I use the nike attachment for my ipod to keep track of my mileage and time when I run. I realize that it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s close enough. Or, so I thought. I had tested its accuracy in the past and had been satisfied, but I hadn’t tested it in awhile. Usually, when I run in a race or something, I just listen to the music without tracking my mileage.
Well, I bought new shoes Saturday, and I velcro-ed the foot attachment to my new shoes, got it all geared up no problem, right? So, Sunday, I go out for a run in my new shoes and I checked my pace and time a few times through the run and seemed to be on pace, but as I was finishing up my run, I hit the button to check my time (I had maybe a half mile left at this point) and it said that my pace was 5:16/ mile. Um. Right. Either God had intervened in my run at this point, or the there was a serious, obvious mistake. I thought maybe it was a fluke thing, so I hit it again… “pace 5:10/mile” What the hell? So, apparently it’s off.
Last night I did my hill repeats and while I used the nano (hoping that it had just magically corrected itself), I knew the distance of the route I was running, so I didn’t have to rely on its accuracy. Now, for those of you who don’t use the Nike Plus attachment, occasionally, at the end of a run you’ll hear Lance Armstrong or Paula Radcliffe voice come on to congratulate you for… reaching another 500 kilometer milestone (kilometerstone? How do I say that?) or setting a personal best, etc. I’ve only heard Lance once (and I think that was for hitting 500 miles or something on it) but I hear Paula pretty regularly (I think she comes on more than she should, because I don’t hook my ipod up to my computer very often, so it doesn’t reset itself) and she always says…”Hi, this is Paula Radcliffe, I hope you’re feeling great, because you’re certainly doing great, you’ve covered 500 more kilometers.” So last night, I finish my run, I’m checking my mail, not even paying attention to my stats for the end of the run (because I knew they were wrong) and I hear Lance Armstrong, “Hey, this is Lance Armstrong, congratulations on setting a new personal best for the mile.” And that made me feel like shit. Because it was WRONG. ARG. I want to be congratulated by Lance legitimately!!
Since I knew I was having this problem, before I left work yesterday, I plotted an 8mile run for this morning on running ahead. (Okay, so I tried to get the route to show up in this post, but that link that RunningAhead gives me NEVER works in a blog post. Uggggggh. What's the deal?).
I ran this route this morning and it took me 1:16:40. Which is about 9:35/mile. Which, is fine… but, I thought I had been running faster than this… like almost a minute per mile faster than this. Methinks my nano has been off for awhile. So, it looks like I’m not in as quite a good shape for hitting that 4:20 marathon as I was thinking that I was. I’ll re-calibrate it this weekend. And hopefully, this morning I was just running a little slower because I did my hill workout last night.
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3 comments:
That's why I like doing runs old school(w/o a Garmin or the like). Technology is great,WHEN IT WORKS..:-) I just have heart rate monitor & map my runs on MapMyRun.com & use their pace calculator. But then again I am just running to finish whatever route I'm doing at the time. Even the tempo runs that I do I just look at how long it takes for me to get at each at each mile marker.
I finally stopped entering my info in the treadmil (it's too cold to run outside here=( ) because I was putting too much emphasis on the calories, etc. It's freeing to just run to be running! Great work training and being determined..
Hi Amy, I've been reading your blog for a little bit and really enjoy it. You know how Paula keeps congratulating you? I had the same problem and emailed Apple. They said it was a known problem and to reset the nano by holding down the menu and center buttons at the same time until it reset. That fixed it for me. Good luck with your training! :)
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