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Sunday Long Run and my new App
Sunday Long Run and my New App!
As many of you know I have been having on-going problems with my Garmin 410 watch. It froze up before the Derry 16 Miler last weekend, just like it did last year at Great Bay. Now it looks completely dead and the wrist strap is broken. It’s out of warranty and Garmin has not replied to my latest inquiry.
Sunday morning while getting ready for my Sunday Long Run and having a cup of coffee, I was playing with my new Samsung Galaxy S3 phone. This is my first smart phone and it’s a great new toy. I enjoy poking around the free apps section. It’s amazing what you can get for free.
I found an app called Run Keeper. It is one of those fitness apps that you always hear about. There seem to be hundreds of them out there, maybe thousands. Since my Garmin is useless I figured I’d download this app and see how it works.
Run Keeper Trial Run
It only took me a few minutes to download and enter my basic info. This app uses the GPS in my phone to do just about everything my Garmin did. Today, I wore my running belt and tucked my phone in there like I usually do. When the club stepped outside of Brueggers to get ready for the run I quickly found the app and it started looking for satellites.
My Garmin used to take several minutes to lock on but my Samsung phone locked on in under a minute. I was wearing gloves and the phone is a little slippery so before we started running I hit the start button and tucked the phone back into my belt.
As I ran along Run Keeper told tell me how long I’d been running, how many miles I’d run and my pace. It did this every 5 minutes after I hit 15 minutes of running. I know I’m a newbie to smart phones, but how cool is that? You can laugh now, but let me enjoy my moments of wonder and delight.
When I got home I went to runkeeper.com and finished setting up my account. Their web site has most of the features that Garmin Connect has and a few more that I have not investigated. I’ve only used this app once, but I’m sold so far.
Since my phone is slippery and I had running gloves on, I did not dare to try and take my phone out of the belt pocket. So, at each of our three water stops the timer kept going as I hung around, drank water and chatted with my friends. At the second water stop it started announcing my stats as I hung around talking. I took that is my que to go.
My “official” Run Keeper time was 2:07:16 but I can probably knock off 3-5 minutes for the water stops and starting the app before we started running. But hey, it was just a training run.
The highlighted splits are the miles where we had water stops. I could probably knock 7 minutes off of my “official” time.
What smart phone apps do you use to track your running?
Do you think these apps will replace devices like Garmin?
Run well my Friends!
© 2013 anagelin
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8 responses to “Sunday Long Run and my new App”
I love runkeeper! It helped me get at least 2 of my 8 PRs last year, probably only 2 because I figured out late that you can set your goal pace. I too, mostly use it for training runs and once I start it, I tuck it away, and don’t stop it for water stops or bathroom breaks.
Sue, I’m glad you think it’s a good app also. Have you used any of ther other features on their web site?
No, I haven’t really used any of the other features. I do like to listen to music occasionally and I like how it syncs up to my itunes playlist.
Okay. So when RunKeeper announces your info the music fades so you can hear it?
Others have told me that it does not track your miles as accurately as Garmin. When I ran 12.5 miles it recorded my distance as 13 miles even. May have been a user error. I did a software update recently and this weekend it seemed to be more accurate.
I used Nike+running. Great app!
I’ve heard great things about the Nike app.
I use MyTracks, an ope source project that uses GoogleMaps. Not too polished, but does the trick .
RunKeeper isn’t quite as precise as Garmin but for the price it can’t be beat!