As you may or may not have noticed, for quite a while, I had no activity on my “Recent Runs” (in the right sidebar, under “NIKE+ STATS”).

This was for 2 reasons. I was running less frequently, and a lot of my runs were done barefoot. The Nike+ (which is essentially a pedometer) relies on a transmitter that rests inside the base of the sneaker. If my Nike+ enabled sneakers are sitting in my closet while I’m out running, there’s no run data to report.

I was running less frequently because I got burnt out on the (limited) options for running in the neighborhood where I was living. There was 1 nice running path, but once you do it 50+ times, motivation to continue to do so begins to vanish.

Anyway, I have moved to a new neighborhood (less than a mile from the beach here in SoCal!) and I also got an iPhone. The Nike+ GPS app for iPhone relies on GPS to determine how far you’ve run, so I no longer need to have my Nike+ shoes with me to track my runs.

So now I’m able to record run data, and I have tons of new paths to explore. Awesome!

On a somewhat unrelated note, I recently acquired a pair of barefoot running shoes (“Evo Mesh” by VIVOBAREFOOT) from Planet Shoes. I’m planning on trying them out tonight, and if all goes well I’ll be posting a review shortly. Stay tuned!

Just a quick update, for those of you wondering why I seemingly haven’t been running at all lately.

The Nike+ run updates in the right sidebar come from the Nike+ iPod chip. This chip is in my sneakers. I haven’t been running in sneakers lately. I’ve actually been running barefoot. More to come on barefoot running later, but until I figure out a way to use the Nike+ run tracker without wearing shoes (or perhaps with a pair of Vibram Five Fingers), I’m not sure how I’ll be keeping that thing updated.

But yeah, general lack of updates due to what I’d say is a major shift in my running regimen. Slowly but surely working my way into the whole running without shoes thing… So far, so good. Will post a more detailed update all about this when I have some more time.

I was messing around on Twitter earlier today, when I came across the Twiike Leaderboard. I’ve posted about Twiike before – It allows you to automatically add your Nike+ runs to Twitter. Anyway, the Twiike service put together a list of the top 100 runners (out of those using the service, obviously). When I saw that, I told myself that I needed to be on that list – I was just assuming I wasn’t on there. As I scrolled down, I saw my Twitter name (@Runlikeh3ll) and I’m #73 on the list. Pretty cool! Now I’m determined to move up that list. I’ve been doing nothing but interval runs lately, so my runs are short but fast. Anyway, we’ll see how that goes.

I absolutely love Nike+ iPod. This thing has kept me motivated to continue running for over a year. I don’t use it for every single run I go on (sometimes I forget to bring the Nike+ chip with me, sometimes I do the elliptical at the gym because my knees are bothering me, etc) but I’ve been using it for close to two years now, and the novelty hasn’t worn off. I have no idea if other people ever check out my run info, but I know that I check my own stats out every once in a while.

Anyway, I came across Twiike this morning. You can use it to display your Nike+ runs on your Twitter profile (mine is here). Pretty cool, huh? I don’t know how many of you use Nike+ (and out of that group, how many also use Twitter) but if you do happen to use both, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t want to check out Twiike.