23-March-2020 By Jeffrey Cooper
Tracking your Runs
I admit up front I am a big fan of metrics. Tracking my workouts and the progress from them was how I got fit in the first place. Seeing workout numbers go up and weight (and cholesterol) go down are huge motivators. If you are facing motivational challenges trying to keep fit and work out, I highly recommend tracking the numbers, preferably visually, if you can with at least one of any number of running apps.
I use a lot of apps. I find different apps have different strengths, and each one gives a bit different perspective on your run, ride or workout. For running, I’ve setting on 3 apps, which I use simultaneously, because each one has what I consider an essential feature. I recommend you do the same- try out different apps, and several at the same time, to see what works best for you.
A small downside to using multiple apps is that Apple Health and Google Fit- depending on your phone, will see multiple copies of the same activity. Until they add de-duplication, it’s something I live with. I don’t really care about Apple’s 3-rings system, since this makes that irrelevant.
FITIV Pulse. I just love this app for so many reasons. It’s gorgeous when you are using it, and it presents the results of your workout beautifully.
When you are working out, you see the screen to the right. It is intended for heart-rate focused workouts. All my workouts are more or less focused on heart-rate, whether it’s running or weightlifting.
The first thing you notice is the Halo. It has a graduated color ring that changes color from blue-green-yellow-orange-red as your heart rate increases. It calculates Max HR from your age, or lets you override it if you know what yours are supposed to be.
Additionally, you see a ticker along the bottom, which ticks at (default, but settable) a 30s pace. It is color-coded the same way.
Both are powerful, and together more-so. The ring is visible no matter what, which is why I love it in the gym. You can see your HR instantly and work to keep it sustained through a set.
Additionally, I try to stay in a given zone for several tickmarks along the bottom. It’s a latch-type of marker, not an average, so when 30s is up, whatever the HR value, that is latched at that color level. So I try extra hard.
I roughly estimate that just using FITIV the way I use it (and the way you are tempted to use it, given its method of presentation), I get about 10% more workout in a given time period.
FITIV is even more valuable when you add sprinting interval training, which I call Sprintervals. I added intervals almost 4 years ago, one a week. I found that the effect on my body and on my resting heart rate (RHR) was about as much as running itself was when I first started that. If running gave you X benefit, adding sprintervals once a week gave you 2X benefit. That is powerful.
The post-run Heart Rate (HR) analysis is most impressive when you’re doing HIIT-style sprints. I remember the first time I saw this, I had been using the app for a year. I was so pleased when I saw the new GPS-overlay feature (right half) that it spurred me even more to sprint.
The left graph shows my HR, and you can clearly see the sprints. The first few sprints tend to be shorter, until I get my second wind. Then they get longer, and lately I’ve been maintaining fast speeds for longer (I am not a fast runner). Towards the end, as I get tired, you can see the effort tapering off. In this particular graph, you see a prolonged dip in the middle- I got a phone call which I kept short.
The graph on the right is the other, really great feature of this app. The graph on the left is overlaid onto your GPS track, and if you sprint, you get a dashed line. This is the most impressive feature after the halo itself. Even when not sprinting, it’s still fun to see the HR overlay.
FITIV Pulse is my top running app for recording effort. It’s great for cycling and anything else you do, as well. I’ll talk about using this app in the gym in a future article. The app is quite inexpensive for these features, and it also runs on wearables- Apple Watch and Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active, on the right, running independent of the phone. If you are serious about running, this is a great appl
Strava. The other key app I use on every run is Strava. They are one of the most popular running and cycling apps out there, with tens of millions of users. They are great for training and have deep analysis that other apps don’t have around heart rate training. If you cycle, they connect to power meters, cadence and bicycle computers, and you get a very thorough analysis of your ride. For cyclists, this is the #1 app by far. If you run, they are great (though FITIV has better graphs). However, if you Trail Run, Strava is essential.
If you have a premium tier of Strava, you can run with the map showing a heatmap. Strava’s millions of users have left them with trillions of GPS data points where people and run and cycled. That data is depersonalized and aggregated into a heatmap. When you run trails, it is an essential tool for finding your way around. I greatly increased my trail running when this became available. In this screenshot, I was about 5 miles into an 8 mile run. I was able to sort my way through the tangle at the top and make sure I was on the right trail to get back to my car.
You can also see the heatmaps on Strava’s website for advance planning. Frequently trails are in areas of low cellphone coverage. In those cases, you want to have a basic understanding of what your run will look like, and then preload the map in Strava before you leave home. (Note, if you do not have Premium, the heatmaps will show up at low resolution. You can, however, get the basic idea of how they work).
Once you start your run, it’s very easy to track where you are going and largely avoid getting lost. It doesn’t work at close zoom, so if you aren’t sure exactly that you are on the right track after a junction, you can still tell pretty quickly and not end up on the wrong trail and potentially adding significantly to your range.
For reference, I’ve blended 2 of the modes above on the website version of Strava. The default mode is Dark Mode, which shows the popularity of trails in terms of brightness. On the right is the satellite view, which is good if you need to correlate with some landmarks or find a place to park before you leave home. You can filter by running, cycling and even swimming, and it runs on wearables, independent of the phone on Samsung’s watch. It’s an essential tool.
A final note on Strava. It has a social network interwoven into the app, and it is something they are known for. Workouts are visible to your contacts, and there are other features, such as Fly-Bys (who did I pass on my run or ride) which are interesting. Strava will also automatically detect when you are running the same route and will provide you with progress reports at how much you are improving on that segment. It’s not something I use because I run a different route every single run, but it’s a useful tool for many people.
MapMyRun. The two previous apps are essential for me to measure performance and for discovery. However, I do use a third app. MapMyRun, by Under Armour, in my own personal opinion, is in 3rd place.
While I don’t have anything personal against the app- it does track your runs, and it does workout analysis similar to Strava. I find the app to be quite buggy sometimes, though, and it does have fewer overall features than Strava. It feels like releases are rushed out the door and fixed later as users report them. In that regard, it’s frustrating sometimes.
There is one reason why I still use this app- GPX Export. GPX is a GPS eXchange file, and it allows you to export your runs or rides to a file that is readable by mapping applications. In particular, I use Google Earth to view my runs. I will go into depth on Google Maps run & ride tracking in a future article, but wanted to address the differences between GPX exports in these apps.
All three apps- FITIV Pulse, Strava and MapMyRun will export your routes using a GPX file. MapMyRun, being a bit stripped down from the other two apps, has an advantage here, for me. This advantage isn’t necessarily an advantage for other uses, as it is missing the elevation data. However, it makes the GPX file much, much smaller as a result.
Take a look at the run in the map above, tracked in all 3 apps. MapMyRun’s GPX file is less than 1/2 the size of Strava’s, and is significantly less than FITIV’s GPX file. If you don’t track your runs like I do, cumulatively, in Google Earth, then this doesn’t matter. However, I’ve tracked about 500 runs since I got serious running again in 2016, and when you combine them all in Google Earth, the resulting map file can become enormous. Using MapMyRun’s GPX files are the best way to keep the total size as low as possible.
I’m probably going to write a script in the near future to parse Strava and FITIV GPX’s and strip out elevation, as well as removing a large number of data points, as there is no reason you need a GPS sample for practically every footstep in a run. I think the maps will look the same with 1/10 of the # of data points. More on that in the Google Earth write-up in the future.
Conclusion
If you are serious about running, it’s best to use an app. They all support wearables and any decently-featured app will help you get better results. I discussed my three favorites. There are other big names like Runkeeper (owned by ASICS) and Endomondo, also owned by Under Armour, as well as myriad other lesser-known names.