Firstly Happy New Year to everyone and hope this year brings you everything you want.
The other day I tweeted about using the Strava running app. Appreciate there are alot of running apps out there, but I came across this one through some other users so I thought I'd give it a go. I must admit I'm not big on running apps, watch trainers and all that sort of stuff, although I do use my Garmin Foretrex 301 occasionally to measure the distances of my runs and how much ascent etc. So on today's run I thought I'd just see how they compare.
Firstly on local runs I don't usually take my phone, so the thing I like about the Foretrex 301 is you can wear it as a watch and the display is easy to see, with my touch screen phone it doesn't like to work with gloves on so that just makes it a bit harder to read the screen. Funnily enough, if you've been on an Easyjet flight recently and read the in-flight magazine you can now buy gloves specifically to work with touch screen phones. Once back home and uploaded the data on Garmin connect I tried to upload onto the Strava site and it notified me that my Garmin device is not supported and I have to contact support, don't know how easy that is as I don't want to take it that far. Comparing the data, they are pretty similar and for someone who is a recreational runner like myself there are no drastic mis-matches in the data.
Looking at my data on the Strava web account, I did like the segment facility which shows segments that have been created in your area, albeit I got depressed at my results, it shows how you fair against others, this feature can be turned on or off. It will also give you any PB's you have got on your run. Segments are climbs, sprint distances etc. The climbs are graded similar to the TDF.
A good friend of mine also uses the runtastic app, so that's another one for me to try.
Anyway that's all my opinion, the main thing is just to enjoy the running.
Next week off up to Scotland, bring on some snow hopefully.
