Small Talk with kfloydh

Nike+ GPS iPhone App

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:09:07 -0400

I have been running with the Nike+ SportBand on my wrist and Sensor in my shoe using an old 3rd Generation iPod nano (with a broken screen) to listen to music on my runs for the past year or so.

But last week Nike came out with an app for the iPhone that allows you to use its GPS to track your runs.

Now instead of the SportBand and a Sensor in my shoe I can just strap my iPhone to my arm and go for a run.

It's a little bulky, but definitely more accurate and more precise. And the app gives you some awesome ways of viewing your run data.

For comparison I ran with my SportBand and the iPhone for 1.5 miles. Here are the run graphs.

SportBand first.

Now here's the iPhone version

Pretty similar. And any difference in time and distance was due to me starting the SportBand first and stopping it second.

So the SportBand is just as accurate as GPS. Which makes me feel good about all the runs I've done with it over the past year.

But check out some of the extra stuff you get with the iPhone version.

See the Route button above the graph in the previous pic. Here's what it gives you.

It shows you the route on Google map. With the black dot being your start. The red dot being your slowest point. Which was 9:48 according to the information in the bottom right corner. The green dot was my fastest point. Which was 7:02 according to the box second from the right at the bottom. Then the blue dot with just one peak was the lowest altitude of my run. The blue dot with two peaks was the highest altitude of my run. The black diamond with the 1 in it is the 1 mile mark of the run and if you click on it shows you how fast you ran that mile, which was my fastest (and only full mile) and was 8:32 according to the bottom left corner box. And next to that it would show my slowest mile if I had run at least 2 miles.

Aside from all that there's the pace/elevation graph in the upper right and as you drag your mouse along that graph the distance, duration, pace, and elevation information below it changes so that if you really wanted to you could see how your run changed every 100th of a mile. That's pretty damn precise. Or you can click any of the dots on the map and the information in the pace/elevation box will change to show the information for that exact point in your run.

The iPhone app itself also can show you a map of your run and the color of the route changes based on how fast you were running at that point. Green is fast and red is slow with yellow and orange in between. That's pretty cool.

And all of this gets uploaded automatically from the iPhone to the Nike+ website via 3G or WiFi as soon as you click "end workout". No more hooking the SportBand up to the computer. So the app is more reliable than the SportBand. Which sometimes needs to be reconnected repeatedly until it syncs correctly.

Like I said, the iPhone is a bit bulky on the arm, but I think this added information will be enough to keep using it instead of the SportBand. And even with the screen on max brightness, gps running, and listening to music, the iPhone battery only drained about 7% or about 15% for 25 minutes. Which means it should last long enough for me run for about 2.5 hours before it goes dead. As long as I have it fully charged at the beginning of the run.

I think it's pretty cool and just wanted to share. It's just another way for me to stay motivated to keep running.

Injured

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 11:08:54 -0400

I had been running consistently for about a year gradually increasing my milage by 5 miles per month and got to 85 miles in May. But I had started to notice some pain in my right leg and some instability in my right knee.

I stopped running and went to the doctor, had a bone scan which did not show any stress fractures (which I dealt with through most of high school and college), and did no high impact activities for 2 weeks.

Today I did my first run in 19 days, only 2.5 miles...and it STILL hurt... :(

It pretty much hasn’t gotten any better with no running and minimal P90X workouts. And with no stress fracture I guess it’s some sort of soft tissue injury. My right knee definitely feels more unstable, but I thought that was maybe just from limping when it hurt more earlier.

But it still hurts really, just enough to make me limp through most of the day.

Anyway...I’ve decided to take another month off from running and try to do some things that could strengthen and increase the stability of my right knee.

So my next run is scheduled for Aug 2. Until then I’ll be doing the P90X thing and trying to get some Physical Therapy friends to help me with some exercises to strengthen my right knee.

Would be nice to get back to running sooner than later, but seeing as how I’m not a competitive athlete any more it’s not really worth pushing through any injuries. And I’ve been better able to control my weight and haven’t really gained any since stopping running. Hopefully, I can keep that up.

P90X X 1

Sat, 8 May 2010 14:45:26 -0400

I have been running consistently for almost a year now, but about 7 months ago I realized I needed something more, something to improve strength and flexibility, something to shrink my gut and maybe even give me some abs.

I decided I’d give the P90X workouts a try...

Similar to my plans of not burning myself out running too often, too far, and too fast I started P90X slowly. So slowly in fact I only just finished the first 90 day cycle in about 7 months.

I’ve only been doing workouts on days I don’t run. Occasionally I’d double up and do a workout and a run in the same day if for some reason I skipped either previously in the week.

And I don’t do the full workout every time. For instance, Yoga is 90mins long, but I skip the “Yoga Belly” stuff that is a little more of a workout than I want from Yoga.

Similarly I follow the instructor’s advice of “Do your best, and forget the rest.” Meaning I try to do better quality moves as opposed to doing all the reps they do. When weight is involved I use very light weights, 10lbs at most right now. And for pull-ups I pretty much have to use a chair to support my legs on every rep.

This has worked out well for me I think as a supplement to my running, with the running being more important to me. But I’ve never been much of one for lifting, so I figured this would be a good way to get some strength and definition.

Since adding the P90X workouts to my runs about 7 months ago I have lost 22lbs. I was 228 at the start of October 2009 and I was 206 this week.

And that’s just doing the workouts on days I don’t run.

I have just started my second cycle of P90X and now I’m doing the workouts on my off days as well as days I run anything under 3 miles. With plans for the next cycle to be the same with runs under 5 miles, and then eventually get to a P90X workout every day and a run every day.

That’s highly ambitious, but running 80 miles a month and doing 3-4 P90X workouts a week would have seemed very ambitious a year ago as well.

Doing the running and working out has given me a positive attitude. I’ve not varied my eating habits much at all and I’ve still lost all that weight. The weight is not my main goal though. I just want to be a better runner and be more fit in general.

With continued use of Nike+ to track my runs and P90X to keep me in shape I plan to continue doing just that for as long as I can keep it up.

An Argument for Unplugging the Toaster

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:02:47 -0400

My wife has a habit of unplugging the toaster after each use. I thought she did it for fear it would start a fire while we weren’t watching. I never quite understood the need for this...

Until today...

Let me preface this story with another story. You see, when I was a kid and was in the kitchen and needed to go pee I would occasionally walk over to the trashcan as if I was going to urinate into it. It only happened a few times, but one time I did get so far as stepping on the pedal to lift the lid and unbuttoning my pants. But never actually peed in the trash can.

A similar mistaken identity almost happened today.

After toasting some mini-bagels I began to butter them dipping my knife in the butter and spreading it on the bagels. But one time rather than taking my knife back towards the butter I took the knife towards the toaster.

With the toaster still plugged in, luckily I was able to stop myself as I have in previous mix-ups.

But from now on, maybe I’ll take to my wife’s habit of unplugging the toaster after each toast lest I be electrocuted in the future.

My New 5K PR

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:11:41 -0400

I ran my fastest 5K in about 10 years yesterday, 24:53

That’s over a minute faster than any 5K I’ve run since starting to use the Nike+ system a little over a year a go.

And it wasn’t even a race, it was just a workout.

While I’ve started some track workouts to try to increase my speed, distance is still my main goal at this point. So today when it took me about 30 mins to run 3.3 miles I wasn’t too upset, especially since it was raining and 40 degrees with about 20mph winds.

I’m still just plugging away and don’t have any immediate goals that will crush me if I don’t meet them.

But I’m very happy with that 5K yesterday, especially since my first mile was in 8:30 and overall I averaged a pace of 8:00, which means I must have been running about 7:45 pace over the last 2 miles or so.

That’s 15 seconds per mile faster than I was training on the track the day before.