Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Woo Hoo!!

First things first...I have lost two pounds in two weeks. Five more pounds to go!

Secondly, how many of you have an iPod? I've been thinking about buying one but I'm having a tough time determining if I'll get my return on investment. (He he! I'm an engineer--only people like me would try to figure out an ROI on an iPod.) See, most likely I am not going to wear the iPod when I run outside. It's dangerous. There have been two women recently attacked on the trail I run on and I've been chased by enough dogs that I want to be able to hear them. So the only time I would wear my iPod to run would be when I'm on the treadmill or when I'm running on the track. I like to ride my bike on a trainer so I could see myself using an iPod then and I hate to grocery shop and could see myself using the iPod when I grocery shop. I drive an Element and it has a built in adapter to play the MP3s through the stereo so I could use it then too. And here's the kicker...I get a discount on it. So what do y'all think?

I am running the Reach the Beach relay in New Hampshire September 16th and 17th. Anyone else running it? My legs are 9, 21, 33. Check it out!

I'm also running the Manhattan Half Marathon on August 27th. Anyone else? I would love to meet any RBFers while I'm in NY. More details on that later.

Finally, a friend of a friend recently did Ironman Lake Placid. It was inspiring. I was able to watch her finish online and then I looked at her splits. To me, they were doable. Now the wheels are turning. My goal has always been to do an Ironman before I turned 30. I think Dave will divorce me if I train for an Ironman. He didn't see me very much when I was training for the half.

That's all for now folks. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm doing my catch-up blog reading, so I'm a little late to answer your ipod question.

I LOVE my iPod. I run with mine outdoors and I bike with it, too. I also listen to it at the gym, in the car, while I'm reading and now I'm going to have to listen to it while I'm grocery shopping!

One of the best parts about it is that it feeds my need to organize. No more mixed tapes - I have a running playlist, two sprinting playlists, a biking playlist, a driving playlist, a happy playlist, a grumpy playlist etc. Or you can just choose to listen to only a certain artist or a certain album. And it holds so much music! I put my entire music collection on it, plus some of Matt's and it's barely half-full. We're talking days and days of music with no repeats.

The only thing I don't like about it is the iPod headphones. They tend to fall out of my ears when I sprint, but I bought an extra piece that goes over head ear-piece and now they stay in perfectly. And I'm the only one I know who has had that problem.

One thing to know about it that took me a while to figure out is that it learns what music you like best (whatever you listen to most and don't skip over) and plays it more often. So if you use your iPod for a while and then add music, you have to reset the memory by holding down the top and bottom button, otherwise it won't play the new music very often because it hasn't classified it as part of your "favorites".

Hmmm, what else? You can use your iPod to transfer files (Excel, Word, etc) from computer to computer if you don't have a disc handy. It also has a calendar built into it and contact information, but I never use those.

You can also buy the cheaper version, the iPod shuffle. You just download songs onto it and it plays them at random - no playlists or anything, though.

Ok, I think that's it for my sell on iPods. )Sorry for all the rambling!) I wasn't entirely sure I needed one when I got it, but I'm totally addicted to it now. Let me know what you decide to do!

Derek said...

Hey, thanks for the comment on my blog! Sorry to miss you at the Manhattan half, but I'll take pictures of Colorado for you...

I like the little flash players better than iPods, myself. They're hold fewer songs, but they're a lot smaller. The only flash-based iPod is the shuffle, but for a few bucks more you can get an MP3 player with a screen, voice recorder and an FM tuner. I have a Samsung YP-MT6 (scarcely bigger than the AA battery that powers it), but the Creative MuVo and Sandisk models also seem pretty good. $130 for 512MB is pretty standard.

(The other problem with iPods is that music from the iPod store, only plays on iPods. So if spend a lot of money there, you're kinda locked into buying iPods from here on out. Songs you buy from buymusic.com or wherever play on a variety of players)