Rookie runner

I’m used to 14 hours, multi-task multi-purpose working hours; my average working day starts at 6 and a half with the first mails and web check and usually ends after mid-night; but I’m a full-formed lazy boy for everything concerned with sport activities. Yes, it’s true that I love skiing, I play tennis, I swim and try to perform in other sports too… but these are not daily activities, nothing I can say I dare to to every day. The opposite is true!

But as my business/dinner lunches grows in number and in quality as my weight has re-started growing; I needed something that, without forcing me in a diet I would never have been able to maintain in the long distance, granted me a loose in fats and – hopefully but as a side effect – could also get myself fitter.

I started by evaluating the Nintendo Wii together with the Wii fit; but as the summer approaches it’s getting harder to perform fitness activities at home; I don’t have enough spare time to dedicate at least 7 hours of my week to go to the gym (and when I tried I never been able to reach the objectives I had due to my early abandon of it).

Speed graph on Nike+ siteBut then I’ve seen a commercial of the Nike+ Men VS Women challenge; basically Nike+ is a sensor, integrated in your left shoe to track speed and distance, wirelessy (via Bluetooth, I suppose) connected to your iPod (Nano or Touch, I own the second one) to organize, measure and maintain your running activity.

That was exactly what I was looking for:

  • It’s something geeky and innovative; something that reallly excites me;
  • It has a companion web site with cool functions and intuitive UIs;
  • It gives me the chance to share my results with friends and followers in a load of ways (email, Facebook, web, etc.);
  • It let you create your own challenges (personal or VS someone), running tracks (using Google maps), and objectives (calories lost, distance, speed, etc.).

I think these qualities are keeping me on track: I’m really enjoing running and I having the first results after just five days of activities: I started on Monday with a 20mins, 2.5 Km run and ended my Running Week on Saturday with a 25mins 4,7Km performance, nearly doubling my first effort!

Here belowOn the right column you’ll find a widget that connects to the Nike+ server and let me share with you my results; hopefully you’re going to see a 10Km run in the next 30 days!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>