So last night I was 20 minutes into The Extra Mile Podcast, and a 4 mile treadmill run when ZAAAP! My iPod just stopped working. The sound stopped, the screen went black, and more frustratingly, the data acquisition stopped. So the first question I imagine you all have is WHY? …why are you running on a treadmill, that is. 
Seems that with 2 kids, and my early morning trips to get my daughter to preschool, it’s hard to run in the morning (plus I’m not really a morning person)… so after the kids are in bed, the dishes done, etc… I head to the gym.
Back to the iPod… I was a little stressed at first… I continued my run, finishing the final 2 miles while thinking about one thing… How will I compete in the Nike + Half Marathon (the iPod/Nike+ virtual race) in Oct. with a dead nano? Got home and tried plugging it in, only to see it fail to start up, connect to iTunes, or anything…. CRAP, I killed it I thought. I went to bed thinking about how I would take it to the Apple store to see if it is a bad battery, or how I would explain that it’s just a few days out of warranty…. When I woke up - Poof! it was working again…. So, my latest hypothesis is that it was shorted out with sweat while running.
I took it to the Apple store, and everything looked good, but there was some (salty) goop around the Nike+ receiver… again supporting my hypothesis. So, I walked in to Apple Heaven thinking I may need to drop $150 for a new nano, but walked out just $30 lighter after buying a new (fully enclosed) armband for it. I’m going to try the Nike+ band, and additionally I’m thinking to wrap the nano in a baggie to see if that solves the problem. This is more reasonable than solving the issue of heavy sweating on my arms!
Side note is this… I went to the gym with my blood glucose at 90. Ate a gell, and ran - and my BG stayed right around 70 - 90 the entire time… maybe a little bit low, but in range, and as a result, I felt GREAT from a running standpoint. Whew, that’s a good thing because it’s just over a week until the Bridge to Bridge 7K, which means the World Wide Half is right around the corner…
Final note… I feel like my iPod is looking out for his daddy… You see it died the same day that I successfully wrote some software that takes an iPod run XML file and converts it into a .hst file for Garmin’s MotionBased website. I end up running on a treadmill, but can’t get those runs into MotionBased, until now. It works pretty well with one exception - the GPS track. Since the iPod doesn’t know where you are, there is no data - NO WORRY, I just set up a strait line out in the ocean. I can get the other data I am interested in, and just ingnore the mapping part. So if you start seeing my runs where I’m out in the ocean, you’ll now why. And with the first two names James Christopher, hence the initials J.C., was there any doubt that I could run on water?!
Running from the impending lightning,
Jamie, The Diabetic Runner
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