I might be "that" guy.

Yesterday while running wearing my hoodie it occurred to me that soon I wouldn't need it. The weather was warming up and I'd be down to shorts and a technical shirt. My first thought after that was "Where will I put my iPod?"

I can't strap it to my left arm. That's where my GoWear fit  by BodyMedia goes, and my wrist has my Garmin 305 on it. My front right pocket has my phone with GPS running to map my path. If I strap another thing on my other arm, my iPod for instance, I'll be practically bionic. But without a pocket I don't know where else I'd put it. I'm afraid Chris' accusation that running was just another way to get more gadgets may be right after all. As much as I was irritated by the Nike+ thing when it would lock up and show my 4 mile run as .2 miles over 55 minutes I keep toying with the idea of putting it back on because I like the community features of it.

I'm going to use DailyMile.com and hope that the community, goals etc. in there are comparable and scratch the itch. But there's no really easy way to get the data in there. It means typing it in again. I already have to enter my miles into GoWagon, SparkPeople, and my paper running journal. I'm getting tired of doing that. There's a lot of running tracker sites out there, and I enjoy the choices. I just wish there were one I liked as much as I liked the Nike+ site. You'll notice I'm not linking to it... it's because I can't recommend it because of the faulty uploads and there's no solution to it. I just kept losing runs and you can't manually enter them.

Hey, in case you missed it. DailyMile.com is the site that I think has the most potential for keeping me. I need to play with it some more, but it looks more fun than the one I've been primarily using (GoWagon) which is a little more serious feeling, and less fun.

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.

Forever Young

Today I ran slowly. I didn't run slowly by accident. I set out to run slower but longer. I've been doing half hour runs and I wanted to do 40 minute run, but I wanted to do it more slowly than usual. I don't have a great training reason why so don't bug me OK? I just wanted to run longer and slower today, so I did.

So. I went to the gym, pretty fantastic blizzard hit here on Christmas Day so it's not worth trying to run out there really (unless you have YakTrax, but more about those later!)

The gym was busy and I did it anyway. Being out of shape it's hard for me to run in front of other people. I'm not as out of shape as I once was though. I didn't mind running while other people could see. And there weren't lots of people laughing or pointing when I was doing it or done either so it was OK. I wondered how it'd be to run with a room full of people. It was nothing. A big old nothing.

That's a good hurdle to be over.

A couple other notes about today's run.

• First, I was listening to Phedippidations, my favorite running podcast and it occurred to me while I was doing the C25K I ran listening to music and I got a lot more thinking done. Listening to the podcasts is cutting into my thinking time because I'm listening to him. I may alternate days listening to audiobooks/podcasts and listening to music. I like the time for my brain to unwind and it doesn't feel like it is unwinding when I listen to podcasts.
• Second, varying the incline on the treadmill while I run may help me with the uncomfortableness of running on a treadmill. I wasn't sore afterwards. My legs didn't hurt at all.
• Zensah compression leg sleeves are worth every penny. Seriously. I put them on right after the run and I feel like a million bucks. I feel better after the run than I did before I ran. These things are great for the legs. I recommend them VERY highly. If you run and have any soreness at all get a pair and put them on after a run. If you wear my size and don't like them let me know and we'll see about my buying them from you if you hate them. (No, I won't pay full price, your sweaty, hairy legs have been in them... but I can see myself paying half-price so you're not out the full price of them. I'm pretty sure everybody will love them.)
• While listening to Phedippidations Steve Runner, the host, was talking about the body's rejuvenating itself every so often as cells replace themselves etc. He said we were forever young. JUST as he said that, like one beat later, they said it on the radio because Rod Stewart's song by that name was playing. I got goosebumps. If it were in a movie I wouldn't have believed it. It would have stretched my credulity. It happened today for real though.

I told you I'd tell you about YakTrax. They slide onto your shoes and when you walk on packed snow or ice you walk as if it were dry dirt. I ran up the hill in front of my house that's packed snow and ice that my car couldn't go up if I didn't have a running start. They're thick rubber and the bottoms have a heavy gauge metal spring looking material on the bottom. You wouldn't wear these in a house. They're not for that. But seriously. It changed the way I walked outside. I couldn't feel that they were on my feet and instead of that learned Iowa Winter Walk that we all do when on ice I could stride. I could walk, jog, turn abruptly. I didn't have to make wide turns. I could jog in a tight circle around my car. Try that on ice in normal shoes without these.  If you're outside at all in wintery conditions with ice or packed snow you should own a pair of these. Mailmen should all have them. Seriously. Absolutely astonishing product. I'll be able to run outside in a much wider range of conditions now.

As you may have noticed from this post there were two running gear endorsements. Yeah... there's a third review coming as soon as I get a chance to use it. I got a Garmin 305 for Christmas. It's a GPS for runners that you wear like a watch. I'm so excited I can't stand it. It's got a heart rate monitor on it as well. Soon, oh yes, soon. So... Christmas was good for me in the running gear department and I really am enjoying it all. The advantage of the amazon wish list is that it lets people know what I want without them having to guess if Model X is the same as Model Y.