Once again me and The Wife will be running through the streets of Cardiff in the name of Kidney Wales. If you’d like to make a donation to the charity then The Wife has a special page set up here. Of course I’m in danger of veering away from the technology angle so I’ve devised a method of keeping the blog on track: I’m going to use my HTC 7 Mozart phone to track the run. I’ve recently moved away from my old reliable Nike+ system in favour of Runkeeper. This is for one reason only – GPS. Runkeeper is a cross-platform app which runs (no pun) on Windows Phone 7, iPhone and Android operating systems. Of course, i’m using the Windows Phone 7 version which is free for what I require. You can pay a subscription for advanced functionality but personally I wouldn’t be able to make use of that.
Runkeeper uses your phone’s GPS to keep track of your location as you run, and consequently your speed, altitude and other useful bits of info like your pace that it can calculate from the raw data it captures. It’ll also display a nice map (using Bing on WP7) with your route overlayed. Sadly, the app is lacking in certain areas. For example, it doesn’t have any way of playing music as you run without pausing the app (no multitasking yet in WP7), loading the phone’s built-in music player, starting your music, returning to Runkeeper, resuming your workout. It’s a bit long winded. Also, there’s no voice updated of your progress so you’re never sure how far you’ve run until you take your phone out of your pocket and look at the screen, which risks phone damage through accidental droppage. My final gripe is with its sluggishness. Scrolling around the map is slow and tricky and needs to be improved. Basically, if there was a WP7 version of the Nike+ app as per the iPhone, I’d actually pay for it because it’s great, but on WP7 I’m really just stuck with Runkeeper.
Sorry, I’ll get back to my original point – tracking the Cardiff 10k. I used Nike+ last year, but this year I’ll be using my heavier phone. My training has helped me to get used to it being in my pocket, but if it pours down with rain then I’ll be forced to put the phone in an AquaPak, or abandon the idea altogether…. I’ll report how I got on after the event.
