I Worship (while) Running with Nike+iPod

The combination of three things have recently changed my life and got me exercising (as well as starting to increase my life-expectancy). I have decided to share them.

First: A couple years ago Michele researched some running books and ended up purchasing: The Beginning Runner’s Handbook: The Proven 13-Week Walk/Run Program. I’ve watched Michele run this 13-week program with amazing results and increase her running pace to be two minutes per mile faster than what I can run .

Second: We recently acquired a second iPod Nano along with Nike+. In case you’re not familiar with Nike+, it’s a pebble that fit in Nike shoes (or attaches to shoelaces of other shoes), and an adaptor that connects to an iPod Nano. The combination of these two gadgets keeps track of your running (speed and distance), loads the data online and allows you to track your progress and compete with other runners online.

Third: I found listening to General Conference while I run quite enjoyable. Absorbing the messages of conference while running has provided me with new insights.

Making it better: The only negative thing about these three is having to look at the clock on the iPod or a watch while running the 13-Week Walk/Run Program. I’ve found a solution, to create a blissful run. I’ve added audible minutes markers (a computer voice speaking the minute) to the last Semiannual General Conference (Oct 2007). Now I just listen to know what to start and stop running.

For you geeks, I wrote a simple applescript to create the spoken text (as .aiff files). GarageBand was used to compose the minute audio and the general conference podcast together. The final file was exported as a .m4a (which I think allow me to pause between runs and keeps the file size small). I used the KSL Conference podcast, but will probably go back and add the minute markers to the Church’s mp3s instead (KSL breaks each session into two two-hour tracks) The church doesn’t.

Here is the applescript:

tell application "Finder"
	global time
	global destination_folder
	global repeat_times
	display dialog "How many minutes?" default answer "121"
	set repeat_times to the result
	set repeat_times_text to the text returned of repeat_times
	set destination_folder to (choose folder) as text
	set time to "1"
	repeat repeat_times_text times
		if time = "1" then
			set texttospeak to time & " minute" as text
		else
			set texttospeak to time & " minutes" as text
		end if
		say texttospeak using "Victoria" saving to destination_folder & time & "_min.aiff"
		set time to time + "1"
	end repeat
end tell

And here are the files:

GC Oct 6 2007 SAT AM Hour 1.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SAT AM Hour 2.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SAT PM Hour 1.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SAT PM Hour 2.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SUN AM Hour 1.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SUN AM Hour 2.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SUN PM Hour 1.m4a
GC Oct 6 2007 SUN PM Hour 2.m4a

02/03/2008 | hugh |

Comment

  1. I just use an egg timer and and my 8 Track player.

    http://roper5.com/images/79.jpg

    Doug
    Feb 3, 03:46 PM

  2. I still don’t understand how you can run to people talking. I listen to the Soundtrack from The Cutting Edge. You should try it!

    http://roper5.com/images/79.jpg

    Sarah
    Feb 3, 05:11 PM

  3. What’s an eight-track player?

    http://roper5.com/images/79.jpg

    Hugh Roper
    Feb 3, 06:45 PM

Commenting is closed for this article.