got me fitter and healthier than I’d ever thought I’d be. Never would I have thought I’d ever be able to complete a marathon, and now I’m more concerned with trying to do it in under 3 hours than I am with covering the distance. That 18min run I started out with now takes me under 6mins ;)
