Phone Friday: Tracking My Jogging

I'm not usually a fan of gyms - but I've got say, Bally's has totally won me over recently. No, it's not a new machine or class. It's one magic word: Babysitting!. Our little one now qualifies for their child care, and we've started taking advantage of it.

This means I'm freed up to start running again! Whoo!

While I really liked my Google Spreadsheet for tracking my runs, I was curious if there was an existing Android app that would automate the whole data entry side of things.

Of course there is -- I give you: Handy Runner. The nice thing about Handy Runner is it does just what it's supposed to do, and not much more. It allows you to start a run, stop it, and have it automatically published to a tracking service. It calculates more stats than I care about, and records my GPS track which is a nice bonus, but that stuff stays out of the way.

Along with simplicity, the other key feature it brings is integration with RunningAHEAD.com. RunningAHEAD is a free platform for storing your workouts. While it can track all sorts of sophisticated aspects of your workout, it appears to do just fine with the data Handy Runner will automatically feed it.

As a bonus, it provides a public view of your workouts you can share with the world, as widgets for embedding in your blog:

Here's a key tip before you go for your first jog. Make sure Handy Runner is in your ignore list of your Task Killer. Otherwise, like me, you'll finish the run and find that it didn't record a thing. Whoops. Lesson learned.

Happy Running!