I have not been blogging that much of late, since I have been very busy with work and life in general. I have decided to remedy that by giving myself a bit of a writing assignment, and hopefully give myself some motivation.
Motivation? That's right I can use all I can get, and the reason why is that my lovely wife has dragged me into the torturous world of running. As we all know the best runners are people who sit in front of a computer all day at work, then go home to sit in front of a different computer at night  . The truth is, we have been running together for about 3 months now and I can now run around the subdivision in my running shorts without being to embarrassed. I'm down 28 pounds and a bit over half-way to my goal weight, so I'm not complaining much. |
4Gig Nano: $249.00
Nike + iPod kit: $29.00
Nike + Ready Shoes: $100.00
Now I have to keep running or I just wasted almost $400...
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But last night something changed....
My Nike+ iPod kit arrived, bringing my love of over-priced electronics, and my new... not loathing of running together. I order my kit, shoes and sensor, last month. I have been eagerly awaiting their arrival, so when I found out they would be arriving yesterday I decided to knuckle down and go buy an iPod Nano. I already have a 30GB iPod, so I was holding out until I made sure that the Nike+ kit would not work with it. I found out for sure on Wednesday, and promptly decided to buy the cheapest Nano they make. Needless to say that lasted until I got to Best Buy, and realized that for only $100 more I could get 4 times the capacity. (I am the Apple marketing departments ideal customer: a sucker.) Sure the 1 gig would have been fine; how often am I going to be running over 10 hours? Never! But hey, now I can run something like 50 without hearing the same song twice. All totaled up I spent more on my Nike+ setup then I would have liked. As I drove home I fought buyers remorse and hoped it was all worth it.
Once I got home, at approximately 8:30pm, I rushed upstairs to set things up. I had to update my new Nano's firmware to the latest version as well as make sure I had iTunes 6.05. Then I was determined to go for a run. I boot up my computer, plug in my Nano and like magic iTunes pops up: there the new Nano. I take a second to register with Apple and all is well with the world. At this point I am having warm feelings for Apple.
For those of you who just want to know how the Nike+ iPod kit works, and don't want to hear about my oh-so-fun setup experience, feel free to skip the next five paragraphs.
Then sadly things took a turn for the worse. I think that perhaps someone at Apple read my Apple Sucks iBalls blog from last year and placed a voodoo curse on me. As I mentioned, to get the Nano to work with the Nike+ kit you have to upgrade the firmware. To do this I had to download the latest iPod Updater from Apple. Its still not that late at 9pm, and we are in Michigan where the sun dose not set until about 9:45 at this time of the year. Download iPodSetup.exe. (Which to my surprise is almost 60megs. I guess they have to include the firmware for every iPod made in the file). I run the installer and for some reason it takes a long time to install. But hey it installs. Still ok; its only 9:15. Plug in the Nano, run the Updater, it asks me what I want to do, I say Update. And it sits there.
I took this opportunity to change to my running clothes. Come back to the computer and its sill just sitting there. Its now 9:30. Humm. I decide that it was done and that the updater was just hung. So I unplug the Nano, attach the Nike+ sensor, and sure enough I now have a Nike+ iPod item on my main menu. All is well. Only thing is I have no music on the Nano to run to. Easily fixed, or so I thought. Did I mentioned that I have an Apple related voodoo curse? I plug the Nano back in the docking station and launch iTunes. No Nano. "Well," I think "that's odd, perhaps I just need to reboot...."
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| I reboot, reconnect, still no Nano. At this point I quietly remark to my dog, "I'm not to happy with this." But hey I can run in the dusk light; it will be nice and cool. So I decide I'll just attach it to my laptop and see if it sees it. So I turn on laptop. Plug in the Nano...nothing. Hummm. Well, I guess I can try the updater again... This time my entire computer hangs... 9:45pm. I uninstall the Updater. Reboot, and reinstall. Same thing happens. 9:55pm. Decide that I probably need to rest the Nano, so I do. Plug back in, it hangs... 10:05. It is now officially dark out. I am now constantly mumbling to my dog, who is starting to look nervous, "I don't get it, this should be working... I am very unhappy with this... I am very unhappy...". I start to wonder if I somehow hosed my 3 hour old Nano when I updated the firmware. Now I'm mad at Apple, all be it unfairly, at making an Updater that can hose your iPod. |
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But wait, I have a Mac. Maybe its just my Windows setup. Maybe its something simple. I'll try and connect to it with the Mac. I turn on my poor, abused, Dual G4 and plug in the Nano. Launch iTunes, nothing happens... I think at this point I let out my first official expletive of the night. As the last echoes of ka ka ka diminish my dog flees the room not to be seen again for several hours. It is now 10:15. I gather a bit of control, and decide to download the Mac version of the iPod Updater. After anther 60 megs, and another 10 minutes I get it installed. Plug in the Nano, and to my great relief it shows up. However the only choice it gives me is to restore it back to the original factory settings. "Fine," I think "its brand new", and I click Restore. All seems well until after about 1 minute I get an error. Something like "can not restore while iPod is in use". But its not in use! Now I start to get really mad. I can't believe I am going to have to take this thing back, F, F, Mother F, etc. My wife quietly asks me if I am OK, and I decide I need to pull my self together. I reboot, try again, same thing. Rest the Nano, try again, same thing. Must remain calm. Its now 10:30.
After pacing about the room I decide to move back to the PC one last time. I dock the iPod, launch the iPod updater...and magically it works. Quickly I click the restore button before it can vanish. About 30 second later It says its done. Done! OMFG, it's done!
OK, its only 10:45pm I can still run, right? Ill be damned if I did all this for nothing. Quickly I launch iTunes. There's the Nano. All I need is something with a good beat. I grab pretty much all the Oingo-Boingo I own and copy it over. This maybe takes 1 minute. Put my fancy shoes back on. Undock the Nano, plug in the Nike+ sensor dongle and run down the stairs. After a minute or so of setup on the Nano itself getting the sensor in my shoes and the Nano to talk, I hit the street.
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| I decide to just go with the first option on the workouts menu: 3K. The nice thing is I am all pumped up with angry energy after my setup from hell, so when the nice lady that now lives in my Nano told me to go, I went. Now I have been running for a few months, but I am no great shakes. I have never had a reliable pedometer, and my treadmills readouts seem to be a bit dodgy and I don't trust them. My best guess is that my "quick" pass is about 12.00 (1 mile every 12 minutes, or about 5mph). But I take off like what to me seemed a bat out of hell. Real runners may feel free to laugh at this. |
Click image to see the full graph, of my very first Nike+ Run.
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At long last I am running with my Nike+ setup and, believe it or not, I love it. It was worth every penny and I will even forget my entertaining setup.
I began to realize that this was the device for me when the lady in the Nano whispered in my ear that I had reached 1km. I quickly look down at my screen and can see my pace, my distance, and my time - as well as what I'm listening to, of course. I can still change volume and skip tracks like always. I move a bit further, along, and my run takes an uphill turn. I'm slugging along when she pops back in, letting me know that I have reached the halfway mark. Sweet. A bit further on I start to remember that it is 11:00pm, and I am a old fart. My pace is slowing. On cue she shows up again, "1km remaining". I get up a bit more energy and keep on moving. Then the good part begins. At .5km remaining she starts counting down. By 100 yards this is very motivational and I see by my chart that it worked wonders. By the time she told me 100 yards remaining I am running faster then I was at the beginning. And I'm not even mad anymore.
Now, I did have a few glitches in my first run. Nothing big. Because I had to "rest" my Nano, it lost my weight, so there was no way for it to guess my calories burned. I could have set this back up but by the time I hit the street I was not thinking to clearly. Also I did not have time to calibrate it, so I can't be sure that it is very accurate. Going to take care of that tomorrow. Last, I think I did something when trying to end my workout, because my chart gave me spike at the very end were it thought I was running at a pace of 1.23 (1 mile in 1minute and 23 seconds.) that, to the best of my knowledge, is impossible. I don't mind this except it threw off of the average on my chart and made it difficult to see the true variations of my pace. I am hoping this is something that will not happen again, or at least is something I can figure how not to do.
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| The fun is not over yet. Once you are back to your computer you can upload your run to the Nike+ website where you get several cool types of feedback. I'm not going to go to far into this at this point since I only have one run posted and I don't have much to compare. However if you want to see how it works you can see a sample runners page here. http://www.nike.com/nikeplus/#runs |
Click image to see the full Nike+ page
with my one lonely run. |
Over all I am very happy with the Nike+ iPod setup. In both Apple and Nikes defense, I am pretty damn sure that my setup woes were a fluke, and most people will never have any problems. Once the firmware was updated things went amazingly smooth. Sunday is my long run day; we are planning on doing 10 miles, so I should have a much more interesting graph. I'll try to give a better review of the Nike+ website after that.
Now I'm off to calibrate my new shoes.... |