Nike Chicago’s Make It Count Leap Day event

Leap day comes but once every four years so I spent part of my extra 24 hours this year attending Nike Chicago’s Make It Count event Wednesday night. It was amazing. Chicago Blogger Network invited the first 30 respondents to attend the event. I leaped at the opportunity! Pun intended. Going into it, I had no idea what to expect. The details were a little vague, but I wanted to find out what the deal was. Plenty of awesome things followed after I RSVP'd.

First awesome thing, Nike Chicago sent by messenger a bag stuffed with gear to wear to the event. I figured this would be for photo ops. Surely, they didn’t want attendees showing up rocking a competitor’s gear. To start things off the group was given a presentation introducing the new Nike+ FuelBand.

It’s Nike’s answer to athletes who desired to track their activity when running is not their main sport. Activities like dancing, basketball, and football all count towards collecting fuel points to meet athlete goals. It’s pretty sleek. A normal day's activity would be around 2,500 points, and an active day around 4,000 or more.

Just like the other Nike+ devices, the Nike+ FuelBand has an interactive website to set goals, view progress, etc. Good news is the Nike+ and Nike+ FuelBand sites will be integrated in the future so existing Nike+ GPS Sportswatch users like myself will be able to view all their info on one combined site. Second awesome thing, we got a chance to try out the FuelBand ourselves for the evening. We’re told we’ll be breaking out into groups and hopping in a caravan headed to Soldier Field and getting out on the field to earn points towards the evening's goal of 1,000 points. Pretty darn cool. So we headed over the stadium. Mind you we had another 50 degree, sunny day earlier but when we left for the stadium the temperature had really dropped and it was raining sideways! Great thing was by the time we got there, the rain had stopped, but it was freezing. The group was still pretty amped to get out on the field despite the cold. Before we got out on the field we were escorted into the locker room and greeted by Chicago Bears kicker Robbie Gould.
Of course I had no idea who he was (I’m not that into football) but I knew he was kind of easy on the eyes. Robbie was our host out on the field. We worked our way through three stations to earn fuel points; agility, field goal kicking, and pass catching.

That's me attempting to kick a field goal. Fail. We were all pretty much frozen by the time we left, but we had a great time out on the field. We got back to sync our points on an Ipod touch and got a detailed walk through of the Nike+ FuelBand website. Anyone familiar with Nike+ will fly right through the site. It’s very user friendly for new folks too.

Third awesome thing, we danced. Choreographer and dance trainer BraveMonk was there with house music and dance steps to keep us moving and earning more points! Before last night, I liked to think I knew how to dance, but apparently not. I couldn’t keep up. I bowed out gracefully and cheered on from the sidelines. Of course by the end of the night, most had met and even surpassed the 1,000 points goal. Also by the end of the night, I was pooped. The Nike+ FuelBand is totally addictive. I was tapping the stats button all night checking my points progress. I’m still addicted to my running stats on Nike+ so I can only imagine how much fun it will be setting up challenges with others outside of running and getting all my friends up, moving and collecting points.