In the twilight of footballing career which has spanned two decades, well okay career is a very strong word to use there I know, but anyway mid summer last year I was starting to feel a little bit at a loose end when it came to some sort of pre-season training and so I started a little road running.
Now it’s a nice short around the block run which I must admit for ages I didn’t know how long it was, nor how long it was taking me to complete it, so I started with a simple stop watch and the first time to pop out was 20:24. Yes that’s twenty minutes and 24 seconds, which I recorded by writing it down into a day planner for 2009.
Now the runs were a little lonely so I started to bring along my iPod (Touch) for the sounds, which helped greatly, and I managed to work the time down. Then I invested in a set of JailBird Bluetooth stereo headset which gave me so much more freedom when it came to the act of running. I’ve been very happy with this purchase.
However then I thought hey, their should be an app for recording running routes and times, and when I looked there are a good few available, but unfortunately all for the iPhone and not the iPod Touch.
I’ve kept running infrequently over the winter and then this spring of 2010 I found that the Palm Pre is a great running mate, tunes, phone and a nice stopwatch where I could email the running time which I found to be a nicer way of recording my times. However for some months no Palm Pre app for recording the route via the GPS coordinates.
And now to the point of this post, finally SmartRunner have an app for this and I used it for the first time yesterday and I must say I’m delighted with the outcome (if not so happy with the actual run itself).
Now I have a clear way to record the distance and time of the run, but also some ideas about the elevation of the hills and my pace during the run. I must say I like what SmartRunner have to offer and will use to full effect over the summer pre-season training.
By the way the time and distance is way off world record time by some 7 minutes, so I have some work to do!
