Nike+

Sorry about another running post. I promise I'll talk about gaming or something tomorrow. I wanted to speak on this yesterday but was overan by that year in review post. . . So yeah. I got a nike+ sensor for Christmas and a little pocket so that instead of buying the $100 shoes it will just tie into the laces of any running shoe. I didn't think much of this thing until I logged onto the website for the first time. Woah, I should have realized that when Nike and Apple get together you will end up with something pretty cool.

You start out by selecting or uploading a very small profile picture. You choose a user name and login and are thrown into your main page. From here you have many options. Your latest run is graphed out by pace and distance. You can look at many stats such as your history of runs by date and distance. This was all to be expected. The COOL things are the challenges, distance club, and Nike+ mini.

The challenges are user generated. There are currently 20 thousand random challenges, you can sort by popularity or by when they were submitted. Challenges range from first person to reach 100 miles, longest miles ran in X amount of days, fastest 3k, fastest 10k. Anything you can think of and there will be multiple challenges to sign up for. You click the join button, and your screenname is thrown into the mix of runners and graphed. If you look at the image above I am in 4th place of 10 people for most miles ran in 2 days. Some challenges have thousands of people, some have only a dozen or so. There are different types of challenges called team challenges. The teams are preset and you choose the team you want to join. So, there is a huge challenge for MLB teams. It goes for 90 days until opening day, you choose the team you want to run for, and everyone's milage adds up beneath their chosen team. There are competitions like this for men vs women, meat eaters vs vegetarians, united states regions,

the list goes on forever.

The distance club is as you would expect, after 100 miles, 500, 1000, all the way to 10000 miles you get put into a different club. You also have a Nike+ mini, which is essentially your avatar. Seen left. As you complete things you get different stuff for your avatar. I got a new tshirt for doing my first run. I would imagine every tier of the distance club gives you something else too. And winning challenges and completing your goals and resolutions stacks your trophy room, mine is empty... :-/

Overall, I think nike+ has the right amount of competition matched with the right amount of a reward to get anyone to want to run as many miles as possible.

I don't know if this will get old, but I know right now its like a new video game or toy and I could just surf the site looking for new features and I can't wait to get home and run. Victoria made the amusing comment that its funny that even when I get into something active, I still find a way to spend a lot of time on the computer involved with it. Kind of a double edged sword...

Listening to: Addicted by Saving Abel