My NIKE Human Race @ Shanghai 08.31.08

By 阿杜.Steward
Shanghai

About What is the Nike+ Human Race?

On 08.31.08, Nike is making a statement like no other before. Nike is putting on the World’s Largest Running Event. The 10k event will be the ultimate runner experience.

1. About my race

Overall, it was a great race, it was challenging and fresh (to most people including me, never experienced a race as far as 10K). When on the subway before the race that morning, everyone in red Tee-shirt and running shorts was agog about the game. You should know when running in such a large folk (approximately15 thousands of runners in Shanghai), it certainly provides you some additional push. It’s not only about competition,but also people enjoy being part of such a huge event and air of shared goal permeated.

So how was the race result for me? Er….as I mentioned, additional push from the folk, but unfortunately I was in the middle of the less speedy,seemed more like pull than push…yup, that was lame, got chicked and outrun by many runners even female runners 囧～

2. Something special about the race in Shanghai

- Everyone got nice NIKE gear for the race, check my photo- a T-shirt with a unique runner number, a gadget in the shoe that can sense your speed, and a gym sack (don’t understand why organizer required everybody running with it and actually made runners very uncomfortable when running.)

- Rain began to pour as soon as the race began at 7 am, stopped before 7:40 am, but the ground was wet through. It was a rainy day and has showers regularly during the whole race. Well it hampered the progress yet at least we didn’t have a burning sun :)

- I got interviewed by NIKE people :J

- By the road, plenty of water stations and bananas and even cheer girls. As giveaway after the race, everyone can get free Red T shirt (I am 180cm but got a S size Tee,囧) and gym coupon plus concert ticket for罗志祥,范玮琪,羽泉and胡彦斌 .

- The whole event was great , except the organizing was a bit messy, folk complained. But just let go the unpleasant, it's still unforgettable.

Besides an amateur athlete, here's some analyzing stuff as a part time consultant, hah~

3. Why it rocks

- Making different. Biggest running event over the world ever. 25 Cities around the globe and nearly thousands of thousands of people participating. To its participant, think about how cool it is, most of us never experienced 10K, and it provides a global connection point for everybody.

- Good timing. Right after the rocking Olympics, you should like to take some sport after watching the Beijing Olympics, well it is time. Let celebrate sports with our physical involvement!

- Combining NIKE + digital running world with physical. NIKE plus is a fresh concept from collaboration between two much-admired companies, NIKE and Apple. (Nike Plus is a technology that allows runner’s shoes to communicate with their iPod Nanos, it’s able to measure your distance, pace, time and calories burned during running). Your exercise now has data illustration, you can choose to upload to your blog for example and share with anyone in the world.

- Good geography selected. Many reason for selecting these 25 cities in the world, one of this is that it showcased many most famous landmarks in the world. My friend in Taiwan race through Taipei 101, and NY of course they ran pass Manhattan, UK through central London (but for Shanghai, we have a urgent location plan changed, and we only ran in and out the suburb Century Park,囧).

- It’s linked with charities. Disaster happened, and it people united. we are doing this for thing that’s so meaningful, delivering message about love and shared vision.

4. Some after-event suggestions

- Make it social. I was shocked when I entered the NIKE + website to check my result for the race(you can head over http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/humanrace/map.jsp for result). I simply input my Chinese Name and my data pop out! And another email will be pushed to my email address with more detailed information ,since I left my contact info when signing up for the race. So it’s a good chance, if NIKE make the most out of this information. If you like SNS such as facebook and xiaonei etc, you should be excited to know those people also running in the race afterwards. We can share photo, article and video with people running in other side of the world, even make friends with them. NIKE don’t have to build a website for this, can simply archive this by some collaboration with SNS website. In that case, it’s gonna rock for a longer time.

Did you run the race too, how do you like it if yes and what do you think if you missed the chance? There should be more such similar events in the future,anyway, marinating body fitness is something you should always keep in mind!