Whenever I think of running for a long period of time I can’t help but remember that scene from Back To the Future III (my favorite movie series of all time). Doc is at the bar and talking with a man from 1885 and telling him about the future (bad idea if you don’t want to disrupt the space time continuum). He says that they have great forms of transportation and the “auto-mobile”. The old man says “doesn’t anyone ever walk or run?”. To which Doc replies “oh, yes but for recreation”. And then the line that I always say, but no one ever catches on (because as I get older so do the movies) “RUN FOR FUN!”.
All that to say, that man had no idea what the future would hold for running. I have run over 250 miles in the past 12 weeks and so needless to say my running shoes were shot (actually the right heel started to cave in). So I was in the market for some new shoes. Well, me being the geek that I am planned it just right. Nike just released a new line of Nike+ shoes that work with your iPod Nano. There is a chip that you put in your shoe and that sends your speed and mileage to the Nano which keeps track of your run and displays the info on screen or via voice through your headphones.
Local Apple store was sold out of these… on order now. I’m hoping I can jerry-rig the sensor to my Nike 360’s I bought 2 months ago.
I have heard of doing this. There was an article on digg.com where someone had done it. They are made to work in the middle of the shoe best but you can calibrate it on a track or run a known distance. They have those little pouches that connect to your shoe laces to cary a key or ID in that would be perfect, or you could get a road id at roadid.com that connects to your laces. I’m going to be doing some trail running in a few weeks up the South Sister in Oregon and will be using this method.
Will this work with other ipods, or just the nano, and can it do metric or only imperial? (I don’t use miles)
Run for Fun! Man, thanks for jogging my brain (so to speak).
Enjoy.
An even better idea than this would be to match the tempo of the song to the steps taken – or vice verca…
I spoke with the guy at Niketown (who seemed knowledgeable) who said that the design of the Nike 360’s preclude them from being used for the nike+ line. I wouldnt recommend jerry rigging that brand or you might hit air and destroy your sneakers. They are supposed to come out with Nike 180’s that are nike+ later this month (june 27th) That will be the shoe with the most support that has the ipod feature.
by jerry rig I think that he ment attatch it somewhere else like the shoe laces. I have seen that done and it seems to work just fine. They do have a lot of shoes coming out that have more support and heel cushioning. I have heard that the Moto IV’s are a good option for that, but if you don’t want to buy shoes putting the sensor on the shoe laces does seem to work if you calibrate it.
James-
it only works with the nano at this time, and it does both kilometers and miles. Which is good since most running events even in the USA are done in kilometers anyway.
theOlster-
I have heard that Apple has a patent for that, but who knows if they will use it.
I love my Nike+iPod Sport Kit – it’s a great experience, but it’s not perfect. Especially when it comes to the Nike Leaderboard. I recently made a run at the Leaderboard and did not get the results that I expected. You can read my full story at:
http://mensnote.com/categories/?p=41
Just know this – I love this product and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
We all ought to post our HIGH ENERGY running iMixes so that we can share…