ipod+nike

yesterday evening, i finally tried out my new ipod+nike device that serena and kelvin had gotten for me as a gift!

while i should have tried out my ipod on sunday with a 30-minute run, i instead opted to go on a mini-hiking adventure with some friends to the national arboretum. i'll post a photo soon.

anyway, back to my new ipod+nike device and the run. it was pretty cool. not only do you get to listen to music but since i was set to the distance mode, at every mile, a woman's voice would talk over my music and say "you're at X miles!" however, it seems as though i should calibrate the device so that when i run, it's set to the way i run and the steps i take, because according to my ipod, i ran 5.45 miles, whereas when i used gmap pedometer and mapped the route, it was only 5 miles.

according to my ipod, i had run 5 miles at a pace of 8 minutes and 29 seconds per mile totaling 48 minutes and 10 seconds. now, i'm not really sure that this is accurate, for while i was running faster than normal, i'm not sure i was running at under a 9 minute mile pace. for me, that's hard to do! now if i take the gmap pedometer map, i would have run 5 miles at a pace of 9 minutes and 38 seconds, which seems a little bit slower than the pace i was running at yesterday but probably more on par than the ipod calculations!

my analysis of the situation? that i need to calibrate my ipod so that it fits with the way i walk and run and the steps that i take when i run. my theory is that ipod probably calibrates it to an average person and how he/she walks. since i'm much shorter than the average person (i'm only 5' 2.5"), my ipod is calculating a bigger step than what i'm actually taking. well, at least, that's my theory! i'm heading to the track tomorrow, so i can calibrate my ipod then and see whether it's more accurate afterwards.

until then...