Running with technology: Nike+ The Review

Having promised a review of all of the technology I run with for some time I have finally decided to pull my finger out and actually do it. It seems fairly obvious to review my Nike+ device first as it is one of the first gadgets I really purchased to use whilst running and I am still using it. At a later point I will create a subsequent review of my Garmin Forerunner watch should anyone want to know about that!

In about Feb ’08 I started running, I’m sure most thought it was a whim, a passing fad. However, for my birthday I asked for an Ipod Nano and whilst in the States I picked up one of the nike+ widgets. Darren,  a colleague from work already had one of these so I’d half seen it in action and was eager to get out with it (judging by my archive I went out 3 days after getting it!)

Before you begin (hidden not so obvious extras!)

So you have purchased the nike+ kit
and are eager to get out and run, well hold your horses. Unless you have special nike+ trainers which have a little hole cut into the sole to house the dongle you are going to have to either make or buy a ‘holster’ to attach to your laces. You can pick one of these up from ebay pretty cheaply – I have only used this one so can’t really review it but there are certainly others on the market. The dongle slides into the holder and then the holder is attached firmly to the laces. The device I have has a pivot hinge which allows the holder to be easily removed from the trainers unlike some which are weaved into the laces, this mechanism has its obvious pro’s and cons the later being the device can come lose/break off which has happened to me once so far resulting in needed to purchase a new kit.

Lets Run…

Ok so once you have got the little dongle in place and you have placed the widget into your ipod (if you have an old school ipod) you should see an option on the menu screen that says ‘Nike+ Ipod’ from this point the submenu’s should all be fairly self explanatory. Chose the run type you want to do, chose your playlist and away you go, once you have finished tap a button on your ipod and plug it into your computer.

Itunes will now do the rest of the work for you – syncing your data with the nikeplus servers which has a nice little portal to track your runs, see how others are doing etc. As the system has no concept of gps don’t expect masses of data but its a nice little automated online diary.

The Results

As the nike+ is just a glorified pedometer the distances and speeds mentioned should not be taken as completely accurate. Once calibrated they suggest to take a 10% margin of error, if you want almost 100% accuracy you will need to look at one of the gps devices out there which tend to be more expensive. If you want a relatively inexpensive first device i’d suggest looking into these. The Nike+ website is really nice and clearly a lot of thought has been put into its design and usability.

Verdict

I tend to recommend this device to all new runners, however, with iPhones apps and nokia phones starting to offer gps mapping perhaps the end is insight for the current Nike+ so who knows! If you have an ipod/iphone already goto the apple store and get the dongle for like £10 and your pretty much good to go…