As you may have read here, I am taking part in a weight loss challenge this year and to be honest, the main challenge is with myself. Trying to stay motivated is always the hardest part!
For the past 2 years I have taken part in the Great South Run, a 10mile run in October around the windy streets of Portsmouth. I intend to take part again this year too. Usually I train a bit, do the race and then snuggle up and hibernate for the winter until around March time. I don’t want to do that this year so I booked myself a place on a 10k run around Chichester. I thought about it worked out that it’s 6.2 miles so thats around 62mins at my pace (ish).
I’ve tried various apps on my phone and none had come close to matching the one I had on my nokia 5800 until now. I love Cardio Trainer. For a number of reasons, but mainly because it helps me to run. It measures my time and distance and allows me to share these via facebook and/or Twitter. It gives me a little medal to show me how many calories I’ve burnt off in the past 7 days. I HATE it when it gets below 500, but boy, that 2,000 medal sitting there at the moment looks damn good. It does miles or kilometres and saves me from working that out. It lets you measure your weight each week and puts it in a graph for you. It can even measure the food you’re eating if you want to and it shows how much red (bad) food you’ve eaten compared to green (good) food. Simple, but it makes me think before I buy a chocolate bar!
The best bit is that this app is free. It does most of that for nothing. I have paid for the app (£6 or so) because it has totally changed my running. I tend to run on the same route most mornings and I can race against previous times and it’ll tell me how i’m doing and if present-me or past-me is winning.I also paid for it because I wanted to support the developer as it obviously wasn’t easy to pack so much stuff in. They offer a 30-day refund too if you’re not happy. Win and indeed win.
Today though, one feature came into it’s own. Like I said, the race was 10k, my mind is in miles. I set the app and turned on the voice settings. A lovely voice then told me my pace every 500m (you choose how often) so I could judge how far ahead/behind of target I was. Within about 3k I realised I might be able to do this race under an hour. So I sped up just a little and the voice confirmed it as I managed 5k in 28mins.
I finished in 59.13 which I am chuffed with, but I truly believe it is down to the Cardio Trainer app.
Here’s the Android link. I hope it helps you too.
