Thursday, May 16, 2013

Running Apps

In 2011 my sister ran her first half marathon.  As a girl with allergy and asthma all her life, I pretty much thought she was going to die.  I knew she worked out, but non of us girls were athletic in high school.  So when she actually survived and got a medal and all, I thought why not me?  So in February 2012 I signed up for the same half marathon, and I completed my half marathon in October of 2012.  I have never been much of a runner, and almost passed out doing laps for volleyball in eighth grade.  I kept asking my sister how she trained, but she told me she runs until she can't, then walks, and runs again when she is able.  That doesn't work for me.  I feel I will either sell myself short or push myself too far.  I decided that my iPhone needed to help me.

I tried a few programs, mostly free, to help me get off the couch and become a runner.
You can get a version of 5k Runner for free that lets you do 4 workouts equaling one week and a day of the running program.  I did really like how this was set up, however I'm doing a half marathon, not a 5k.  If I was just doing a 5k I probably would have bought the full program of this application.  One thing I didn't like: I thought the prompts were a little too quiet.


MapMyRun allows you to go on your computer and map where you will run, so you will know ahead of time how far your run will be.  This can then be sent to your phone for you to follow.  You can also just go out and run and it will track by GPS, where you went and how far, and how long it took.  I didn't really get into this application as much because I liked to plan my workout instead of my route.  Sometimes I would turn this app and my RunKeeper app at the same time, because it does have some contest type things from Shape you can enter online.  You can also log in your food with this one, how much water you have had and your weight.  Also if you log your run, it will subtract the amount of calories you burned from the amount of calories you ate that day.



Half Marathon Training was $1.99. I found it harder to navigate  I like the run/walk interval training for me because I still need to build my lung capacity.


RunKeeper is the app that I keep using. It is easy to set the different training sessions I want. You can set it as a number of repetitions, plus it syncs to the website. You can share on Facebook or with selected friends. I can view all my past activities (times I ran) and it does track calories when I run outside.  While running it will make this beep noise when to change to the next interval, and you can automatically add a 5 minute warm up and cool down. While running they show the time counting up for the total time and counting down on each interval, which is what helps to push me through when I don't want to run anymore. You can add a playlist to run to as well but I usually just play iheartradio or Pandora. I can still hear the beep for interval change through the music which was too faint on some running apps.

This year I don't plan on running and half marathons but I would like to run a full one sometime. This year I have done the 5k Glow Run and I have the Warrior Dash later this summer which is also another 5k. I hope to find another race to run since I ran 3 races last year.



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