Loving the husband!!

Tony was away for work Monday and Tuesday. What timing - I had the night from hell with the kids on Monday night. Started with Jack sick and crying for over an hour at around 10pm, settled, Ben then started crying for around 20 minutes, probably with the disruption as they share a room. At 2am Katie had opened her door and I heard her outside my door where she SCREAMED in panic, frightened the life out of me! So, I was very tired come Tuesday when Katie was ill all day.

Anyway, husband comes home with a present for me :). He bought me a Nike sensor.

I'm fairly serious about my running now, 5 days a week. I kinda have a love/hate relationship with it. While I'm running, I find it difficult and think I could be doing better things with my time, but it gives me such a buzz and I feel really great afterwards. Despite my complaining about the scales not moving, I know I look and feel different. I'm down a dress size and sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself and think "hmm, not too wobbly any more" - still have a way to go though!

I've got my first official 5K in July and want to do more outdoor running now that it is Spring. I'd been looking at GPS watches to accurately track what I'm doing and help with my pace as I find it very different to the treadmill, but couldn't justify the cost. The Nike sensor is the next best thing! It's sort of a super fancy technologically advanced pedometer. You can get official Nike shoes which have a groove under the insole to put the chip, but they'll probably be mega expensive so you can buy a little pouch to put it through your lace straps. It is in conjunction with Ipod. There is a wireless transmitter that goes into the Ipod port so you can listen to your music and periodically it pauses play and a voice tells you how long, far, what pace you're doing, then resumes play. You can select power songs for a boost when you're flagging and it stores all of the workout data. When you get home, connect it to the PC and sync to "Nike plus" and it stores all of the data online (also keeps a workout history on the Ipod) and gives you graphs and all kinds of cool analysis. You can set goals and compete in challenges with other sensor users or just do your own thing. Can't wait.

The only problem is, I have an Ipod video. This only works with the Ipod nano. Oh dear. I guess I'll just have to treat myself ;-). I have my eye on the girly pink one! I collect Nectar points for various places I shop. It costs me nothing and I've built up just over 22000 points. I just saw a 4GB silver nano on there for 25000 so I was gutted - so close. Then I looked at the rewards a bit further and found I can cash in 22000 for £110 for a particular store. This is just about the price of a 8GB *pink* nano. The points have been accumulating for over a year. I would probably have eventually spent them on something for the house, but you know what, I never do anything for me, so I've reserved the nano at said shop and hopefully will pick it up tonight!!! I'm so excited. I love my video and will use that for general listening, but it is heavy and bulky when running, so this is going to work out great. The shuffle would have been ideal, but I can't input anything to that.

I'm hoping that it will be very encouraging when I'm running outside to hear "You have ran 2 miles, your current pace is 6.5 miles, you have 1 mile left, keep going!" when I feel like giving up.

Next on my shopping list - an arm/wrist band for the nano because currently the only pocket I have is a small one in the back of my pants! Who said running was free sport? It is costing me a fortune ;-)