I can’t believe I forgot to mention this, but I won my first Nike+ Challenge! Over the thirty days of the Metafilter 1.0 Challenge, I logged 88.37km (which is just shy of 55 miles). I can’t believe it either. Especially since I injured myself halfway through and thus had to walk all the rest of it. I feel a little guilty actually, seeing as how the other participants were all dealing with the Northern Hemisphere winter and I was cruising through summer. I’m also lucky to live such a pedestrian-friendly city where I can walk to work and back every day. I’m sure the MeFites will get me next time. Many thanks to Hoey for setting it up and especially to pyjammy and pjrivera for pushing me ever further. 🙂

Yay! I’ve finally got something on my virtual trophy shelf!

After two days of rest and ice, the leg is feeling pretty good! I walked to work this morning without any pain or stiffness. The physio still wants me to refrain from running for a while longer, but at least I can get some exercise now. (And get back to my Challenges. I have another one starting today.)

It appears that perhaps psorr was prescient. Despite not running for the past few days, I’ve just suffered a blinding pain in my left quad when reaching down for a book. I’m off to the physio in ten minutes. STUPID STUPID STUPID.

Later: Turns out I have a small tear in this sucker. It’s not bad. I’m supposed to ice it for a few days and take it easy. I can walk, but not fast. The hardest thing is fighting the urge to stretch it. (I’m not supposed to.) It’s like poking a sore tooth. I just want to make sure it still hurts. Again, STUPID.

Hoey’s challenge is killing me! But as we agreed over IM today, it’s doing a really good job of motivating us to run. The lead keeps switching between me, him, and another person, and every time I see that I’m in third I have to head out there again. I’ve done over twelve miles in four days! (That’s nearly 20km.) My hamstrings are actually holding up really well; it’s the rest of me that’s falling apart. My left quad is sore and my lower back is tied up in knots. I think I may have to switch it up to walking for a few days if I’m doing to survive the month.

Oh – and since someone has asked, for running music I usually listen to Podrunner. This guy does a weekly podcast of dance music that’s all set to a specific “beats per minute.” It’s great at keeping me in a rhythm without the distraction of iTunes occasionally throwing up a Disney song. (My other preferred workout music is, of course, Max’s mixes.)

I was surfing MeFi last week when I saw this post suggesting a Nike+ challenge for MetaFilter users. “Intriguing!” I thought. “A running contest against pasty white geekboys? I might actually have a chance!” So I signed up. Then today I got an IM from the originator… and it turns out to be my old college friend Hoey! I’m not sure whether knowing one of the participants makes me more or less bloodthirsty. *shrug* Anyhoo, tonight I headed out for a 5K run around Vic Park. I managed the whole thing without stopping – quite the accomplishment here lately – and my hamstrings seem to be holding up well. (I’ve been applying anti-inflammatory gel before and after I run, and I’ve even started going to yoga again in an attempt to get in more stretching.) And the coolest thing is – thanks to the time zone difference, I’m the only one who’s had a chance to run yet so I’m in first place! I’ll try to enjoy it while it lasts…

Nike+ iPod Tracker
I was reading Podophile the other day when I discovered that someone’s written a WordPress widget to display your running Nike+ stats on your blog. The obvious problem is that I’m not running WordPress. In the comments I discovered two possible alternatives: justdoing.it (a service that grabs your data for you) and this bit of PHP that emulates the WordPress widget. I’m wary of giving my username and password to a service with so little identifying information, so justdoing.it is out. I turned to the code. It works by hitting the Nike site every hour and pulling down your data. Well, I don’t run that much. So the Snook and I came up with the idea of setting up a cron job to run the script at midnight every night. It pulls down all my run information (as XML files) and then I can do whatever I like with it. So far, I’ve created a badge for my sidebar with my cumulative totals. Whaddaya think? This weekend I’ll add in the details of my most recent run. Drop me an e-mail if you’re interested in the code. And thanks to Ernie for getting me started!

Oh, and this article on the possibility of people using your Nike+ sensor to STALK YOU? Is ridiculous. I doubt many runners wear their running shoes everywhere. And besides, if you know their habits well enough to place sensors wherever they’re going to be, you might as well just follow them around. It’s pointless. Besides, I watch Veronica Mars and everybody can be tracked by their cell phones anyway.

It appears that running a marathon in two weeks may have been a little, uh, overambitious. I just can’t help it; I’m signed up for two separate Nike+ iPod challenges (one to run the farthest in a month; the other to run 50 miles in the 25 days up to Christmas) and my competitive urge has kicked in. Tuesday night I actually set a new personal best for the mile (10:24) but as I was climbing the hill from Sydney Uni’s No. 2 Oval, I felt a sudden stab in my hamstring. Again. Crap. I ended up walking the rest of the distance home. I guess I’ve been ramping up the distance too quickly. I decided to give it a rest on Wednesday and Thursday. I also started rubbing Voltaren on the muscle a few times a day (since I can’t take ibuprofen anymore) and I’ve taken a couple Epsom salt baths. I also saw a massage therapist Thursday afternoon who gave my legs a thoroughly painful going-over. Friday I felt cautiously optimistic enough to try a short run. I went for a two mile run around Vic Park and tried to concentrate on taking shorter strides and not killing myself. I also ran 90% of it on the grass, which I figured would help. I still felt some pain, but it wasn’t really the muscular strain of before. (I think it was just soreness from the massage.) Afterwards I went to GNC to pick up some Endura. It’s nast but I’m forcing myself to choke it down a couple times a day. Does anybody else have any suggestions to get me back on the road as quickly as possible?

Well, I did it! I officially ran a marathon… in two weeks. Since I got my Nike + iPod kit two weeks ago, I’ve logged 42.74km (that’s 26.55 miles) over eight runs, with a total elapsed time of 4’54:33. That’s not bad! Now all I have to do is do it all in one go. (HA.)

I’m having a hard time finding anybody to “challenge” on the Nike+ website. I’ve put my name down for a few of them on the forums, but so far I haven’t gotten any invitations. Do any of you guys want to go running (virtually) with me? On a related note, I logged my longest training run yet tonight: 6.65 kilometers. Woohoo!