Brian Morrissey of The Internal Pigdog politely expressed some frustrations with the accuracy of his Nike+ SportBand over the course of a few posts in mid May.

On May 18:

“So far, I’m underwhelmed. The chart above shows my run today. After nine years of running, I figure I have a pretty good sense of pace. There’s no way it was that slow. I ran today more at 7:30 or a little below. The graph also has all these peaks and troughs that don’t make sense.”

Again, on May 19:

“To test the accuracy, I ran to the park, then started Nike+. I did the four-mile loop (technically, a USATF-measured 4.04). Nike+ told me 3.71 miles. I was pretty much exactly right about the distance. My internal odometer kicked Nike+’s ass.”

Nike responded directly to Brian’s concerns in the person of Blogger user PLe1, the director of Nike’s RUN NYC program.

“Brian, just for the sake of disclosure I’m the director of Nike’s RUN NYC program. I just want that out there so it’s not like I’m hidng the fact I work for Nike.
Out of the box it’s 90% accurate and set for 8 minute pace but it’s designed so that every runner can make it work for their particular cadence by calibrating it.”

Make sure to check out Brian’s article and the article’s comments thread for the whole story.