Those are the breaks

The freezing cold temperatures had given way to a much more bearable 32 degrees this morning and I had hoped to resume running with my 9 year old son today. The snow and bone chilling cold had forced him to take a hiatus for the last three weekends and he had mentioned that he really wanted to run. Unfortunately the poor guy had an accident while cleaning up the dishes yesterday when a plate fell on his big toe. This required a trip to the emergency pediatrician's office last night and no activity of any kind prescribed for the next five days. So much for us running together this weekend.

I headed out alone this morning and didn't check the temperature before I left. I quickly regretted all my layers when I realized that it was almost twice as warm as Saturday's 18 degrees. Instead of hating the wind I began wishing for more of it. Today's run was less taxing than Saturday's and I ran about 4 miles. I still felt a bit sluggish and my pace reflected it; 12/sec per mile slower than yesterday.

When I tried to sync my Sportband with the Nike+ site I got the same "No runs to upload" message that I got the day before. Fortunately the device still records events accurately so I can manually capture the data and input it into MapMyRun. There is a way to manually create an XML message with the run data that can be uploaded to the Nike+ site. I'm debating whether I want to take the trouble do something that won't reflect the real time performance of my workout. After all, that's whole the point of the Nike+ system.

I should be frustrated and angry that the Sportband has failed me in so many ways but I'm taking a glass-half-full perspective. Now I'll get to buy and play with a new technology that will give me even more features than my Sportband. Despite the fact that I've had the Sportband (make that three Sportbands) over the last five months and have recorded hundreds of runs, I will get my entire investment back and this will help fund my new purchase. I only wish I could make my son's toe problem go away so easily.

Nike+ site is down

One of my favorite activities on a Saturday is uploading my week's runs to the Nike+ website. I had a great workout session today, over an hour, and I was disappointed to find that the Nike+ site was down. Their web page says "We are performing system upgrades to make Nike+ even better. Please check back in a few hours." Oh well, at least I can enter my week's cross training sessions at MapMyRun.

UPDATE: The site is back up at 1:24PM

Gearing up for a 5K race

I am planning to run in a 5K race in May that is part of a larger set of races that include a marathon, half marathon, 10K, 1 mile and kids run. A friend of mine who has been running for a couple of years will be joining me. I'm confident that I'll be able to run a credible pace for 5K by then but I do need to work on both speed and endurance. I'm going to try to run a 5K course this weekend as a way of training for the upcoming race. I use Google Earth, Gmaps and MapMyRun to plan my routes. They are all very accurate (to the inch) so you can plan ahead or track where you ran against your elapsed time to calculate your pace.

Performance data

I upload my run data to the Nike+ website (top) which provides a personalized page that tracks my history. It keeps track of total number of runs, total distance and average pace. You can look at each run separately as well. You can also set and track goals, participate in discussions and challenge other Nike+ users. MapMyRun provides similar functionality but doesn't require the use of the Nike+ system. You can import your data from the Nike site to MapMyRun (directly above) and see much more detail about the run than Nike provides.