So last week I was finally going to do it, I even had it all planned out “Run 9am Wednesday Morning” and what did I wake up to see on Monday, Tuesday, and yes Wednesday morning…. Snow… So as you can guess I did not go on a run this week. I did go on a hike though, so here is a picture of me and my cute dogs for your enjoyment.
With all my spare time, not running last week I was able to take a look at some good running apps that are available for my iPhone and would also be transferrable to my apple watch. I compared the apps Strava, MapMyRun, and Nike+ Run Club. The first one I looked at was Strava, the pros I found for the app were that it was good for tracking runs, had some good social elements, like allowing you to connect with other friends running and compete against them for times, and good GPS tracking. The downfalls for the app were that it only tracked in miles and would not convert to kilometers and that to acquire most of the features they offered you had to pay for them. So that one was instantly out of the question, as a broke university student I cannot be throwing my money away on a running app. The second app I looked at was MapMyRun, an app designed by Under Armour. Some pros to the app were that they could connect to another app called MyFitnessPal, which tracks your food and Macronutrients allowing you to make sure you are fuelling your body properly for your runs. Another pro was that it was free and free is good, but the downfalls were that it was designed for long distance runners and it was more there to help you discover new areas of land to run. We then came to the final app I was reviewing and the app I ended up deciding on from my running experience, Nike+ Run Club. This app is free, it allows for you to share your runs socially, has audio voice recordings for motivation, and can also sync up to my Spotify music, which is always a bonus. Some downfalls are that it does drain my battery life on my phone quite quickly and also uses my cellular data for tracking purposes.
I am very excited to start using Nike+ Run club on my runs and have already planned out my next two runs for this week. I have already planned runs for both Wednesday and Friday. I don’t think that jumping straight into a 10km run is such a good idea so I think for the first two weeks I will be starting slow with two 5km runs and see how my body feels after the first week.
