Tuesday 9 November 2010

Runkeeper – jumping back on the horse with an app

While most people are probably starting to move there training from outdoors to inside as winter starts to get a grip, the opposite is true for me. My running always seems to lag during the summer, maybe this is partly due to enjoying the hops, barley and water combination too much, but probably has more to do with my enjoyment of winter running.

Running in the dark has also always been my preference, and with the shorter days there is now little other choice. The other obvious aspect of the coming winter is the cold, wind and rain (and snow if we are lucky)which again is something I rather enjoy running through. No matter how horrible it looks from inside the bricks and mortar, once you get going its far more enjoyable than running on a nice day, and there’s always a sense of achievement from getting a good ole soaking.

Stolen from http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/mighty-hurricane-rips-into-jamaica/2007/08/20/1187462176029.html

It wasn’t quite as bad as this.

With the rain and wind beating down last night, I finally dragged my ass out for a run for the first time in nearly a month. I’m still persisting with POSE running and last night was the most comfortable run I’ve had keeping decent form throughout, and not too bad a pace for being quite out of shape.

I finally think I’m striking the ground correctly and didn’t have to spend the whole time thinking about form, just enjoy the rain and wind and push myself on. The ability to use my calve muscles this morning was also quite a nice plus, and quite a long way from the balls of lead that I was left with after previous runs.

I suppose I should mention Runkeeper. While I was out pounding the streets I was also running the Runkeeper Pro app for the IPhone for the first time. Runkeeper tracks the route utilising the onboard GPS, and gives a nice wee statistical breakdown of the run, much like a Garmin Forerunner, and probably does a whole load of other things that I will never fully utilise.

Just using the default settings, I was a wee bit surprising when Tinie Tempah faded out to a female voice telling me my distance and average speed after 5 minutes, it was definitely a good motivator, however I need to change the units to imperial from their default metric!

It looks like a promising training tool, which I may or may not write more about in the future, however I would question the accuracy of the GPS plotting on the map and the altitude, not that these make any real difference to me.

Runkeeper img

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Simon said...

I've been thinking about running again recently - a few people have mentioned it to me and I was looking at including it as part of an overall fitness regime. After being out on the bike yesterday I very nearly went for a run straight after, but decided that was probably silly. So when I read this post last night and watched the pose running vids (again! I watched them the first time around too) that was it, I was going for a run today.

OUCH! Pose running really takes it's toll on the calves! Still, it felt mostly good and I knocked off just under 3½ miles. So the sore calves are worth it.