Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Gear Check - iPod Nano

Liz reminded me this morning that I should be taking the occasional day off. I've been on a roll lately and the triathlon training had me working out on my usual days of rest. But I moved my Long Run back a day yesterday and I'm supposed to be tapering this week for Sunday's race. So, I took this morning off from training (which was good because I overslept a little) and thought I would do a different kind of post today.

I thought I would occasionaly post about the gear I'm using throughout my training. There isn't a lot of gear required for running but it's amazing how many gadgets you can amass when you get into it.

Yesterday's post included a couple of videos that I shot on my iPod Nano. One of them is upside down because I'm new to using the video function, so I'll try to go back and fix it if I can.

Here's a pic of my iPod:


I'm pretty sure it's the 4th generation iPod Nano. I don't have a ton of music on it, but I downloaded some songs to run to (including a lot of music from Rocky) and I enjoy listening to podcasts. It also has a video camera built into it. The quality is surprisingly good for the size of the Nano, but I rarely use it to shoot video. I'm having fun playing with it for the blog though.


I bought an arm band by Griffin for use on my runs and I have a pair of wrap-around headphones that stay in place pretty well. The arm band is comfortable and unintrusive. It holds the iPod in a plastic case that keeps it from getting scratched and keeps most of my sweat off of it. I run the headphones chord up my back and mostly forget about it during a run.


Sometimes it's nice to zone out to music on a long run and sometimes I'll play the faster-paced playlist when I need a little up-tempo inspiration. I'm a fan of the Two Gomers podcast (http://www.twogomers.com/) and a movie podcast from http://www.slashfilm.com/. The Gomers talk about their adventures in running and the Slashfilmcast talks about movies. Between the two, I have plenty of materieal to entertain myself on really long runs.

I don't always take my iPod on a run, but it's a great gadget when I want something to listen to.

Tuesday
Goal For The Day: Rest
Distance: 0.00 Miles.

Notes: I originally had 4 Miles on the schedule for today but a day off is probably a better idea with the race coming up. I'll do my regularly scheduled speedwork tomorrow and my scheduled 4 Miles Thursday. I'll cut back on my speedwork Friday and rest on Saturday. Then Sunday is the big day!

Daily Miles: 0.00 Miles.
Blog Totals:
  Run - 67.11 Miles.
  Bike - 42.51 Miles.
  Swim - 2,700+ meters.

3 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure yours is the 5th generation. Mine is a 4th and it doesn't do any cool stuff. By the way, I like your new font :).

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  2. I think you're right. My bad. One day, I'll look back on this post and laugh about how I used to have to carry my music with me instead of just downloading it straight to my brain!

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  3. I use my 'droid phone with mapmyrun to log my runs, and when I first started training for my half last year, I would listen to mp3's from it as well. I loaded up a big playlist of up-tempo songs that I loved. And then one day, I left my headphones at work and so I went out without the music. And I didn't miss it, not one bit. To the point that I haven't put the headphones in for a single run since that day. I'm not sure why--if it was up to me I'd listen to music pretty much all day. For some reason, not so much on the runs.

    Of course, I try to avoid treadmills like the plague (way too tedious for my short attention span), so if I had to climb on one of those, I wouldn't go near it with a 10-and-a-half-foot pole without an mp3 player. Tho i've thought about putting digital copies of tv shows/movies on my phone to watch while on the treadmill...that might work.

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