This really brings great sense of achievement.

What’s new

This is not my very first 10k, but the first time I finished 10 km comfortably - without feeling exhausted, dehydrated, or wanting to walk, stop or give up. I just ran 10k non-stop. Additionally, this is the first time ever that I ran without my earbuds on. In fact I did not even bring my phone with me this time.

Goodbye to my good ol’ Nike+ Running App

I used to carry my phone every time I wanted to run. The Nike+ Running app really did a great job in terms of motivation and gamification. These are some things that I really loved (and missed):

  • Real-person voiceover that gives you an encouraging compliment after each run, especially after beating your PRs
  • In-time voice notifications informing you of your current pace, time, and lap
  • Great community so that not only can you compete with yourself, but also with your friends, with people at your age, with people in your neighbourhood, and essentially with everyone in the world
  • Music control and Spotify integration. It loads your favourite Spotify playlist, and even the offline music that you saved earlier if you are a Spotify premium user. If you have abundant cellular data or city wide wifi, you can even let the app choose the songs for you to stream based on your pace and heart rate, so that you always get the right tempo
  • Indoor mode which makes it still useful when you are on a treadmill

This app is so perfect that I did not even bother charging my Garmin Forerunner 10 (a GPS watch) that I received as a gift.

However, after reading and hearing a lot from my parents and a bunch of professional advices, I decided to switch to the GPS watch. The basic ideas were:

  • The phone is too heavy to carry around compared to a watch
  • The phone is not wearable. Even if you purchase some sports accessories so that you could bind it on your arm or waist, it still hurts if you’re doing a long run
  • Your watch is hands free, and your phone is not, when you need info
  • Most watches record your location more frequently than the apps do (more location data points per minute), and therefore creating more accurate results
  • Your watch has its own battery and does not heat up for constant GPS usage

In short, your watch is an expert designed specifically for this purpose, while your phone app is just an average Joe that gets the job done - with some tricks that make you happy.

Some insightful discussions on this that I find interesting to read:

Data Migration

It’s definitely painful to export all your records from Nike+ Running App. Unlike any other competitors, there is just no official way to download the data, and I’m not sure if this is because of their overconfidence that they are leading the industry. Lucily, I found these two tools super handy:

The tradeoff is that you will need to type in your Nike account and password. I reset my password temporarily to something and then changed it back afterwards.

If you’re exporting runs with GPS data, you should want the GPX format. If it’s a treadmill run where there is only pace, download the TCX format. When in doubt, always open the files in two formats in a text editor and compare which one has more data in it. If you are not like me, the file with bigger size is usually the one you want. This is the painful part if you have a lot of runs, because you really need to manually verify each one, if you care about them. Behind the scenes they are all XML files.

I then imported these files to Garmin Connect. Even then I still lost some data - like lap splits - really it’s because there is no standard protocal in creating these GPX or TCX files. Each company has its own variations (the XML tags are different, for example).

One solution that I found accidentally (when I was comparing products) is to upload your Nike data to Strava. And then download them from Strava. You’ll be surprised Strava handles the Nike-formatted files better. When you bulk download the same runs from Strava, the files will be more happily accepted and recognized by Garmin Connect.

The sound of silence, and the thoughts

My mom said, “yeah, you’ll be fine coz you only run 5k or 10k. If you’re like me or your dad (they are marathon runners), you’d be deaf by wearing your earbuds for that long period of time”.

She may or may not be right, but I’ve never tried running without music. I guess that’s just something I do subliminally, based on what I see in TV shows, iPhone ads and Apple Watch ads - people always have earbuds when they run. But oh well running without any music just feels so much better. It’s definitely worth trying. When I was not listening to music, my brain started to think about random things - best friends, loved ones, family, childhood memories, JavaScript, the bug that I dealt with, dynamic programming algorithms from CS341, texture of favourite foods, jokes that I made with friends, Youtube videos that I saw earlier, imagined conversation with someone, my favourite German professor teaching a new grammar… anything, bascially. I’d change my mind and say it’s not random things - it’s things that you care the most. It’s things that make who you are.

It’s simply nicer to listen to your feet stepping on the ground. In the Laurier trail I could also listen to birds and leaves when the wind blows. I recommend a book that my parents recommended to me before, which I did not bother reading until now. I’ll probably write another blog about this book, but if you’re interested in running, you should read it.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir

Some discussions on running and music that I find interesting to read:

The next step

Of course I will keep running and make full use of the watch. It feels the entire day is lightened up after a run, and you’ll be promised to be more efficient in working and studying. Since I lost the gamification part of using the Nike app, I’d buy myself a better watch as a reward, when I finish 300 runs with the current one in the year of 2016. Better than a badge on a piece of software eh? The better watch would come with wireless syncing with my phone, better screen and battery life, works on treadmill, with more types of sensors and more detailed stats, etc. I’m looking forward to the Garmin Forerunner 25 which was just introduced 3 months ago - but I’m sure there will be a even better version a year later.

Wish me luck on completing my goal!