I’ve been running for some time now (3 miles a day) and when my treadmill broke, I decided to run outside with my iPod (3G). At first, I clipped it to my running shorts, but I found that it was heavy enough to tug at the waist. Not wanting to expose myself, I put the iPod on a lanyard and carried on my neck. That was okay, but it bounced around a lot, so I next tried a fanny pack. The fanny pack I used worked pretty well, but it still bounced the iPod around quite a bit and the device started skipping. At first it was only on a song or two, where I would get a bit of dead space in the music, but eventually, it became a serious epidemic. Some of the files on the iPod were even damaged in the process (I’m still not sure how that could happen since the files were being read, not written — perhaps the iPod records the last time played in an MP3 header?). I ended up wiping the iPod and reloading everything after this happened.

I did a little searching on the web for iPod armbands, intending on strapping the thing to my upper arm, when I found the following post on USENET:

Subject: Re: bought an ipod! From: Lawson Stone  Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 01:28:17 GMT  > Be careful with your ipod when running, Apple no longer has running as a > recommended activity when using it.  The Hard Drive is very small and is > fragile, especially with the bigger models.  I have my last gen Ipod 10GB and > its great!!  I run with mine all the time. The best way to carry it is on an arm-band. I got a velcro armband used for dealing with forearm pain--it's very tough and can be wrapped very tight. I clip the ipod on it via the included "belt pouch" and it doesn't skip at all.  Now, if I fell and landed on it, that'd be a catastrophe, but as far as normal use, it's really fine on a tight, sturdy arm-band

What a great idea. I happened to have one of these to deal with tendonitis from racquetball, so I gave it a try. This is by far the best, and least expensive, solution I’ve found. It works great — the iPod stopped skipping since the bouncing from running is significantly dampened by the time it gets to your forearm. I highly recommend this solution to any iPod runners out there.