Might As Well Face It, I'm Addicted To Running

I remember the day fondly. January 17, 2007. My girlfriend CVS and I were at my parents' house in Long Island still in the initial stages of the courting process. I had just pulled out a small black Nike plastic bag from my knapsack which held an item I had purchased the day previous and wanted to take a look at. I pulled a little square box from the bag and read the words 'Nike+ running sensor' at the top of the box.

"What is that?" asked my girlfriend CVS who I had begun digging very much lately.

"It's some chip you attach to your shoes and your stupid Apple iPod which then keeps track of your runs. It is supposed to be able to tell you how far you ran, how long it took you and the calories burned. Apparently, it then saves all this information on the interweb."

"That's so neat!" exclaimed my girlfriend CVS.

"Agreed," said I, "Now, before I see if this thing actually works, let's go make out!"

Our make out session concluded, I headed downstairs to hook up my Nike+ sensors and then went off to see for myself just what this little chip could do.

And after my first stride, I was hooked.

When my first run had been uploaded and I had viewed the incredibly accurate data the chip had collected, I found myself wanting to run again just to increase my numbers.

Almost two-and-a-half years later, with upwards of 8,000 miles under my belt in that time, my desire to continue increasing my Nike+ numbers has not decreased a bit. And, while my girlfriend CVS has become my dopeness wife CVSW, my glowing reviews of the Nike+ system remain glowing.

So why this obsession with my running numbers?

According to the article The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics, published in Wired Magazine on June 22, 2009 which described the effect the Nike+ running system has had on users, my running addiction is the product of a well-known theory among sociologists called the Hawthorne Effect. In its simplest terms, the Hawthorne Effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied, not in response to any particular experimental manipulation. And this is exactly what was happening to me the moment I used the Nike+ sensor. As soon as I saw the statistics of my first run, I began actively observing myself and my performance and began wanting to increase that performance as much as possible. And, by combining a dead-simple way to amass data with tools to view and share it, Nike+ has used the theory of Living by Numbers (the ability to gather and analyze data about yourself, setting up a feedback loop that you can use to upgrade your lives, from better health to better habits to better performance) to exploit the Hawthorne Effect to its fullest.

I guess that just about says it all. I'm happy that I can cite the cause for my running addiction the next time T,H,E K,I,D or The Gull berates me for my obsessive ways.

Anyways, all this writing about Nike+ has me itching for a run. And it most definitely is an itch I want to scratch!