Sunday, June 1, 2008

SportBand Update

Ok, so last Sunday I went for a run. And it rained. I do live in Portland, OR after all. And halfway through my run I looked down and the display on my Nike+ SportBand was blank. Darn it. So I ran home and called the tech line that had helped me get started on Mother's Day, but they were closed - perhaps for an early Memorial Day? I tried to initiate a live chat, but that was unsuccessful. So I called NikeTown. They were open and they had SportBands. It was a pretty easy transaction to swap mine for a new one (other than parking downtown and keeping a toddler from causing a ruckus at the store). But it worries me that this band didn't make it through one run in the rain. What am I going to do in the winter? The manual says it can be immersed in one meter of water for 30 minutes. Since mine wasn't immersed, you would think it would have lasted longer.

Then it turns out that I can't manually input the run data that was lost due to the equipment failure. Because I might "cheat".

I do like seeing the data so I'm sticking this out for now. Today I even calibrated the sensor by running a mile at a local track. 4 laps in lane 1 = one mile. Or 1.13 according to my sensor - no wonder it thought I was running so fast. I made the adjustment and went our for a longer run. The data is in and I'm about a minute a mile slower than I was pre-calibration. Sad, but probably more realistic.

One last thing I need to investigate is why there is always a major dip in my speed towards the tail end of my long runs. Yes, I'm tired, but not THAT tired. Maybe some interference. I'll have to try a longer run somewhere else someday.

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