I worked out a 16 week pre-running schedule and a 25 week running schedule after doing considerable research on the net. A good way to start is to walk for 6 minutes and run for 2 and repeat three times. Increase running time, decrease walking time and increase reps as you go along and eventually you build up the stamina to do long runs. The goal is to be able to run the 21 km on the next marathon in Delhi, sometime in November this year.
Anyway, to this end, I thought I would go and get a stopwatch which would allow me to time the 6 minutes walk and the 2 minutes run and so on and so forth. Nike being my favorite sports brand, I landed up at the store and asked for a stopwatch which I could ideally hang around my neck and time myself. They didn’t have one, but the sales guy showed me something really interesting, the Nike SportBand. It looks like a simple digital watch where the timepiece is attached to a rubber band that goes around the wrist. It comes with a chip that you insert in your shoe, if you have the Nike+ variety. Once you start your walk/run, you sync the two devises and it’ll track your pace, calories, distance covered and time taken. You press a little button to check your performance as you go along or at the end of the training.
The interesting thing is that the time piece is a devise that you plug into your USB port once you’re back in front of your comp. Nike+ has a sportband utility that you download on your system. When the devise is plugged into the USB port, the utility pops up and sucks all the data into its DB. Therefore you track all your walks, runs and essentially keep track of your performance on a continuous basis.
Well, I liked the SportBand, however my shoes did not have the placeholder for the chip. Which meant, not only would I shell our 2500 bucks for the band, but another 5-6 grand for a pair of Nike+ shoes. I dropped the idea in general and thought I would simply use a watch to meet my original objective.
I went back home, a wee bit disappointed. Would have loved the SportBand.
Earlier in Nov 2009, I’d gone to the US and bought a pair of Nike Zoom trainers, for a mere $50. On a hunch, I pulled that pair out and checked the shoe, and sure enough the placeholder was there. Wonderful!! I drove back to the store to buy the SportBand. The sales guy examined the shoe and told me that style was yet to come into India and it was a great pair. Even more wonderful!
The SportBand is a great product! I went for a couple of runs and tracked myself. It takes a minute to sync with the utility on the comp and as long as you’re online, the Nikeplus.com website keeps a track of all your performances. When not being used for tracking, the devise doubles as a smart sports watch.
Am looking forward to the 5km mini marathon tomorrow morning, as well as updating another round of data on my Nike+ account. So far, looks like money well spent!
