Nike+ Sportband

Hi everyone,

As you may know, I took up running/jogging last year to help with my fitness and to lose some weight.  Recently, I purchased the Nike+ Sportband to wear running to track my speed and distance.

Nike+ Sportband

The wristband receives the information from the shoe sensor and tracks distance, speed, calories burned and time.  Throughout the run, these figures flash on the little screen. When you've finished running, the black part of the wristband detattches and you can plug it into your computer to download the information from your run (it has a USB like plug on the end).

I think I'll find this quite useful to track my progress as I'm focusing now on improving my speed and distance to hopefully work up to 5.7kms (as I am aiming to do the "Run for the Kids" fundraising fun run for the Royal Children's Hospital in mid-April).

My main criticisms are that it doesn't display heart rate (I think you have to purchase an additional accessory to display heart rate) and the pace or speed is displayed according to minutes/kilometer (i.e. how many minutes it takes you to run 1km).  I would prefer if speed were displayed as km/hour.  Also, I recommend you go to the website to find the instructions to intall the device.  It wasn't really that hard, but the instruction leaflet that comes with it is seriously worse than IKEA instructions.  There were no words, just random pictures of shoes etc.

Here is an example of what the graph looks like:

Nike+ Sportband Running Graph

I ran 4.37kms yesterday, which I am quite happy with considering I had estimated about 4km from Google Maps.  I think I have run further in the past, maybe up to 4.5-4.6km, however it was quite hot and humid yesterday, thanks to all the rain so I perhaps didn't push as hard.

As far as the shoe sensor goes, you are supposed to buy the Nike compatible shoes which have a recess in the sole to slip the sensor into.  I didn't really see the point in buying new shoes when there is nothing wrong with my current ones, so I opted to purchase a little plastic clip (on eBay) which clips the sensor to your shoelaces.

SwitchEasy RunAway Nike+ Sensor Clip

The one I purchased was called the "SwitchEasy RunAway", but I think there are a few different brands of clips available through eBay.

The Sportband is available from Rebel Sport in Australia (and Nike stores as well, I presume), however I purchased mine through eBay because none of the Rebels I tried had the pink colour, haha!  Plus it was cheaper (around AU$60 including postage).  Send me an email if you would like to know the eBay sellers that I purchased the band and/or clip from.

Thanks for reading!