Weekly Weigh-in (Week 47)

Sunday yet again and time for another installment of the weekly weigh-in.

Been an interesting week this week. Running has been going rewardingly, starting in on the 9th week of the plan tomorrow, and I feel great for it. Been eating decently, when I've even felt like eating. Hoping to keep up the momentum I've had through the remainder of the year, but with Christmas and New Years both ahead, we'll have to see how things play out.

Today I am going to talk about another of the wonderful tools I use to make my life easier on the path to the new better me. Runkeeper is a free app for the iPhone that I have come to love since I started running. It uses the GPS on the phone to track your location while you run, and then uploads it to the Runkeeper website. They recommend against keeping your phone in your pocket while you run as it might interfere with the GPS readings, but I have found that if it does, it doesn't interfere to a degree that I have taken issue with, so it's not something I worry about.

I just fire up my music, more on that next week, start up the GPS tracking in Runkeeper, lock the phone, and then go on my run. When I get home I unlock the phone, tell it I'm done with my run, enter any notes, and then stop my music. It's as simple as that. It then uploads the information for my route, distance, and pacing to the website where I can access it later. Since my running right now is training for a 5K, I have it track my distance in kilometers, and because I prefer it that way I have it display not only my distance but also my pace. I don't pay any attention to the app while I'm out for my run, so I don't actually know what features it has while it's tracking an activity, but after the fact it gives you access to a map of your route, and a graph of your pace or speed each minute throughout the activity. It also displays overall pace, total distance, and calories burned based on what type of activity you told it you were launching when you started your tracking. It keeps all of the activities you've tracked using the app locally, and they are working on 2-way syncing for upcoming updates so that should allow tracking of activities using the phone for things you entered into the web interface manually.

That brings me to the website. Each activity is uploaded automatically to the website, which tracks your distance over time, the number of activities per month, and various other stats. You can enter things manually instead of through the GPS, or edit a GPS run. I don't yet have a heartrate monitor but if you do you can upload either an average heart rate for the entire activity, or a graph of heart rate over time provided by certain Polar heart rate monitors. The stats guy in me loves this website, because it has so many things for me to look over and play with. The runner in me loves it simply because it tracks what I do, and gives me feedback on how I've improved since the last time I was out. Either way, I enjoy the app and the website very much. Both have paid versions, I have tried neither at this time but I may try them in the future, if so I'll let you know if I find it to be worth the cost.

So, now that I've talked about some more of what I do when I run, let's see what it has done for me on the scale. 209.6, down 2.8 from last week. That leaves me down 73.5 pounds since I started, which is about 25% of my starting body weight. So far it looks like the momentum is working in my favor, just have to keep it that way.