A new Nike+ Sportband problem

I had a particularly good bunch of runs this week and looked forward to downloading my Sportband after this morning's workout. Today is the last day of January and I was curious to see how I did in total mileage compared to December.

I started with 15 minutes of core exercise as a warm up and then ran 3.1 miles outside. It was 18 degrees and windy and I struggled through the whole run. Running is mostly fun but today it was work. There was no debate when I reached the crossroad where I could run another mile or just head for home. I had hoped the core work would have prepared me better but my legs felt heavy throughout the run. My running felt mechanical the whole way through and I was prepared for an abysmal pace. I was surprised to see that I ran 3.1 miles in about 29 minutes.

My frustration came when I attempted to upload the past week's runs to the Nike+ site only to see the dialog box read "No new runs to upload." I tried multiple times but the application just wouldn't recognize my runs. I ended up manually inputting the runs into MapMyRun where I aggregate all my workouts including training done on the elliptical machine. I looked on the Nike+ forums to see if there was a solution posted. There were no solutions but I saw that I wasn't the only one who was experiencing this issue.

I finished January having run almost exactly the same total distance as in December averaging about 15 miles a week. Since I was on vacation for two weeks in December and had more time to run I'm considering January's distance a net gain. With the Sportband failing to upload my runs I'm thinking about bringing it back for a refund and getting a Garmin 50 with foot pod and HRM. I just can't rationalize spending over $400 for a Forerunner 405, Polar or Suunto GPS watch with the additional foot pod and HRM.