I'm a jogger, a slow one as you might imagine, but a little bit compulsive about some aspects. Like this...
I like routine. I try to run the same days, same times and only a small number of routes. When in Houston for a visit, I run the loop at Memorial Park, and when I do hills, I have a favorite "Scenic Loop" variation that comes out at about 7 miles that I'm really fond of. So, what does any of this have to do with atheism, or iPods? Hold on, I'm getting there!
See, at some point after I started jogging, I began logging my runs. At first I used spiral notebooks. I'd record the date, elapsed time, distance, location, and anything else of interest, like, whether it was raining, or cold, or whatever. About 10 years ago, I started to log this info in an Excel file that I'm still using.
The point to all this is that I really like to know how far I go on a particular run.
Of course, when I run a loop at Town Lake, the distances are known. And when I do a street run, I can always drive it afterwards in the car and get the distance from the odometer.
Still, there are gaps. If I were to run for 30 minutes on the north side of the lake and turn around and come back, how far would that be? Don't know. So, several years ago, I bought a wrist mounted GPS designed for runners. Not only could this little tool tell me my distance, it could keep me up to date on my current pace, which I found might be really helpful after my second marathon, the one where I started WAY too fast and then walked most of the 2nd half.
But trees and cloudy days interfered with the GPS, so I was really excited to hear about the Nike Plus (+) system. If you haven't heard, Nike + is a system that works with an iPod Nano, and consists of a chip that goes in your shoe, a receiver that pugs into the bottom slot of the Nano, and a software upgrade. The ads say that you can get pace and distance updates through your earphones as you listen to your favorite running tunes.
After a significant drooling period, I got a Nano and the $30 Nike+ kit. It took me a couple of times to get it to work like I wanted, but I have to say, it works pretty well. I have re-measured established runs, and found the Nike+ distance very close to what I had figured before, and running to tunes seems to help my performance. I do, however, leave my iPod behind on those runs where I need to keep an ear open for the sound of approaching cars.
And, by the way, I will also offer a plug for the Podrunner podcast, where you can get free hour-plus techno tracks labeled with a BPM (beat per minute). My favorite pace is 173 BPM. More info at djsteveboy.com
After I'd had my iPod for a couple months, I become aware that ACA was making both the Non-Prophets Radio and Atheist Experience shows available as podcasts. So, I follow the easy directions on the websites, and very quickly I have the current and several back issues of each show loaded and ready for listening.
I can't begin to describe how much I have enjoyed this! I had never heard a complete Non-Prophets show, and was only rarely able to watch the Experience TV show. Now, I never miss an episode of either, and have also listened to most of the archived shows.
One lesson I quickly learned, however. I cannot jog while listening to one of the atheist shows, because every now and then, these guys crack me up!
So, if you're a runner, or an atheist, or both, get yourself an iPod. You'll be mighty glad you did!
