Nike has launched added features to its Nike+ website to help runners and athletes achieve their goals in the new year.

At the company's dedicated website, users of the Nike+ system can set up an account and challenge themselves as well as friends to various tasks, with a forfeit to be paid if they don't achieve their goals.

The forfeits can then be filmed and posted on the website. Already, Nike has posted runners who did not live up to their challenges bobbing for lobsters, having their nose hairs plucked, and be duct taped to a bucking mechanical bull called Helga (which seems incongruous as bulls are by nature male).

The most public of these challenges is from Maria Sharapova to NBA All-Star LeBron James. If Sharapova runs more miles than LeBron in January, he has to be ball boy at one of her tennis events; if she runs less, she has to be his water girl at a game of his choice.

See the link to the Nike+ website below.

>> Link - Nike+