Nike Plus FuelBand! How does it work!?!?

In February I went to an unveiling event for the new Nike Plus Fuelband:

And it's a pretty sweet looking little device right? Here's a brief description of what it does, from the website: "Nike+ FuelBand tracks your activity through a sport-tested accelerometer. Then translates every move into NikeFuel. Nike+ FuelBand tracks running, walking, dancing, basketball - and dozens of everyday actions." And if you're not really an athlete, as the presenter said at the unveiling, "...it's also a cool watch." Though he also made sure to add that "If you have a body, you are an athlete."

And even though I'd argue that this thing is actually designed to

measure every other type of exercise besides running (it can obviously measure the energy you burn while running, but it's not a GPS tracker that can give you your pace or distance), after testing it out that night (in a series of larger-than-life exercises on Soldier Field involving catching touchdown passes, kicking field goals and running onto the field with our names being announced over the loudspeakers), I'm sure I wasn't the only attendee that went home wanting one of these things.

And today Nike delivered one to my office!

After work (and a brief run with my wife through Lincoln Park (what was up with the crazy, freezing winds?!?)), I set up my Nike Plus account, unboxed this thing and plugged it in to charge. Starting early tomorrow morning I'm hitting up two of the 5K tours put on by Chicago City Running Tours so hopefully I can get my fuel points up higher than their current level... ZERO:

I'm already excited about this, though I'm still curious as to how the algorithms inside it work, aside from measuring how much I swing my arm around while working out, how does it figure out how much "NikeFuel" I'm earning?!? I guess I'll start to figure this out tomorrow.

Side/end note:

I picked up my Bunny Rock 5K packet today - baby blue shirt, bunny ears and pink sunglasses. This is definitely an Easter run...

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Zach Runs Chicago

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