Tracking Walks with iPhone and GPS

The new iPhone has a GPS unit inside it so there are applications to help you track your walks.

The application I am using is RunKeeper. This allows you to log all your activities and they get synced with your online account on the web. There you can view your weekly activity and see maps of the routes you took and graphs of pace and altitude with time. All very cool.

Check out an example of my latest walk data here: 3.85 miles of walking activity

The application costs about $9.99 for the pro version which I went for, but there is also a free version which includes Ads and lacks some of the advanced features such as workout suggestions and voice commentary.

What I am finding is that I want to save more data for fun so it encourages me to walk more. Plus it includes mapping so you can see where you are if you are exploring new places.

A couple of small issues I found were that I accidentally paused the tracking and didn’t notice. So my first walk data had gaps in it which looked like I teleported between points on the map.

Also, when you switch to another App or answer the phone, the App pauses since 3rd party software like this is not permitted to run in the background. So you need to make sure you re-start it.

When you finish your walk, you save the data and it is very quickly uploaded to the web. Then you can go online to check out how many calories you burned etc.

Here are some photos of RunKeeper running on my iPhone:

You can also listen to music while you use this App but I am thinking to listen to language-learning audio tracks.