Walking

8 days to London – run in the sun, and tiring day

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Ran 12 km in the sun. It was 18°C according to the apps, but felt 20+ when not in the shade. It felt harder than it should have, and felt slower than it was. Still, very happy to have run it.

All my training has been in cooler weather. Temperature barely touched low teens on the rare hot run. It was in low-mid single digit Celsius on most runs. So, it was a good to get a feel for how body will deal with the predicted heat next Sunday. It didn’t leave me feeling too confident, but at least I know what to expect.

Apart from the run, I was able to squeeze in 3 stretching sessions as well – pre run, post run, and pre dinner. Good.

Didn’t get any foam rolling, icing, or meditation done. Bad.

Started the day with volunteering at Park run as number checker. Hopefully I did not too shabby a job. May have met R’s GP out there, without either of us knowing who the other was 🙂
Also, 4 more to go before I reach the 25 volunteerings landmark.

Family selfie at Virginia Water - everyone's tired, everyone's happy
Family selfie at Virginia Water – everyone’s tired, everyone’s happy

Took the boys for the evening walk at Virginia water. Didn’t check timings before leaving. Ended up driving longer than walking. Still, it was a happy outing for everyone, even if we had to drag R by her legs to take her along.

Meals were a Cheeseburger and fries, from 5 Guys, for lunch, and R’s dal rice for dinner. Nothing healthy, everything tasty. Just the way it should be. (May have had eggs for breakfast, and whey protein after the run, too)

Quite knackered now. Will probably sleep in tomorrow, before starting a week of early wake-ups on Monday.

Also got one last run of the week tomorrow. Just an easy 5K next week after that.

8 days to London – run in the sun, and tiring day

Activity tracking apps

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I’ve been trying various GPS based activity tracking apps for cycling & walking but still haven’t finalised one. Here are my thoughts about the four I’m using right now on my N1:

SportyPal, that trusty old mate from E71 days is here. The previous install was buggy but has improved drastically after update. Only if they could add that auto-pause function.

Runkeeper, the app of choice of my iPhone owner cycling buddies in India, has a superb website with a host of features. However, the app itself is bloated, buggy and hangs ever so often.

CardioTrainer, is a superb app with a complete set of features including that valuable auto-pause feature and voice updates. However, the website for it is basic, actually threadbare. I guess it’s because of their strong facebook integration. However, for non-fb users like me, it does leave a big hole. What’s good though is that both this app & SportyPal support gpx file import/export. So I can easily export gpx files from CardioTrainer to SportyPal.

Finally, JogTracker, has a basic website which is not too well laid out either. However, what they do have is a very light, simple and fast app. And despite being so light and simple, it still has all the functionality of other apps that I use (with the exception of CardioTrainer’s auto-pause feature).

So, after this one week of usage, I’ve decided to dump Runkeeper. Not because of any deficiencies in the app or website, but because it’s so slow and bulky.

JogTracker is also close to being dumped. Reasons: tacky website and no import/export gpx option.

This leaves the field to SportyPal & CardioTrainer.

CardioTrainer has the added advantage of having, apart from the auto-pause feature,  an additional set of paid add-on features. I’m still not fully confident of the app’s performance having seen it pause/stop unreliably a few times. Yet, this is a solid app which I intend to continue testing for the time being.

SportyPal has many things in its favour. For one, it has all my (recorded) rides so far since it was the best app available for my E71. Other than historical data, the ‘open’-ness the developers have shown by giving the option to import/export ride data is a big plus (CardioTrainer also gives the option to export gpx). And finally, since the update, this is the app that has been most reliable on my N1 in terms of route coverage.

P.S.: All these apps are free and available on Android market. Most of them should be available on the iPhone too and SportyPal is by far the best app I’ve seen on Symbian60 based phones (read: Nokia).
P.P.S.: Are there any other apps out there that you feel I should try?

Activity tracking apps