It's a two-piece system. A small chip goes into the iPod's cable connector port, and a small pedometer/accelerometer goes into a special compartment under the insole of the special Nike shoe. I don't wear Nike shoes, but that doesn't matter. You can put the Nike+ sensor in a plain old shoe wallet, and it works just fine. The pedometer broadcasts a signal to the chip in the iPod, and the iPod records your data and gives you feedback through the headphones. And when you sync the iPod, it sends the data to Nike's website, where you can view all kinds of interesting information.
Here's what I see when I upload my run data (click to enlarge). The circles are mile markers, and you can mouse over any of them to see your pace for that mile. (In this screenshot, I'm mousing over the first mile.)
And I can also see a bar graph of all the runs I've done in the past week, month, or ever. The new run is in red, and when you mouse over any bar, it gives you the details from that run.
Psychologically, this can be very encouraging. You get to see the real progress of your training program, and something about the visual association is just lots of fun to watch. I also track goals for myself using the Nike+ Dashboard widget. For example, I recently looked ahead to see how many miles I would do in the next four weeks. It happened to be 70 miles. So I set a goal of running 70 miles in four weeks. Now, every time I open Dashboard, I see this widget in the upper corner, with the runner symbol (actual mileage) nipping at the heels of the target point (which keeps moving to stay "on pace" with the goal). Here's where it sits this morning:
Interestingly, I don't usually listen to the iPod itself as I run, because I'd rather talk to the person I'm running with than listen to music. I usually just put the chip in the iPod and leave the headphones at home. But when I run alone, I often listen to podcasts, which tend to pass the time faster than music.
As I mentioned, the iPod does give you feedback as you complete miles, reach your halfway point, and near the end of your run. And occasionally a famous athlete (Lance Armstrong, for example) will congratulate you for your fastest mile or longest run so far. That's all well and good, but I often prefer not to know how far I've come or how much distance remains. I'm more interested in the tracking that happens after you upload the run.
So there you have it. It's a great system. I highly recommend it.
3 comments:
We improved on the nike+ system with http://www.runnerplus.com
you should check it out if you are interested.
Hope to see you there.
That is so cool!
You might be interested in a site called Breaking the Tape. You obviously are using something else to track all your miles, which is what I use this site for, but it also lets you link to other sites (like your blog) and it will post your run information there. This might be a good way to help others see your progress mile by mile. If your interested in seeing how it reports your miles you can look at my blog.
Post a Comment