ipod+nike and sports kit experimentation

Registration: (limited to 35.000 runners):

Till 15/02/2008:

• Half-marathon: 12€
• Vodafone’s Mini-marathon (8km): 12€

From 18/02/2008 until 15/03/2008:

• Half-marathon: 17€
• Vodafone’s Mini-marathon (8km): 17€

More in meiamaratonadelisboa.com

I’m going! And you?

My resolution for 2008 will be running 1600km this year, starting today.

You can see the progress for January, above or the whole thing here.

You can also cheer me up if you want to :).

After 36 runs, I finally achieved my first Nike+ milestone: 250 kilometres!

Also made my farthest run today, 12,02Km. Really started dragging myself in the last 10% of the race, which made my think that I need to put more long and slow paced runs in my running schedule, in order to improve aerobic resistance.

One issue is starting to become important: my training schedule.Besides the common sense of running comfortably and adding a sense of variety to the runs, I did not make any special regime. So far, my average run is near the 6.5km per workout (sometimes 5k, sometimes 7k) and they’re not particularly fast, so I neither get a hard training in the aerobic side nor in the anaerobic (running with your energetic reserves rather than with oxygen).

But that’s going to change next week, with some fartleking and a Saturday long run.

Tomorrow, a decompression fartlek session and Monday, rest. Or the opposite

Just 48km to get my first real milestone. Also improved my 10km time down today, to 53′59”.

I’m starting to think that cold weather might be a good thing, since I ended the race with no signs of needing to stop.

The day started early, Woke up at 7:15 a.m., took a reinforced breakfast and off we went to Oeiras. We left the car there and got to the starting point (Algés) by train - participants in the race could travel for free - a nice attention from the organization.

The race started at 10:00 a.m. sharp. Since I was in the last group of participants (those with no official mark or with more than 48min. per 10km), we only started effectively 4 minutes later.

The first two kilometers where dedicated to pass slow runners (or fast walkers as I call them), so I could only get into my normal pace at 3 km.

The race itself was pleasant to do, with only three moderate climbs, especially the last one at 8 km, with a slight inclination but lengthy. The last kilometer was a breeze, and I even managed to accelerate as I arrived to the finish line.

I decided not to take the Nike+ kit nor the iPod, in order to get a full impression of the race and its ambience, since it’s my first participation in this kind of event. Despite being now officially addicted to run with the Nike+ kit, I’ve managed to control my pace smoothly.

8.500 people participated in the race, only 7.165 classified (view race’s classifications here).

Winners:

• Men - Rui Silva (Portugal) 29:04
• Women - Vanessa Fernandes (Portugal) 33:29

Top marks for the organization of Corrida do Tejo 2007! Hope to do it next year!

Corrida do Tejo 2007 official t-shirt


My time: 54:14


Corrida do Tejo 2007 participation medal

Finally I’ve found a viable alternative for nikeplus.com: runnerplus.com. runnerplus.com is much more functional and social than nikeplus.com.

Although still in beta testing, you can connect with your friends, organize competitions by country much more easily and manage your running data in a non-flash environment. And better: you can even synchronise all your running data stored in nikeplus.com to runnerplus.com!

Still some things to do, in my opinion:

• Widgets (mostly html generated, to include in any webpage / blog);
• Personal Breaks, goals and records in each user’s profile;

For what I’ve seen, the widgets are being developed, and they surely will be an excellent way to promote runnerplus.com. Another key-feature that will surely boost users to join, will be records, goals and the like.

Twelve days to Corrida do Tejo. Besides more distance covered, I still don’t know if I’ll be able to make it bellow 50 minutes. My plan is to run smaller distances until the racing day, something near 6.5km, near the 5′20” pace and one last 10k run in the middle of the next week, as fast as I can.

Let see how it goes…

In case you’re wondering why the running data changed to smaller values, I’ve deleted some badly calibrated runs from my account, so this one today is my first 10k run. Prior to running with the nike+ipod thing, I was doing 10k in 1h02m34s. Now, after some 3 weeks of more regular training, I nearly spent 7 minutes less!

My goal to Corrida do Tejo is to get near the 50 minute mark, and that will require more regular scheduling of my training sessions.

More on this lately, if I get to make significant progresses.

After two normal runs I’ve started to suspect the iPod was not well calibrated, and it hapenned to be true.

This little gizmo was saying that I was running something like 20% more, hence my 4:57 per km. Today the pace dropped to a normal 5:40 per km, nearer my predicted time. This means also that the 24:51 per 5 km is obviously exaggerated, but I’ll leave that mark active, just for the sake of beat it, in a near future, with the correct calibration. One more challenge to be added.

Talking about challenges, I cannot prepare to the 10km run and maintain a pace bellow 5:00/km, like one of my Goals in the sidebar. Something near 5:20 seems acceptable for a speedy run now, at least for my skills at the moment. This means a challenge to be dropped.

OK, I did my first iPoded and Niked run.

A mere kilometre just for calibration purposes. I’ve got to calibrate the iPod twice, since the covered distance was not accurately measured.

You can get a great tutorial in the Nike+ , so I wont get into details about it, but my practical bits are:

• Go to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ and with the satellite view activated, set a path to run or walk;
• Get the distance (attention that the Nike+ software only allows calibration up to 2Km) and set it in the iPod (see the tutorials at Nike+ for this);
• Warm up, preferably running five hundred meters, besides stretching exercises;
• Run the distance, with your normal running pace. Don’t force it too much (so it would underestimate distances) or slow it (it would overestimate);
• Periodically, calibrate the iPod, for continuous accuracy, and also because your base-pace might change with more runs;