Sol Young » Nike+

100 Miles Stronger w/ Nike+

Sol Young — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:53:49 +0000

Today I hit 100 miles of running with Nike+. It shows how poorly I’ve been keeping up with running (Galina is in to 200+ now). It’s a nice feature they offer… Rewards keep participants interested. I’d still like to see more non-flash integration with blogs.

The stats for my first hundred with Nike+:

26 runs
3.81 miles per run
Average pace of 7′24″

I’m still tracking with both Nike+ (today’s) and Nokia SportsTracker (today’s). The SportsTracker, with GPS, is slightly more interesting because it maps your progress while on the run and offers live mapping. I’d still like to have SportsTracker integrated in a blog – it’s a pain to share otherwise.

Something else of interest during today’s run… Everyone on the trail was in a great mood! I offered, “Good Morning!” to eight people and received eight positive responses. In Philadelphia this is a first. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s a fluke. But either way, it’s awesome to return from vacation with a strong positive vibe.

Good Morning!

GPS Running

Sol Young — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:34:48 +0000

Link to today’s run

I love running. I skip wearing headphones or listening to music because I love hearing the world race past me. Things that interfere with the actual experience of being there aren’t interesting to me.

Nike+ on an iPod (a music player first and foremost) thankfully has the option to do a workout without music (and without a headset). I’ve been using this since Christmas 2007 when my wife gave it to me. It’s great! Nike has training programs you can follow to get you the next level.

Recently discovered when I got an N82 is the Nokia Sportstracker app. It keeps track with GPS and gives an amazing amount of live metadata. Not only are you able to follow your speed, pace, average pace, distance, location, etc, in real time, you can pump the data live to the web.

There are a couple things lacking with both systems: Social interaction outside their gardens. Both offer links to back to your workout pages, but neither supports easy placement of the data elsewhere (read: No RSS feeds of the content).

An RSS feed of the workouts would be an ideal next step for either company. RSS being available would allow WordPress and TypePad widget development much more easily.

It would also be slick to have Twitter and Facebook integrations (Nike+ has some Facebook apps written by third parties – I haven’t been impressed with these since they’re all Flash).

Running profiles:

Nike+ and Nokia GPS

Sol Young — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:12:45 +0000

Having some fun with the iPod Nike+ and Nokia GPS at the same time while running down to the John Kelly statue along the Schuylkill. While stretching decided to shoot a quick video (didn’t Qik).

The results for the Nike+ are extremely accurate. Since the iPod measures pauses, I believe both devices were pretty much in sync.

Results:

Morning run – Nike+ and GPS track… And honeysuckle

Sol Young — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:10:10 +0000

view in Google Earth

This morning’s run was notable. Honeysuckle and other sweet flowers filled the air next to the Schuykill River… Far better than the expected dead fish, exhaust, and port-a-potties.

Micro-blogging a 10-mile run – Broad Street Philadelphia, 2008 – Utterz

Sol Young — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:42:40 +0000

I ran Philadelphia’s Broad Street run, a 10-mile race today, while carrying an iPhone, making calls, checking Twitter, and taking and posting pics. I chronicled the day with Twitter, Utterz, Flickr, and TwitPic. I used Snapture, iFlickr, and SendPics iPhone apps.

Quick Links to the streams:

My plan was to Twitter my progress and TwitPic/Flickr the pics out to my followers. But I woke up at 3am from a caffeine rush and a thought of typing for an hour becoming a nightmare – and boring. Utterz.com, a service doing pretty slick mashups of audio/video/text/photographs/etc, while harnessing APIs from pretty much every popular social networking service, caught my eye (more on Utterz later).

Here’s the day – check the Flickr photostream and the Utterz links below for my audio commentary while I running…

About Utterz: You start an utter by calling or emailing. Either one initiates it. After that, you have 10 minutes to add more content to the utter. Utterz automatically adds audio from a call or content from an emailed pic/video/audio/text to create an utter similar to what I created above. The call-in feature (dial, press 2, talk, hang up) is extremely simple.

Now, none of the above would be impressive except that Utterz.com is doing it right. This is how services today are supposed to work. Utterz is tied in to all the social networking and blogging services. Any new utter is announced on Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, or even your WordPress/Blogger/MoveableType/etc blog (hosted or self-hosted – COOL!)

The night before the Broad Street 10-miler – thumbs and feet ready

Sol Young — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:04:51 +0000

After a few months of preparing for the Broad Street 10-miler, it’s now the night before and pre-race excitement is setting in. iofy’s new office in the Navy Yard of Philadelphia is a block away from the finish line, so this will be a pretty nice way to finish a race. There are showers and refreshments in the building… Life will be good.

The race starts at 8:30am EDT. For the first time while running a race I’ll be Twittering. This is partially because I want to try it as a social experiment, and partly because I’ve been sick and not training for the last week (read: I’d like an excuse to run slightly slower than usual).

If you see someone blow by you, with the above on the back of his shirt, send a text message to 40404 with “follow sol”…

Gear:

iPhone
Nike+iPod Nano

Software & Services:

Twitter
TwitPic (Send a pic to twitpic and have it announced on Twitter)
Flickr (Get the photostream here)
MobileTwitter (stable jailbroken iPhone Twitter client)
Twinkle (jailbroken iPhone geolocation + Twitter)
Snapture (jailbroken iPhone camera.app replacement)

Good luck and see you at the finish line!

The morning habit of highly effective people – wake up for yourself

Sol Young — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:47:45 +0000

Early Sunrise in Valley Forge – 2003

In Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, shared traits and behaviors of effective people are described (at the strategic level). I’ve found one habit, at the functional level, which seems to span every effective person I’ve met. I do it too.

It’s waking up and doing something you enjoy. By starting the day and doing something focused, for yourself, you’re establishing a sort of leadership over your day. Instead of waking up and being ruled/owned by the clock, it’s getting up and taking control of the day.

Personally, I run. It starts with getting up, stretching, and hitting the pavement. This time is my time. While my legs are spinning, my mind is churning through any challenges or plans for the day. Most everyone I’ve met who are business leaders do something for themselves first.

It can be anything… Coffee and a newspaper, yoga, morning television news, surfing, gardening, art, etc. You can start off by getting in to the office at 7:00am if that’s what you want. The point is that you’re doing this for yourself and not for anyone else. Your day is starting off under your lead.

Back in my routine – daily running, RSS+flow, and dev

Sol Young — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:42:30 +0000

Latest run results… Almost to my goal of < 7:00 pace…

Today is special… It marks the first day of getting back in to my preferred routine. Here it is:

Get up early and hit a good run.
Read RSS (and now some flow) over breakfast.
Drive to the office (while continuing to read RSS).
Have a productive day of dev.
Get home and enjoy some afternoon/evening time with family.
Read more, code more, free time before bed…

For the last few months my routine has been thrashed. Very productive, but insane…

Wake up just in time leave for the office.
Have a productive day of dev.
Get home and follow up with emails and later dev projects.
Do demolition/remodeling/construction with my wife.
Fall in to bed, catch 15 minutes of news.

The latter routine has accomplished a remodeled home, most recently the bathroom, but hasn’t allowed for much mental expansion or physical fitness.

Back to running – Nike+ to track progress

Sol Young — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:22:16 +0000

After a long time off I’m finally back to running. My wife gave me a Nike+ at Christmas and it’s been gathering dust for the most part.

Why? We’ve been remodeling and we’re finally wrapping things up (photo stream on Flickr). I can feel the all-our-spare-time-sucked-out-of-us-and-put-in-to-construction-duties coming back like the warmth of Spring. Now there will be time for visiting family, coding, and running.

I’ll be adding a static about page to solyoung.com and a Nike+ badge will be a small part of it. The Philadelphia Broad Street 10-miler is coming up in May and I’ve got to get back in runners shape. One huge advantage of working at iofy is our office is right at the finish line. It’s going to be a great, great run!