Changing it up...

I was using the Nike+ for a long time to track my runs. It quit working a couple times... more than a couple times. It kept losing runs I'd done. The run would show up on the iPod and on itunes but I couldn't get it to show up on the website so I wouldn't get credit for the run... it wouldn't count for me. Yeah I'd done it, but no credit... no counting irritated me. I loved the Nike+ site a lot... but without a way to manually enter runs that their hardware lost it wasn't worth it for me to keep using it. The aggravation was too much.

So, I ditched the Nike+. Today I unbookmarked Nike's site. If they ever added a way to manually enter lost runs I might go back to them. It's unlikely though. What I switched to is the GoWear fit Lifestyle and Calorie Management System. It's a device I wear on my upper arm and it measures my steps, calories used through the day, and tracks it for me on a website. There's a subscription fee (The first three months were free.) but I like the information so far. I'll give it a solid B+. I wish it synced with SparkPeople.com, but nothing really does so I guess I shouldn't count that against it. It would be cool if it tracked the running like the Nike+ shoe pod does. It seems to know when I'm moving a lot and it counts steps and knows the time. It seems like it could track my running somehow.

The food tracking on the Go Wear fit site is nowhere near as good as the food tracking on SparkPeople.com which is excellent. If you haven't joined SparkPeople yet just to track your food to see how much food you eat, calories, salt, fat, etc... you really should join it. If only for a week.

One of the things I like about the thing is it tracks my sleep and shows how effective it is. You know those days where you feel like you're woke up on the wrong side of the bed and you just have no energy? The armband showed I was moving around a LOT on those nights. It showed me laying down for seven hours but actual sleep it showed as closer to five for a couple nights in a row. I wasn't sleeping well at all... I'd never have known other than feeling a little tired. So. I changed pillows and room temperature and things started getting better. They're not perfect yet. The bed's too soft. But things are better and the armband showed me the efficiency of my sleep. Very cool.

Does this track my running? No. Not really. It tracks other things, but not my running. When I'm on the treadmill I've got the treadmill to do that for me. When I run outside I've got a Garmin gadget from Christmas to use for that... and my android phone. But I need an online running log because that's how I do things... online. So, I use gowagon.com and am really happy with it. It used to import my Nike+ runs. Now I can manually enter my runs from wherever I get the information. The social aspect of Nike+ challenges aren't what I wish they were over on gowagon.com but as more people use it then it'll grow there as well. If you work out on a bike, walking, running, elliptical or spinning you can use this site to track your progress.