Athlete In The City

Nike is revamping it’s ipod add-on to add quite a few new bells and whistles. Additions include temperature + hydration monitors. Our past complaint about it being primarily a pedometer, missing a heart rate monitor as a very basic requirement, seems to be addressed here as well.

There is also some talk of GPS. We’re already enamored of Garmin’s Forerunner watch, which is a phenomenal training device, all around. I’d like to see how these hydration and temperature sensors work, and keep an eye on Garmin’s additions as well.

Hip factor – 10!
Function factor – 7!

Apple and Nike have joined forces to bring sports + fitness fanatics a new way to train.  A wireless piece plugs into your ipod, and a wireless sensor for your shoe.  Everytime you step, it transmits that information to the ipod.  It will also use that information to adjust your music accordingly, to get you to workout harder and so on.  It’s quite a cool concept.

The new device, available at the apple store, and partnered with Nike, is basically a very hip and cool pedometer.  There are many available, take a look over at Amazon.  How a pedometer works is it clicks and increments a counter everytime you take a step.  What good is that you ask?  Well you input the LENGTH of your stride after various estimations.  The problem is that your stride varies dramatically depending on how hard you’re working out, if you’re going up or downhill, if you’re tired, at the end of your workout, and so on and so forth.

Normally you measure your stride by say running 1/10 of a mile, and counting the number of strides in your head, and then dividing.  Really this is just an estimate, and an average of that moment of time.  Suppose it’s off by only one inch (2.5 cm).  A stridge might be 1 meter (3 feet).  Now if you run, and the device calculates you ran 5000 strides, that is 5km (3.1 miles).  But it is then off by +/- 12500 cm (5000 inches) which is 125  meters (417 feet).   If you just train casually you might not care, but if you’re training hard, and really pushing your times, it is difficult to get really accurate numbers with a pedometer.

But if your aim is to make workouts more fun, and to have a useful tool to help you, this is a great one.  If you’re looking for a more all-purpose training partner, I would highly recommend the Garmin Forerunner 305.

Here’s a first look at the Mac OS X application that comes with the Forerunner 305 GPS Runner’s watch. I can’t say enough good things about this product.

I suspect avid runners will immediately see the usefulness of all this data. Most often when you go running, there are highs and lows, dips and peaks in your energy levels. Is it hydration? Is it my breathing? Or am I just running faster or slower, or at a gradient?

This kind of data will answer most of those questions. It’s amazing. You can see exactly where your heart rate is, and Mph speed.

Here’s an example. A few months back I was doing a week of Bikram Yoga. As an added bonus, on some days I would do a double session, and go running *after* the bikram yoga. I found that my heart rate was elevated, to around 152 bpm all the time, and yet my running speed was actually slower than usual. It just amounts to general exhaustion. Another example, when it is extremely humid out, I go running, and bring extra water. I run slower, but find my heart rate stays high.

Most watches with a heart rate monitor just keep the min, max, and total for the run. So all that time in the middle you know nothing about. Here the watch is collecting hundreds of little data points, and syncing them to your computer when you come back home. Graphing the whole thing is like turning on a light in a dark room. Now you can see everything!