Nike+ Is A Pretty Good Motivator
Posted on Feb 23, 2008 under Nike+ iPod | 2 CommentsAfter hearing Paula Radcliffe and Joan Benoit Samuelson congratulate me twice each for milestones over the past two weeks, I was starting to wonder who else might pop up soon.
Well, after an early attempt at jogging again tonight — that didn’t last too long before both knees lodged their complaints! — and right back to walking. So, I settled into a good stride and slowly built up as I went along. I pushed past the scheduled 30 minutes, as usual, but this time I varied my route considerably and wound up going three miles instead of the normal two and change.
This time it was Lance Armstrong who congratulated me — for my longest workout so far.
So, not only am I able to listen to a playlist on my iPod Nano that is mostly classic rock songs that were playing on the radio in my high school running days, but the Nike+ also gives me these nice motivational sound bites from several famous athletes which I can discover as I hit different milestones along the way.
I can recall a time or two when Frank Ridgley brought along a transistor radio when we all ran a group workout. This new technology makes things a little more interesting and more fun.
Oh yeah, I finally put something on the “About” page — the link is in the header above — that I hope helps to explain what this blog represents… to me at least.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Richard, remember showing me the Mileage Club chart on the wall of one of those Randolph AFB hanger gyms? It was amazing how folks were setting goals of 250-500-1,000 miles, etc.! I would tag along with you and Danny Busheme, it was there that I adopted the process I still motivate myself by to this date — logging the miles I’ve run into a written record — feeling and seeing the progress from the inside out! Thank you for showing me that tool.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I’m glad you kept to maintaining a log. It’s very cool to go back to it and thumb through the pages to see where you’ve progressed over time. Even when you use an Excel spreadsheet or a database for a log, it’s still good stuff.
I’ve tried at various times over the years to do the same, but I invariably lost track of whatever I used to log my miles, or I had some interruption of my schedule by the Army and never got back to it, only to start back up later with a new log. Bad for continuity that way, to be sure.
If I searched long and hard enough, I bet I could find half a dozen memo pads or notebooks somewhere in this house with some mileage and/or weight training logs in them. Not worth the bother, though, because they would be disjointed and mostly useless since the periods covered would be so widely separated by times I wasn’t logging at all.
The Nike+ iPod system not only takes the hassle out of logging for me, but it keeps me more honest, too. You can’t do one thing and log another this way. And there is no subjectivity in the system — you cover so many miles in so many minutes and that’s that. This blog is — or will be — where the subjective element will be recorded, as I plan to use it for comments on my runs, and commentary in general about things affecting my running.
Also — probably the sexiest part for me — it all appeals to the geek inside. It’s a damned neat gadget and I’m a sucker for damned neat gadgets.