Fitness, pushups, and the Nike+ Sportband

I guess it all started this spring when I realized that I was old, slow, flabby, and incomprehensibly out of shape.  After dealing with the denial of such a development in my life, I decided to do something about it.  At first, it was all great.  I was running a bit and not feeling too bad.  Developer legend, Justice Gray made his fitness proclamation to the masses and I was encouraged that I was on the right track.  It was around this time I picked up the Nike+ Sportband to track my running progress.  However, not long after all this, Justice Gray fell off the fitness train and I injured my leg playing some ultimate frisbee.

A few weeks back however, I felt sufficiently healed to begin my training again.  I picked up the running, added in the 100 pushups program, and scheduled a 5 mile road race with some college friends.  I've been thinking about writing it a bit, and was encouraged to see Rob Conery write about his fitness revelation earlier today.  So here is my post with a few thoughts on these programs.

Running with the Nike+ Sportband

The Nike+ system is excellent for the geek.  We get a usb device to wear on our wrist while we run.  I'm not sure a gadget guy could ask for anything more.  After my run, I can plug it into my PC and have it update my progress.  It is nice enough to tell me how slow I ran and to let me know that even though it felt like I must have ran 5 miles, it was only 3.5.  It tracks estimated calories if you care about such things, but mainly just gives chart of your running and it is a encouragement to see the mileage increase.

The Nike+ web site is not all it could be but not too horrible.  It is all flash based and while it does make nice looking charts, it is a slow.  I wish it was more ajax, less flash, but Nike has not hired me to clean it up so I'll have to deal with it.  One thing I wish it had is an easy way to make a note about the run I made.  I run some a jogging stroller sometime and I'd like to mark which days I use it.  (When you have 4 kids ages 6 and down, you usually take at least one with you when you leave the house.)

The Nike+ Sportband device is good overall.  It is simply a usb device with a plastic wristband to hold it.  The wristband is fine.  It is a flexible plastic that can be easily cleaned up and it is sturdy enough to hold up.  The usb device has a simple monochrome display with 2 buttons.  The display is heard to read unless the lighting is right.  At night, you can't see it at all.  It reminds me of the old digital watch display.  It could really use a light button.

The kit also comes with the shoe insert.  I don't have the right Nike running shoes for the device, but my wife made me a little bag to attach it to the laces of my sneaker.  It works great.

The functionality is simple enough.  Hold the main button for 3 seconds, it will tell you to walk (and it will sync with the little shoe attachment) and then it will flash at 0:00.  You press the button once when you start running.  You press it again when you stop.  When you are all done, you hold the button for 3 seconds to tell it to stop tracking your running shoes.  The secondary button just move the display from time, pace, etc.  It is useless while I'm running as I rarely have the light or desire to know the time, pace, or anything it could tell me.  Maybe in the race next month, I'll check the pace or something.

I put one of the lame Nike+ widgets on a running page on my blog.  I've found that the widget works only about half the time I check it.  If you are interested in my world class running stats or more likely want to see what the widget looks like, check it out.  There are many widget options, but they all look the same, just showing different data.

100 pushups?

Now, on to the pushups.  I started the "6 week" plan, 3 weeks back and I can safely say that after my first progress test last week, I see no way I'll be done with the program in 6 weeks.  To be honest, I could care less about being able to actually do 100 push ups, but I could really use the upper body exercise and I just don't have the time to get to the gym.  I'd much prefer to be home with my kids than make an extra stop away from home.  Push ups seem like an ideal fit to my lifestyle.

The program focuses on 5 sets of pushups 3 times a week.  I think it is a bit optimistic overall, but the principles of sets of pushups seems good.  The numbers just might need to be tweaked or certain weeks might need to be done over to build up the strength for the next level.  Since I really don't have the same end goal, I don't mind the program.  If you are hoping to be doing 100 pushups in 6 weeks, I hope you can knock out a bunch to start with.  If all goes well for me, I'll be able to keep doing some push ups through the fall and winter and make it a regular part of my home exercise program and someday along the way, I'll be able to hit 100 push ups.

I'm not going to go so far to report my push ups has Rob has done, but my mileage and runs will be on my running page if you desire to check in on my progress.