Running... there's an app for that!

I am not in possession of an iPhone and I actually make fun whenever possible, hence the name for this posting! I will admit though with the truth behind 'there's an app for that', there certainly IS an app for almost everything, and they even make them for Android OS! I downloaded an app for running yesterday. Okay, I lied. The app doesn't actually run FOR me =D.

Yesterday I went out for my 5K training run on my loop here and got mapmyrun ready to enter my stats when I got back. It was all well and good, and I had checked my time when I had less than a quarter of a mile left to go, so I was pretty sure I'd make a better time than my previous, which had been 26:35. That was about the time I thought to check my pockets for my house key... and I discovered that I must've dropped it somewhere. My joy at running a 26:10 was quickly replaced by 'OH crap, I wonder how quickly I can run it again and see if I can find the damn key before I have to get back home and pick up my daughter from school'. It would never do to be running around the neighborhood with my eyes glued to the ground, hunting for a key while some of my friends drove by asking if I realized school was out. Part of my loop goes right past the school so I thought about just walking back there and waiting, but I ended up going home instead. I probably walked an extra mile just seeing if I'd get lucky and spot the stupid key.

Enter run number two! One of my friends who is going to be running the Ragnar with me had been messaging me earlier to see if I wanted to go run with her. She lives in a fairly hilly neighborhood so it's a great place to run. I'm a glutton for punishment obviously so I called her back and said sure. Her goal was just to run about a mile, because she was wiped out, she's had sick kids and no sleep, so part of me going over there was motivation and company. THAT was when she showed me RunKeeper, which is this cool little app for iPhone. Once you load it up and start it, it keeps track of your distance, your avg pace, it even shows a gps map of where you are. I think it keeps track of calories burned too, and it shows splits as a graph so you can see how evenly you run as far as speed. Afterwards, you can save your workout or upload it or share it.

The run was pretty fun, we ended up doing more of an 11 min pace but we ran 3.5ish miles total, and I really liked the whole stat-gathering aspect of RunKeeper. I looked it up later and am disappointed to report I haven't been able to find the same exact app but I did find JogTracker, which operates almost the same, and there's an option on there somewhere that 'speaks' stats to you. I haven't tested it yet, that's on today's list of things to do so I'll see if I can set it up to update me at mile markers for distance, speed, split time, and total time.

I'm also sorry to report that there's not actually an app for running, you still have to do it yourself - but there's a great many cool little gadgets now that make tracking how you do, where you go, etc much easier than just trying to remember. I still like my stopwatch and mapmyrun for basics but technology is fun! After all, I have a GPS in my car, without which I would be lost all the time. I purposely make my running loops easy to remember since it's not like there are race volunteers and signs on every corner preventing me from running 5 miles in the wrong direction.