After getting the white, large size Nike Pro running shirt, I wasn’t sure about it. It was way too tight. Breathing felt like exercise. And the white stretched fabric was kind of translucent, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I stopped in at Dick’s Sporting Goods, and tried on a purple XL sized Nike Pro shirt. I looked for Under Armour, but didn’t see any. I really didn’t look too hard. Anyway, I tried on the shirt, and it fit much better. It also looked much better than the translucent white shirt. Hopefully this shirt will work well for the half marathon. I am hoping it wont irritate my nipples! Damn that hurts! Having not run in a compression shirt before, I will try it tonight, and tomorrow night. I am not sure where I am running yet. Either on my treadmill, or down at the community center on the 1/16th mile indoor track. I also want to try out the foot pod for my Polar RS200sd heart monitor.
As I was getting towards the end of my 11 mile run last Sunday, my nipples were getting sore. I had heard about this happening. They were rubbing against the inside of my shirt. The shirt I was wearing was a Nike Sphere Dry shirt that has kind of a rough texture. It supposedly has more surface area for moisture to evaporate, but meanwhile it became increasingly more and more uncomfortable as I ran. I am going to run a half marathon this coming Sunday, and need to find a solution. I had ordered another shirt which came yesterday. I was hoping it would have a smoother material, and be kinder, gentler to my nipples, but alas, it was a compression fit thing that I am not ready to be seen in public in. I may go down to Dick’s Sporting Goods tonight and buy yet another Nike shirt, but a regular Dri-Fit shirt, and not the Sphere Dry. They seem smoother. I have read that some guys put bandaids over their nipples, but that seems kind of weird!
I saw a Nike Pro running shirt on eBay for relatively cheap. it cost $13 including shipping. I had bought a Nike Sphere Dry shirt at the local sports store for$35 plus tax. Well the Nike Pro shirt came yesterday. Apparently the Nike Pro shirts are compression fit? The Sphere Dry shirt I bought was size large. So that is what I bought the Nike Pro shirt. When I openned the package, I thought they sent me a kid’s shirt. The label did say LGG, the same as my other Nike shirt. So I tried it on. It was a little snug. Not sure if I would call it comfortable. Maybe I need an XL? It is very form fitting. I am in pretty good shape but not ripped. I am working on getting my body fat down. The shirt doesn’t look BAD on me, but I think I will hold off on wearing the shirt in public until I get my body fat down closer to let’s say 5%. Also, the shirt is a little translucent, and my chest hair looks very strange under the shirt. I am NOT going to shave my chest. I used to do that years ago when I was messing around with body building. But I was in my 20’s then.
My Polar RS200sd was delivered by UPS yesterday. The delivery box was trashed, but the Polar box inside was fine. I didn’t get a chance to try everything yet. When I first turned it on, the screen was filled with junk. All of the little LCD pieces were on. I tried pressing all of the buttons for a reset, but that didn’t work. I was beginning to think I got a bad watch. But one of the tiems I did the reset, it finally cleared. It asked me a bunch of questions, and I did the setup.
I tried the Polar Fitness Test to find my “OwnIndex”. Reading through the instructions, I think I neglected to lie down and rest 1-3 minutes before doing the test. I might have laid down for a minutes as I read the manul trying to figure out how to to start the test. I will have to try it again. My OwnIndex result from my first try was 50. That was rated “very good”. Looking at the chart in the book, 50 is as towards the top of the Very Good range for my age group, and greater than 51 is “Elite”. Not sure how meaningfull the results are though. It is still interesting.
After karate class, I got home, changed, and jumped on the treadmill. I did my 15 minutes warm up, ran/jogged/walked for 3 miles, then did another 15 minutes of cool down. I didn’t try the foot pod as I read it is not accurate on a treadmill. But the heart monitor results seemed to flow differently than my Oregon Scientific HR102. The Polar doesn’t jump around as much. I am guessing that they are averaging the numbers a little to keep them from jumping around so much. But that would also delay them a little.
I am hoping to get an opportunity to test the foot pod before the half marathon race on Sunday. It is raining today. There is a small 1/16th mile indoor oval track down at the community center. So maybe tonight or tomorrow night I will go down there and run some laps.
I had signed up over a month or so ago to donate blood this Friday at my work. I was going to do a double red donation. But then I started training for a marathon in December, which is going to be hard enough. Then I signed up to run a half marathon this Sunday having forgotten temporarily about the blood donation. When I remembered, I did a search for information about double red donations and running. I vaguely remember then saying after my last double red donation that it had less of an impact than a regular donation, because they put most of the stuff back in. But in my reading, I found that people were complaining about about even being able to complete short runs following a double red donation, and that even 5 weeks later they still were running markedly slower. Ouch! I am going to be having a hard enough time with running a half marathon. It will be the longest distance I have run to date. My legs are still hurting from the 11 mile run yesterday. I can’t imagine how I would fare after having a big chunk of my red blood cells removed from my body. Kind of reverse blood doping. And I have a karate tournament coming up next month as well. So I scratched my name off the blood donation list. Maybe I will sign up again in January, or late December after I complete the marathon.