I’ve gone on three runs with this RunKeeper app this week and I’ve got to say I could be converting. Weather in Chicagoland isn’t quite at the level where I feel comfortable running outside on a regular basis yet, but this app is certainly a motivation. It tracks where you are using the iPhone’s GPS in real time, so you get a nice little breakdown of calories, average speed and distance (basically everything I crave on a treadmill).
And on top of that you get accountability. It’s posting to my Twitter and Facebook feeds the distance of my run and a google map of where I went. My first two posts garnered “likes” from friends within hours after I posted them. This is the type of post I don’t think much of on other people’s feeds — I read past anything that starts with an icon because I assume it involves needing friends to “bake a pie” or “raise a barn” — but there is some sense I have that I want to put another post out there so I should go out and run again.
All this being said, it is a tad creepy to show everyone your exact running route. Apparently even my mom has heard of this Web site Please Rob Me, which searches Twitter for people playing FourSquare and makes fun of them for broadcasting the fact that their abodes are available to burgle when they check in at every other coffee shop or karaoke bar. The funny thing about RunKeeper is that it works in exactly the opposite way. You are broadcasting when you come back home. Considering that my exercise is leaving the apartment and running right back to it, I’m pretty much announcing when I click “End Activity” that you had the opportunity to take my crap and you missed it. That’s me taking a bite out of crime.
