Nike sportband

I've heard a lot of buzz about people starting to train for marathons, 10k's, relays, etc. lately and I wanted to share my opinion about a product I really like.

After running my half marathon last August, Sean surprised me with this Nike sportband. It is a little watch you wear on your wrist that keeps track of distance, calories, average time, total time, etc. It also keeps track of your entire running total. It works by coordinating with a micro chip in the sole of your shoe. It's extremely lightweight and user friendly. You do have to buy Nike running shoes, but the ones I got were relatively inexpensive and I LOVE them. I know everyone says Asics are the best running shoes, but I would highly recommend the LunarLites from Nike (cheaper too...).

The coolest part about the sportband is that the face detaches from the watch and plugs into your computer. It pulls up the Nike sportband Web site and keeps track of all of your runs, your fastest times, calories burned, etc. When you look at an individual run you can see on a graph the parts of your run where you ran faster, slower, etc. For example, here is my run from this morning:

You can also set goals for yourself, compete against other sportband users, etc. One of my favorite features is what they call "levels." You make it to certain color-coded levels depending on how many total miles you have run. For instance, I am currently on the second level, or the "orange" level. I have about 20 miles to run until I hit level three, or the "green" level which covers 155-620 total miles. The levels go all the way up to "black" which is anything over 3,107 miles-- yeah, not getting there any time soon. It's funny to me that something as simple as wanting to make it to the next level helps keep me motivated.

Anyway, I know this sounds like an ad for Nike, but I've really loved this thing and thought some of you who are training may be interested. Now, with all this running talk I think it's time for a cookie... hahaha!