Nike+

Ok, this post has nothing to do with media...well, maybe a little.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s very little here to be proud of, but I still wanted to post.

I’ve been looking forward to this run for over six months. I had hoped to start earlier this spring, but my operation pushed it back to Memorial Day. I couldn’t wait, so in complete disregard to my doctor’s instructions, I ran two miles this morning.

I’m in awe since my running experience has fundamentally changed and will never be the same. It’s a weird feeling when you realize that your kids will never be able to identify with some of your most raw and formative experiences. Running with a tape deck and relying on a car odometer for information on distance and pace was the way I experienced running from day one.

This was my first run with digital media (I tried running with a portable CD player once, but that doesn’t really work). Man, does that make a difference. You can easily skip to a more appropriate song in an instant. That helps so much. I thought a lot about my playlist for several days before I went out, but I didn’t do it right. Didn’t matter, press the skip button a couple times and BAM! a more appropriate song is playing and motivating you forward. Plus, the iPod’s designation of a power song is a great feature. You’re coming into the final half mile or so and without having to browse, you call the perfect song to get you to kick it to the end. Awesome idea…would have been better had I picked a better song or had my last half mile not been up hill, but all things considered, it’s pretty cool.

As big of a change that having an mp3 player is, the tracking feature of the Nike+iPod probably changes things even more fundamentally. You know the drill. You have a watch and several previously noted markers on your route (0.25 mile, 0.5 mile, and each mile afterwards). As you hit each of these markers you look at your watch and for the next minute you do the math in your head. “Ok, I ran that first half mile at a 6-min mile pace, better slow down…but wait. Did doing the math slow me down? Maybe I’m already down to a 7-min mile pace. Maybe I should be kicking it up. Well, I’ll wait and see what I’m doing at the mile marker.” Maybe I’m just psychotic, but that conversation was a fundamental conversation I had with myself for every run in the past 15 years. I may never have such a conversation again.

I pressed the button to start my workout. Once I ran the 30 feet to the next driveway I looked down at my iPod to see if it was working. AND HOW! There is was: I was currently running at 7:30-min mile. At any point during the run I knew exactly how fast I was going. When I was dying on a hill, I could see that I wasn’t really running any slower than I had been. When I felt good running across the park, I looked down and saw that I felt good because my pace had dropped a full minute, even though I never would have guessed it. The old school method would have had me note my pace at the mile marker and I would have concluded that I needed to work the hill harder when in reality I needed to work the flats harder.

And now that I have a run under my belt, I have the data to compare my next run. I averaged a 9’03” mile…which really sucks…I was optimistically hoping for a 8’30”. But now I know what I should be aiming for, and throughout the run, at any point, I can look down and see if I’m faster or slower than I should be.

I know tomorrow’s gonna suck, and I wish I could explain away my performance on my operation, but I can’t and I’m going out there again tomorrow with the goal to hear the voice at the one mile mark say, “It’s your best mile ever!”