My New Nike+ IPod


 The other day I went out for lunch with a friend and he completely convinced me to get a Nike+ Ipod for my running. Today I got it. I don’t know why I hadn’t purchased this $39CAD device ages ago. It is seriously awesome. Read on to find out about my first experience with it.

The device, as I mentioned, is relatively inexpensive. Coming in at under $40CAD, it’s less expensive than an average dinner out, assuming that you already own an Ipod Nano (which fortunately for me I do).  I purchased the Nike+ gizmo at Sportscheck, which is a Canadian athletic franchise. They also sell shoes specifically for the device, but they aren’t necessary.

As soon as I got it home, I retrofitted my sneakers for it. There are an abundant number of websites suggesting how to do this. I found it easiest to use duct tape. Some sites say that duct tape won’t work because of some sort of aluminum interference. It worked for me though. Perhaps this was because I used white duct tape instead of the generic grey.

I created a small pouch with the duct tape and attached the pouch to my right shoe, under the bottom few laces, above the tongue. To attach the pouch, I used twist ties. It was a simple yet effective piece of workmanship that seriously took only 10 minutes. For a little while afterwards, I was proud of my ingenuity.

 Following the directions, I went down to the high school track nearby. The track is 400m which made it very easy to calibrate the device. Once around at an even running pace and the Nike+ suddenly knew my average running step length better than I’d ever know it myself.

I then ran 3km and used the Nike+ Ipod to guage my pace and distance. All of the vital running information is located neatly on the Ipod display. The Ipod itself, of course, continues to play your favourite tunes while you run. The kicker though, is that ever 500m, a female (or male if you prefer) voice come over the earbuds relaying how far you’ve run or how far you have yet to run.

Once you’re done the run, you can upload all the data through ITunes. Just register for a nikeplus.nike.com user id and ITunes takes care of the rest. You can go to the site and view your runs and get neat pictures of your pace over each run. In my first run, I forgot to click end on the Ipod which caused an extreme dip in the pace. You can see it here:

The nikeplus website also has a bunch of challenges that you can enter and compete against thousands of other Nike+ owners worldwide. I haven’t entered any of these challenges myself, but I plan on it. I also plan on competing with my friend to show him whose boss at the 5k.

Definitely, if you already own an IPod Nano, I encourage you to pick up a Nike+ device. It’s fairly inexpensive, but worth every penny.





3 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. the Nike+ system is an incredible tool. Enjoy it. Their website is cool too, but i find it slow and difficult to navigate. Try checking out http://www.runnerplus.com for an alternate site.

    September 10th, 2007

  2. Jamie

    This is true. The Nike+ site is a little slow and not necessarily intuitive. The runnerplus site seems cool. I took a quick look at it and I’ll have to check it out in more detail. Maybe I’ll even do a review :)
    Thanks for stopping by.

    September 10th, 2007

  3. Was googling how to see my pace on my Ipod tonight and found your site. Anxious because I have a race Saturday and I cant figure out how to keep the pace up on the screen like my girlfriend’s is. Thoughts???

    March 30th, 2011

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