Running's just about my last refuge in life (well, if you don't include my home in the last unit on the top floor; the vehicle whose passenger seats are covered with magazines and junk mail from three years ago; the blog with the readership of the sermon in "Eleanor Rigby"; or the soul therein that isn't craving the attention of more than a single other person, anyway—who also might've helped me think through that last statement), so when I got the chance for that personalized iPod, I took it. Not to deprive myself the full experience as envisioned by the designers, I went with the complete Nike package, the armband without a simple hole for the display, which may not be necessary once you learn the menus, but doesn't help when you're calibrating for the first time, and the cheapest +shoes I had to drive to, of all places, Beverly Hills for. You'd think the treadmill would be the best place to measure your pace, but I wasn't about to risk being flung on my stomach while fumbling for the buttons, so it was the track. And it's fairly accurate, counting laps at each ¼-mile marker, and the feeling with that sensor under the left sole pad isn't at all rock-in-shoe. There's an annoying pause between shuffled songs which seems to last 50 yards of silence, but maybe some playlist-thingy will resolve that; speaking of which, music from Barbarella and the big sky can really make you forget your heart's exploding.