App, Rant, Confession

App

I’ve used the Nike App for a few years now my runs are logged back from 2013 (although not many back then).  I’ve always really liked it, and love that I could write notes on my runs, and also like that I can connect with my running friends (albeit just the two of them).

Rant

However, have not been impressed with this year’s radical update. In fact I’m growing to hate it more and more. It has a mind of its own and crashes regularly, including when I’m running, including on the day of my first ever half marathon  - not impressed -  and even crashed my phone yesterday.   It logs me out regularly and resets all my settings (which I don’t realise until I start running), sometimes it changes its settings for no reason, which is a pain to realise after you start running. It doesn’t record things consistently either, some days  it’s happy to record pace, elevation and then some days not.  And I hate that they’ve taken away the notes feature which means I can’t write helpful comments on each of my runs (which helps me when I look back) and also means I’ve lost all my comments from the last 12 months. Grr x 2

So I’ve been looking at alternatives. It might be time to buy a watch.

Confession (well actually 2 confessions)

I hate wearing watches (that’s not the confession) but feel the need for it is great now. I was looking at the fancy Garmin ones, although they’re pricey if I’m to continue in my serious running it would be a worthwhile investment.

But (and here’s confession 1) I did actually buy a running watch (a TomTom) a few months ago, I used it a couple of times but wasn’t keen and couldn’t get it to sync to Nike properly so gave up using it and threw it in a drawer to be forgotten.  But I can’t justify going out and buying a Garmin, when I have a perfectly good running watch that I never use.  So I’ve made a deal with myself, I will use the Tomtom until the beginning of May and if I use it enough I’ll treat myself to a Garmin (unless of course I’ve got so used to TomTom that I don’t need a new gadget).

There’s another reason I desperately need to start using a watch for running (here’s confession 2) I’ve got into a very bad habit of shoving the phone down my sports bra when running (I hate those arm band things).  My sports bra makes a perfect pocket, easy access, secure and good distance for the headphones, but it does make a very sweaty pocket, and I’m getting more and more concerned that my lovely iphone might not put up with such abuse for too much longer.