March, 2009

I started running a few weeks ago, after years of being idle. I have been following the guidelines for beginner runners from the excellent coolrunning.com website. As a geek, the first thing was to make sure that I was able to track my run, analyze it, map it and archive it. As they say workflow is the only thing that matter . [Ok, nobody said that before, I just said it now].

I tried three different iPhone apps for this purpose. This is a quick summary of the functionality of these three apps. Oh, I ran the first week without an armband, then bought this one. For anyone attempting to run with the iPhone, there is only one way to do it – buy an armband.

1) the running gypsy

This was the first app I tried, a very simple app which effectively does its job. It shows your total time of the run, time for your current lap, average speed, current speed, average pace and current pace.

The buttons to start / stop a run and to start new laps are pretty big with no chances of accidentally hitting them. This app more than does the job. The primary downside of this app is there is no way to publish this online and to share this app with any one else. The app itself had no issues locking a GPS signal and was extremely accurate. Of course we can do better.

2) Trailguru

The next app I tried was Trailguru from the excellent guys who run www.trailguru.com. The app itself builds on top of what the running gypsy can do.

The screen is a bit busy. Trailguru also has laps. GPS acquisition was extremely fast and accurate. The app itself has a tab for a map which shows your current run, very nifty. Few downsides with this app are:

a) The distance shows the current distance run in your current lap. There is no way to see how long you have run from start. The odometer shows the total distance you have run ever with trailguru and is limited to round numbers (no decimals).

b) The screen is pretty busy.

However, the app has two very nifty features, a way to take photos along the run without having to lose your current run data and the ability to lock the screen to prevent accidental hits on the screen.

With one button click, you can publish the run to www.trailguru.com website. When published, you get an extremely informative web page like this one. You can create tracks and routes. Your run is also available to the general public. There is also a nifty way to replay your track. There is also an easy one button click to post that run to your facebook profile, which works as advertised.

Of course, you can also embed the run using iframes to your website.

Pretty much all I want in an iPhone app.

3) RunKeeper

The last app I tried was RunKeeper, I tried the free version. The Pro version adds voice cues and removes ads in the map view.

The GUI for RunKeeper is much simpler than TrailGuru. You get a start button. There are clear huge fonts that show your current page, overall speed, distance and total time. You lose the ability to start / stop laps though. A bonus bar chart shows your speed progress.

The app has a very nifty lock button which does something very unique. It rotates the screen to show even bigger fonts.

Of all the nice things the app does, this is priceless. When you are running with your armband, there is nothing more convenient than seeing your run statistics in landscape mode.

I do wish the app had lap modes as well, but the big screen and a little bit of math in my head gets me past the laps problem. I do wish their pro version has audio cues to support it. RunKepper’s support has been extremely good. I started a thread asking for this feature and I am hopeful to see this in the near future .

Once the run ends, you save the trip and the trip is automatically posted to the web site. The public link is something like this. The URL is pre-shortened with bit.ly (how cool is that) and you can set it up to post to twitter automatically. There is a way to post your data to facebook which works (even though the distance is not mentioned in the post, you have to add it as a comment to the link).

Of course you can embed the run as an iframe as well.

The public page is awesome since you can see your pace and elevation as a graph and you can run through your run to see where you slack and track it.

Awesome stuff. Runkeeper suggests you turn off Wi-Fi when you run for accurate readings, however, I did not find this to be a problem, I suspect in areas where the GPS lock is not easy to obtain, the phone falls back to Wi-Fi hotspot based triangulation, which could be not as accurate. In any case, leaving Wi-Fi on during the run has not been a problem for me so far.

In short, there is very little that is missing in RunKeeper. I do miss the laps feature from Trailguru, but the large fonts in RunKeeper make up for it. I do wish the audio cues in the pro version allow me to set the laps in some manner.

I do think Trailguru is driven more by trails – take photos of trails, share trails, create routes etc, and RunKeeper is focused on running. While the difference is minimal today, for running, I do expect RunKeeper to be the better tool to evolve into. I will buy the pro version sooner than later. I am very impressed by their support in their forum as well as twitter.

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