accuracy of running tools

Well, I am not sure how I managed it but I ended up catching the plague again.  I spent the better part of the weekend laying in bed with a tremendous sinus headache/congestion.  By Sunday, I had gathered up enough strength and felt good enough to go for a long run with Lindsey.

The run started out difficult as I had a hard time finding my stride.  My left leg has been so very tight since the Austin marathon but my mile three it had loosened up.  The run even cleared up my head and I felt really good the rest of the day.  On my run, I decided to try out jogtracker on my HTC Hero phone. We ran the entire run and noticed that the route was longer than we expected, in fact, it was an entire mile longer.  Mapmyrun tracked the run as 14.88 and jogtracker on my phone tracked it as 15.88.  I looked online and there appears to be pretty good support that Mapmyrun is accurate.

Zooming in close the map on jogtracker did not appear to follow our route too closely.  Has anyone ever used any of these phone apps?  Is there one better than the other?

In honor of the Slim Whitman record I have playing right now here is a little diddy by the man:

It feels good to be back running

I had originally planned on starting to run again this weekend, but the weather was pretty crummy in Lincoln so we put it off.  The more I kept thinking about it, the more I have been getting excited about getting back into running.  The weather is slowing going to start improving and the days are starting to get longer, making it much easier to run outside.  Plus, the Lincoln marathon is less than two months away so its time to get back on track.  I am looking forward to the Lincoln marathon and maybe hoping to improve my time a little farther.  Ideally, I would like to break the 3:30 mark and I think I could do it here.  We will see how the training goes and maybe shedding another few pounds might help.

Yesterday, I went and ran on the treadmill for a 3 miler and I was shocked that I had intense knee pain.  At first I was not going to be able to make a mile but held on for the remaining two miles.  The knee pain went away and I have no idea where it came from or where it went but I am glad its gone.  Today, it was cold and there was an intense wind blowing through.  Thank god for windproof underwear.  One of the cool things about todays run is that I got to try out some of the new apps for my new phone.  I recently bought Lindsey and I some HTC Hero phones and have been exciting about all the apps availiable for the phone.  I know there are a ton of running related apps for the iPhone but was not sure what was available for Android.  I found an app called jogtracker and took it for a spin around Como Lake.  The app easily tracked my distance and recorded my time.  I do wish the app had more with keeping track of workouts (calories, etc).  The other cool app that I had is an online music player called AOnline radio which will allow me to play two of my favorite stations Boot Liquor Radio from Soma.FM and KEXP.

 

Do you have any favorite running apps?