After years of scoffing at the Nike+ system, I finally caved. I had given up running with my Garmin, for many reasons. Its spotty coverage, long delays to acquire satellites and the overall paranoia it gave me - that I wasn't running fast enough, far enough and my heart rate was too high. I figured the less accurate and easier to use Nike+ would be a fun way to get me back on track without getting too competitive with myself.
It is definitely not accurate without calibration. I took it on a training run last Saturday with the group I coach, that day the route was 7.5 mi...without cutting a single corner (and we did cut a few). At the end, it told me my mileage total was 7.71 mi. Not bad, a nice estimate rounded up and that makes everyone feel good right?
Today I took it out for a run, that was just me at my own pace...no stopping for people to tie their shoelaces or downtown traffic to deal with. I know the route is 4.5 - 6 mi. depending on which side roads I choose. Almost at the halfway point, I stopped to stretch out my left calf which has been super tight the past few weeks, so I pause the workout on my ipod. I restart the workout and continue on my way, taking my normal 5 mi route, and hoping that I can calibrate the sensor with this run.
Once the run was finished, I pause the workout and start to go about recalling my workout. At this point I realized I had never resumed my workout as my daily total is only 2.54 mi. Stupid Nike+, and stupid me for not checking to see if I was doing it right! Now I don't even want to upload it to Nikeplus.com because I know I ran more than 2.5 miles today, dammit!
So, yeah, this thing is not really helping me with my competitiveness or any of the other things I got this to help out with. If anything it has frustrated me and made me regret selling out to Nike. Of course I was already sold out to Nike, you should see how many colors I have of their Tempo Shorts! So much for my nice stress free run, maybe hill work on Thursday will help me out with that.
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