Geek chic

I discussed the burden of glasses in my last entry and it's fair to say it stems from joining a community who's most prominent members at the time were Dennis Taylor and Deirdre Barlow. They were hardly synonymous with fashion but nevertheless not far removed from the style of glasses around in the early 90's. My first pair wouldn't have looked out of place attached to some string hung around an OAP’s neck. Worse yet my 2nd pair were the forerunners for Harry Potter's, only too narrow for my admittedly massive head so had to be tilted up to a 45 degree angle to avoid leaving ridges in the side of my head that people mistook for white marks where the sun hadn't tanned me.

The trend for cool kids to imitate those brave celebrities who increasingly chose to look like a poindexter never quite took off. Or at least that was the case where I grew up. Anyone who copied the first that I knew about, Chris Evans, was met a reaction similar to Jim Royle’s "Aye, and he's still got ginger bollocks!" I once turned up to a Christmas party in an expensive new designer cord jacket and - together with my rebelliously long hair at the time - got laughed at (rather than admired) for the similarities to Jarvis Cocker.

The term geek chic came annoyingly after my adolesence but I like to think I'd have qualified. Half my life seems to be spent working on spreadsheets. From organising the house bills to making a note of present ideas throughout the year to make Christmas easier, if there's a way to monitor and improve a process you can guarantee I can show you how on Excel!

I did say at the start of all this I'd try to inform as well as entertain. And since I'm struggling to do the latter I thought I'd have a crack at the other!

The ability to measure how my training is progressing has made the task infinitely easier and so I’d encourage anyone going for even the occasional run to download an app for their phone. They vary in terms of reliability and nuances, but should as a minimum keep track of how far you’ve been and for how long. Most will link to their own website to allow you to monitor how your training has progressed and many will have some kind of community you can participate in to answer common questions or make it feel like you’re not in it alone!

I started with a free one called mapmyrun. As I’ve mentioned before I'm not sure what the difference is between this and mapmyfitness since most apps of this nature ask what type (cycling etc) of activity you're doing. The website seemed fairly straightforward and I liked finding several runs around my village (as small as mine) entered by other users, so was obviously popular. But ultimately I was frustrated at not being able to monitor how fast I was running, which looking at the message boards seemed a common request over a long period but hadn’t been incorporated. So I looked at the alternatives.

I'd downloaded the nike+ app a while back when it was temporarily free (usually £1.49). I'd never really looked at it but if like me you assume you get what you pay for I was surprised to see that this received fairly average feedback. That coupled with an initial look at the lay-out had me looking for another. I was, after all, looking for a clear improvement by consensus, all too aware how brittle my motivation was and therefore how likely I’d use a crap app as an excuse not to train!

My first tip of this (and any app) is to look at what the reviewers compare it to in it's criticism. One person mentioned 'Runmeter' which did indeed get universal approval. In particular the ability to run 'against yourself' seemed brilliant. However it was £2.99 and, like runner's nipple and as a Yorkshireman, it went against the grain.

I remembered a couple of friends having posted their runs onto facebook and quickly saw they'd both used the same one, a free app called Runkeeper. Like most of the others it seemed to suffer some criticism for its potential to have problems with its GPS tracking (providing the various data) but on the basis that 1. Most of those who criticised it pointed to how brilliantly it had previously performed and 2. I assume most people are like me and will generally only leave feedback if they'd a negative experience thus skewing the results, I downloaded it and explored further. Immediately I saw a function I'd not seen on the others. I'm following a training plan which mixes up the duration and severity of exercise you do each week, so the ability to enter my own simple workout of 'Run 2 mins, Walk 2 mins, Repeat x 4' and amend it each week was perfect. It also very easily asks what music you'd like to listen to (e.g. shuffle, specific mix) from the same interface which again made it simple.

A few months on and I can’t really fault it. I registered a problem I was having viewing my results online, which a few others also had, and a month later they updated the app to fix it. There’s a ‘Street team’ feature which as well as allowing you to view runs others had done locally means you can keep updated on how others are doing who you know use the app.

A common complaint across most apps is that the GPS is faulty and in my experience this is helped by turning the app on a few minutes (rather than shortly before) you go for a run to allow it to get a good ‘trace’ on you.

You can get a feel for how it works by clicking on the Runkeeper link on the right of this page. Above all my main tip would be to download an app and use it the next time you go out for a walk, even if it’s just a shopping trip. You never know you might end up analysing how far you’ve walked so much that you decide to take your new-found interest one step further.

Don’t worry though, I’m not imploring you to become a glasses-wearing nerd like me, just a runner.

MM