Running with Nike+iPod

Posted by brad on 11/24/2006 on brad's blog

Keystone - 5.00 - 1:00. It's Thanksgiving - always a good day for a run to get a nice calorie deficit going early in the day before the 5000 calorie pigout / football / food coma experience that always happens in the afternoon. I did what is becoming my standard Keystone 1 hour loop - from my house to the horse stables and back.

Today I tried out my Nike+iPod gizmo that I bought a month ago but haven't managed to take out of the box. I put on The Fountainhead (which I'm quickly mowing through), my new Nike+ shoes, and my Nano with the + adapter. It was trivial to set up and it worked great the first half of the run. I ran with my Garmin 305 also - not surprisingly the time was the same for both but the distance was off (the Nike+ was about 10% further which - while good for my ego - was probably wrong.)

At the halfway point, I felt like listening to Covered Side of the Moon (one of my all time favorite Coverville shows.) Two minutes of fighting with my iPod commenced. For some reason I couldn't figure out how to switch the music to the Coverville song while continuing my run properly. I'd even made Covered Side of the Moon my Powersong (admit it - you've seen the Nike+iPod commercial) - but after a few minutes I deemed myself a failure and went back to The Fountainhead. Of course, I couldn't get the run to resume on my Nike+ and finally decided to punt and get on with it.

The run home was great - it's a beautiful day here - and I heard one of my favorite exchanges from The Fountainhead. Ellsworth Toohey says to Roark "So Mr. Roark, what do you think of me?" Roark responds "I don't think of you."

I arrived home to Seth rocking out on Guitar Hero. Happy Thanksgiving.

email | report | digg this

Tags:

3 comments

melikerunfast says:

Brad: Do the Nike+ shoes work for you? This looks like a cool setup, but I need specific shoes for my pronation problems, not any old pair of shoes. Do you have to use their shoes? That seems like a huge flaw in the Nike+ipod system.

by melikerunfast on Mon, 2006-11-27 18:01

Brad Feld says:

I ran in them once and haven't tried them again. The shoes were ok - you have to use Nike shoes. There are three models (I picked the top of the line ones) and they were pretty similar in feel to the Asics that I typically run in. I wasn't able to run in them again because it was too icy and I wanted to run in trail shoes.

If you can get orthodics that address your pronation, you'll be fine since they are high quality Nike shoes. However, if you need a special brand, or if Nike's don't work for you (they usually don't work for me - too stiff - but these were ok) then you are out of luck.

by Brad Feld (not verified) on Tue, 2006-11-28 00:44

Chris L says:

I've been using two Nike+ Ipod adapters (occasionally).

At the risk of having the Nike police come hunt me down, I'll tell you that the cut out shoe business in not required. I have had good success strapping the device to the top of my Brooks shoes and heading out the door. Following the instruction for re-cal helps get the distance right.

As far as switching the tunes, the software is awkward at best. Brad, all I can tell you is to "pause" the workout, then you can hit "menu" find your new playlist, surf back to the Nike+ selection and "resume" the workout. I'm operating from memory, so instructions might be off a bit. Even after having figured it out, I manage to kill the workout some of the time.

As another observation, my battery does not seem to last very long with this gadget hooked up. I'm not good at hooking up the Nano to power daily, so I've set of on several multi-hour runs to find the Ipod dead. I am one grumpy runner without my audiobooks :)

For attaching the gizmo to the laces, at first I just taped it here. Then my wife found these little finger guard things at Sports Authority and the sensor fits them perfectly. I've heard that someone is finally selling a neoprene or rubberized sensor holder, but haven't checked.

Chris

by Chris L on Tue, 2006-11-28 04:37