Get Running

Right on the eve of my graduation from C25k (my third graduation, to be precise), I've discovered a new C25k iPhone app: Get Running. If only I had known about it sooner! Get Running works similarly to the other two iPhone/Touch apps I've mentioned previously (C25k and Couch to 5k), but it is more polished. If I were to put together a wishlist of features for a C25k app, it would bear a close resemblance to Get Running's feature set. I am very impressed by my time with it and I am looking forward to seeing further improvements as the developers continue to issue updates.

At the heart of the program is the C25k running regimen. Unlike either of the other two C25k apps, however, Get Running goes a couple of steps beyond with several additional useful features. When you first launch the app (an impressively quick launch, even for my "old" 3G), you are presented with a bucolic image and, along the bottom of the screen, a meandering path comprised of each of the weeks of C25k further broken into steps representing each day of each week. The image of a little runner marks your current place, and you can horizontally scroll the path to the left and right. Impressively, the program calculates and reports on which actual date you are expected to run your next run based upon your prior run. If you try to jump ahead, or repeat a run, you'll find that you can but that a warning will pop up to gently remind you that it is a rest day and/or that you are going out of order.

Select the day of your choice, press the "Run" button at the bottom of the screen, and you are presented with a segmented circular timer. Each segment of the circle represents an interval for that day's C25k run. Separate arcs above and below the circle represent the day's warmup and cooldown. As you run, little green arrows track your progress around the circumference of the circle. You can play your own music (by launching the iPod app prior to launching Get Running), and periodically the Get Running app will cut in with spoken prompts telling you when to walk/run. At present, the spoken prompts simply overlay your background music, and hearing them can be a bit difficult. Splendid Things has already submitted an updated version of the app to Apple for approval. The new version (1.2) improves the audio experience by pausing the music (if any) when Get Running speaks. This is welcome news, as the spoken audio of Get Running is a big part of what sets it so far above its competitors. Audio cues come frequently. They feature the studio-recorded voice of a woman with a very pleasant English accent. She not only tells you when to start and stop, but also how many intervals you have left to go, how many you have done, how much time is left, and even occasional tips and pointers. There must be hundreds of recordings. Run for a few days with her encouraging, and you feel like you have an actual coach congratulating you and urging you on. If anything, the audio cues come a little too frequently (at least in the beginning days of C25k, when there are many small segments) . As C25k progresses and the running intervals get longer and longer, things space themselves out a bit better. Splendid Things has some audio samples on their web page , so you can hear the coach for yourself and also view a tutorial video to see the app in action. And if for some reason you can't get something working quite right, they maintain an active presence on the Get Satisfaction forums. This is not a developer that puts up an app in an effort to make a few quick bucks only to vanish and never update the app again.

Get Running doesn't offer a way to publish your run to social networking sites (C25kapp and RunKeeper allow you to post to Facebook or Twitter following a run). It doesn't map your run (like RunKeeper or MapMyRun) or keep track of your running statistics (apart from which day you ran which run), and it would be nice if the screen could be set to display things rotated to landscape view (so that the timer doesn't look sideways when the iPhone is strapped to my arm). Apart from those minor quibbles, this is pretty much the C25k app I would have developed if I knew how to develop apps. All things considered, there's no excuse not to Get Running. While there is some room for further improvement, my biggest disappointment is that I didn't discover Get Running until my 9th (and final) week of C25k. I just hope they come out with a version for GW28K or One Hour Runner.

Make Your Own Kind of Music, 2009 Remix

Back in September of 2007, I posted instructions on how to set up a playlist of your own music to go along with C25k. Amazingly, that blog entry, Make Your Own Kind of Music, continues to get comments some two years later. Time and technology march on, however, and in the last two years I've seen other (and better) ways to accomplish what I described back then. At this point, I pretty much would recommend my instructions only to masochists. There are easier ways, now, to accomplish the same result. Here are a few:


PODCASTS AND MP3s:

• Robert Ullrey's Podcast - This is the C25k podcast I used my first time through C25k. It works flawlessly, so long as you share Robert's taste in techno music. There's one song that actually made its way into regular rotation on my iPod ("Operator," by dePreslys), but many others ("My Love is Your Love, and Your Love is Mine" or whatever it is called), still haunt my nightmares.

• djsteveboy's Podrunner: Intervals provides free, varied-BPM workout music mixes for runners, joggers, and power walkers at all levels, designed to build endurance and improve overall conditioning. The mixes include audio cues that prompt you when to move from walking to running and vice versa.

• Take a trip Inside the Mind of Suze and download her C25k music, featuring audio cues. Her music runs the gamut from hip-hop to R&B to teen to 80's and 90's.

• Go Nicole Yourself - Nicole put together a collection of commercial music for each of the days of C25k and has made it available for public download. As she notes, "Should you like the music, go buy the albums off of itunes, emusic.com or amazon.com. Support artists and musicians!"

• A Question of Perspective - Elisa DelBonis made and posted some mixes for her own personal use while going through C25k. Her mix features commercial music and verbal cues, so as she says "If you *borrow* them you do so knowing you didn’t purchase the music embedded in them. (Or maybe you did and we have the same taste in music… in which case you’re in the clear.)" Check out her page for playlists. It's pop/dance/good stuff you already know that you can sing along to.

• Christian Indie Tracks - Christ-centered music from independent artists, divided into downloads for weeks designed to correspond to the weeks of C25k.

• Mindplunge - As of this writing it is not yet in existence, but Richard Lemon looks to be in the process of making his own C25k podcast. Check back later on his progress.

HARDWARE-DEPENDENT (e.g. Stuff for iPhones):

• C25k - This is an app for iPhones and iPod Touches. It does not itself feature music, but it lets you use your own iTunes playlist in the background while in the foreground the app guides you through each week of C25k, giving you audio prompts every time you need to change from running to walking according to the plan. It can be configured to post your progress to Facebook and/or Twitter. The page I've linked here opens AppBeacon, rather than launching iTunes. If you want the direct link to the app on iTunes, it's here.

• Couch to 5k - This, like the C25k app above, is a C25k app for iPhones and iPod Touches. It does not itself feature music, but it lets you use your own iTunes playlist in the background while in the foreground the app guides you through each week of C25k, giving you audio prompts every time you need to change from running to walking according to the plan.

• Get Running - Like C25kapp and Couch to 5k, this is just for iPhones and iPod Touches. I think it is far superior to either of its competitors, so if you are looking for an app specifically tailored to C25k this would be the one to get. (It doesn't do all of the things that a more fully-featured general running app, like RunKeeper, does. But what it does, it does VERY well).

• C25k app for Android - What's that you say, you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch? But you have a phone that uses Android? This app appears to do the same thing as the two above, only for Android.

• RunKeeper - I use, and love, RunKeeper Pro. I've posted about its benefits elsewhere on my blog. It is an iPhone app that maps your running, allows for the playing of music from your playlist, superimposes clear-as-a-bell audio cues that can be customized for whatever series of intervals you are running, keeps a historical record of your runs, supports posting your workouts to the major social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), charts your run on an editable map, and so much more.

• Nike+ - Available in nano and iPhone 3GS versions. I used the iPod nano version for a while, a few years back, but the battery in the little shoe transmitter died and it is not user-replaceable. It is still attached to the laces of my shoe, silently waiting for me to replace it or just throw it away already. When it was working, it was pretty nice. It overlays training information on top of your playlist. Famous athletes even congratulate you at the end of your runs.

SERVICES:

• JogTunes - JogTunes is a site dedicated to helping runners find music that matches their running paces. It boasts a vast selection of music all determined and categorized by style and BPM.

• fitMusic - similar to JogTunes, fitMusic provides "fresh, free, fitness music" suitable for running.

• run2rhythm - similar to JogTunes or fitMusic, run2rhythm provides "specially composed running music."

• C25k.com has a forum featuring a Podcasts, Music and More sub-forum. It's worth checking out.

MAKE YOUR OWN:

• Audacity - Audacity is a free program for editing MP3 and WAV files. Here's a great page of step-by-step instructions to create a mix featuring your own music coupled with interval cues. As for the interval cues, you might try checking out sbellcheck, which provides no music track, only audio cues of when to run and when to walk for each week. The whole course is also available for download as an MP3.

Finally...

• "Make Your Own Kind of Music" - If you DO want to tinker with the Visual Basic scripts and follow the 2007 "Make Your Own Kind of Music" instructions, they do still work. In fact, they're NEW and IMPROVED, thanks to Scott Gould. Scott recently took it upon himself to update and overhaul the VB script, and he was kind enough to share his results. His new version of the script allows for an initial playlist of any size. It starts adding songs to the running playlist from a random location, randomly selecting a start song from the playlist so that you don't have to hear the same music again and again. If the start song is at the end of the list then it loops back to the start of the playlist. The updated script can be found HERE. If you prefer the original script for some reason, it can still be found back at the original post, or directly HERE. Once again, I'd like to acknowledge Jeff Welch, the original author of the script.

We are Borg

Today the update to the RunKeeper app went live in the iPhone app store. I've been looking forward to this update for a while, as the developers have now added the ability to create customized intervals, complete with spoken prompts. This will now replace C25kapp for me. I tried it this morning and it seems to work quite well. I'll post a review later today if I have the opportunity. Here's the map it produced.



As for my run, it was fine. I'm now moving on to Week 5, which includes the dreaded 20 minute run on Day 3. I didn't eat so great this week, and its reflecting in my (lack of) weight loss. I gained 1.3 pounds over the weekend, and haven't shed any of it yet.

The Running Man

Week 3 is done. In my first three weeks, I've dropped 10 pounds. Some of that is water-weight, and I think the figure is artificially inflated because my starting weight was probably inaccurate by a pound or two, but it is still starting to be a noticeable difference. I'm only looking to lose 1.5 - 2 pounds a week, so I'm pretty well on course. More importantly, I'm generally feeling healthier and more energized.

I'm really liking the C25k iPhone app I found - it's so much easier than all the convoluted things I was trying to do before. It posts to Facebook, which I hope is not too annoying. This morning's run, though, for some reason, failed to post.

I Feel The Need... The Need.... For Sleep!

Wait, no, that's not right.

This morning I woke up raring to go. Yesterday my attempt at a morning run was thwarted by uncooperative technology: my iPhone was of the belief that it had no music or podcasts on it (SO not true, iPhone!), and it also decided to stage an impromptu app-strike - all apps kept quitting on launch. Restarting didn't cure anything, so a full restore was in order. I was all geared-up and outside and everything, but defeated I headed back in. I'll get you next time, gadget!

Today was different. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and all my tech was reporting G-for-go. Run Keeper established a GPS lock so quickly that I feared it might actually not be working. The dulcet tones of Robert Ullrey's voice piped merrily through my earphones. The run was uneventful and great.

Since RunKeeper worked well this time out, I actually have a map I can post of the run, generated in real-time as I ran. Only 2 miles, but that's W2D3 of C25k for you. As I ran, I thought about last night's Olympic Marathon and how amazing those runners are. My goals aren't nearly so lofty: I just want to get in shape.

My Sort-of-Triumphant Return

Like Rocky Balboa, a cockaroach, or bad Mexican dinner (choose your metaphor), I am back! This last month away from running was just a brief intermission, prompted by my getting an iPhone. I carry my phone with me when I run, stashed in an armband, for emergencies. The new phone necessitated a new armband, and it took me a while to find the right one and then get around to ordering it. (Once I finally ordered, though, it came near-instantly: I ordered on Wednesday night, and it arrived at my doorstep on Thursday morning. I wasn't sure how that was even physically possible, until I looked at the return address: apparently Marware is located just about 20 miles from my home).

I also used the month away to see if my left knee would start feeling any better - it had been a bit achey. There was zero change after a month, and so I figure that it's probably not running-related. Since running doesn't seem to make it any worse, and not running doesn't seem to make it any better, and I enjoy running, I decided to get back on track.

As for the armband, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. It's a Marware Sportsuit Convertible. It is designed to be an all-in-one phone case. It has a belt clip attachment, or it can be used without the clip as a sleeve. It has an armband attachment. It even has a little key pocket attachment. It slices! It dices! It even plays Crysis! It's a breath mint! It's a candy! Tastes great! Less filling! ...Whatever. The belt clip seems too flimsy to trust, and I don't like the case enough to use it on a 24-hour basis as a sleeve, which means I'm going to be switching cases every other day. All in all, a minor nuisance. The armband part is super-comfortable, at least. On the bright side, the iPhone means that I no longer need to wear an ipod armband on my right arm and a phone armband on my left arm, making me just a teensy bit less geeky-looking as I run.

Since this was my first run in a month, I decided to take it very easy and just did W1D1. During the walking segments, I took a few photos of my route using the iPhone's camera. It was a morning run through the park, not a weekday-dead-as-night early morning run. No sense posting pictures from those, as they would just be black squares.

1. Leaving my development...



2. Greenacres Park, about a quarter-mile from my home. Ah, Greenacres - it's the place to be. (Official City Motto. No kidding).



3. Running through the park...



4. Some wildlife: a couple of geese, an egret (I think), a squirrel, some white birds, some ducks. Camera-shy: Snails.





That last one is near the area where I once saw a small alligator. That was several years ago. Which means the next time I see him, he'll be a big alligator....