Runkeeper Review: iPhone Fitness, Training, & Tracking

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Runkeeper Review: iPhone Fitness, Training, & Tracking

RunKeeper is a mobile fitness application that makes fitness tracking and training easier to use and more fun. Currently, it’s only available on the iPhone, specifically the 3G and 3GS versions due to the use of GPS functionality for tracking speed and altitude.

Since @LaurenWong and I have recently picked up cycling, we decided to go for a night ride through Apex Community Park & Lake in Apex, NC. I decided to finally give RunKeeper a real test, since I had installed this application months ago, but hadn’t had a reason to test it out.

As you can see from the iPhone screen captures below, the GPS tracking isn’t perfect, but for a free application, it did a great job of tracking our speed, location, pace, and altitude. RunKeeper has settings for various activities like Running, Cycling, Walking, Hiking, Downhill Skiing, Cross-Country Skiing, Snowboarding, and Skating.

All of the data is displayed in various graphs available on the RunKeeper.com website. Through Twitter, Facebook, and Social Bookmarking services, you’ll be able to quickly and easily share your adventure with all of your friends.

While I’m not training for a marathon or cycling competition, I can easily see how this data can be beneficial to those who are. The various activity settings allow for specific tracking of the sports/activities you enjoy.

The application itself is very easy and intuitive to use. There are large buttons which help when engaged in your physical activity. You can still listen to your iPod Music Library while you workout, and there’s both a manual PAUSE button, as well as an automatic PAUSE for incoming phone calls and text messages. Simply RESUME your activity after you’re done with the call/message.

The Mph display and Miles traveled data is useful for me personally, but RunKeeper does appear to lack the ability to track steps (pedometer), though this doesn’t really affect the activities that I’ll be using RunKeeper for. This feature may be hidden in some of the other settings, but if not, it would be a great add-on to the RunKeeper application.

Overall, I enjoyed using RunKeeper for our late night cycling adventure, and we plan to use it for all of our future adventures, so check it out at www.RunKeeper.com!