As I said before, one of the reasons why I got the Nano was because of the Nike+ running kit. A few friends have the kit and raved about how well it works. I'd always run without music in the past, but the idea of being able to determine my pace, distance, and time without having to figure it all out in my head from the time on a regular watch was appealing. I also liked the idea of having a running history (which I tried to keep via an Excel spreadsheet in the past) and being able to graph my runs.
The kit consists of two pieces - an accelerometer/transmitter, which inserted or otherwise attached to one of the shoes, and a sensor that plugs into the sync port of the Nano itself.
Of course, I don't have a pair of Nike shoes with the pocket under the insole for the transmitter, so I needed to come up with some other way to attach it to my shoe.
When I was first fiddling with the accelerometer, I didn't realize that that's what it was. One side of it squishes in a little bit, so I figured the thing worked on pressure, kind of like a pedometer. I was always a little suspect of that, though, since how would it be able to determine distance? In any case, in order to make sure the thing would work, I thought I had to make sure that the squishy part was in contact with my foot somehow.
The accelerometer is pretty small, but I decided to try sticking it under the laces of my shoe, on top of the tongue. With the laces over top, I figured that that would engage the action. After some initial walking around the house, the sensor picked up the transmitter and every thing seemed to be fine. Time for a test run...
It turns out that simply sticking the transmitter under the laces isn't such a good idea. I didn't even get half a mile into my test run before the thing went flying out of my shoe, tumbling down the street ahead of me. I was going to need to find a better way.
I starting thinking that maybe I needed to sew a little bag or something ot tuck under the laces. I'm pretty certain that that would have worked, but while I was lamenting the issue with some friends, one of them mentioned reading that some people cut a little slit in the tongue and put the transmitter in there. My shoes were nearing their end of life, so I figured I'd give it a try.
I cut a small slit on the underside of the tongue, off to the side, and slid the transmitter in. Again, thinking it worked by pressure, I made sure that the laces were crossing over the top of the transmitter. I walked around for a bit and the thing was still registering, so I went for another test run. Success!
At first, I didn't like running while the music was playing. I have a small (512mb) iRiver MP3 player that I was going to use for running (as well as travel), but I just couldn't deal with the music in the background. Each song had a different tempo, which I subconsciously tried to match, making running difficult. When I started with the iPod, it was just the same as before - the changing tempos kept throwing my running off. I really liked the stats aspect, though, so I kept at it. I figured that if I couldn't deal with the music, I might get away with listening to podcasts.
Music with lyrics really threw me off, but instrumental songs seemed to cause me fewer problems. I started experimenting with different instrumental stuff, eventually settling on Jesse Cook. I ran almost exclusively to Jesse Cook songs for several weeks.
Eventually, I got used to the idea of having music in the background. I've even managed to deal with lyrical songs as well. Sometimes a song will come on and it starts to mess me up if I start to actually listen to it (which happens if it's a song that I think I might be able to easily learn on the guitar). When that happens now, I just skip to the next song. And now the iPod has become a very valuable part of my running program.
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