Entries Tagged 'iphone' ↓

Ok as many of you know, I frequent the Lost Bluff hiking trail in Grenada, MS quite a bit. I walk it and jog it in hopes that one day I will be able to jog the entire thing. This is no easy task, as there are many steep inclines and declines along the way.

I usually take my iphone with me and use the gps to track my progress and run times using RunKeeper. This a great app, but recently I have been wondering how accurate is the gps.
See the sign at the beginning of the trail says that its approximately 2.2 miles. Each time I complete the trail its on average 1.7 miles, my question was, is it logging my activity accurately while I am jogging?

I decided to walk it today and take my time, taking pictures along the way. Runkeeper allows you to take photos and upload as you go, it geotags the photos and places them on the map exactly where you took them. Continue reading →

Ok so today it reached 99F with a heat index of probably 105F and what do I do? Go for a bike ride of course!

I biked the same path as I did last time but unfortunately as I logged the trip with RUNKEEPER on the iPHONEI noticed that it failed to log 6 miles. See I use the free RUNKEEPER app and it has sponsored ads on it. Well one of these ads popped up not a tenth of a mile down the road and it stopped tracking until the X was pressed. I noticed this when I reached the nature trail by the tennis courts at Grenada Lake.

I have now purchased the RUNKEEPER PRO app and this should never happen again. It has more feature too!

This time around was easier than the last.
I purchased one of those Hydration Packs to help me out this time.

In the map below, 6 miles are missing. I left where the red pin is, went to the nature trail/tennis court area and rode through the nature trail, then onto the emergency spillway area and run down and back up the 100 steps, then proceeded back and rode through the nature trail once more and back on home. The sun took a break at one point and let a few drops of rain fall onto me giving me a nice cool down.

I think next time I will try for 25 miles.

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I used to be able to run 3 miles all at once and not even think about it. I participated in 5k’s before too!

That was back in the good ole days.
These days its much harder for me to run.  I get winded very easily. That’s why here lately I have decided to try my best to get back into better shape.

I have been doing so by bike riding, getting on the treadmill, and my favorite has become trail hiking/walking/running.

I get bored easily on treadmills or the track so fitness trails, biking, and hiking seem to be the solution to that.

With the help of my co-worker Justin, we decided that we would try to use Tuesdays and Thursdays to do some sort of cardio exercise. I may be running, walking, hiking the Lost Bluff trail, nature trail, or biking.
Anyone of you that read this blog, know me and live in my area, feel free to hit me up through email or whatever if you would like to join in. The more the merrier.

Whats making all of this exercising even better is some of the apps that I have been using on the iphone.

So far I have used some really great apps like MotionX GPS, Trailguru, and Runkeeper.

MotionX-GPS was great but it loses gps signal if you fall below 3mph. I think this is terrible for a PAID FOR app as I sometimes only walk 2mph and I would like for it to log my walks. For bike riding it may be ideal, but I have yet to use it for that yet.

Trailguru is an awesome free app for the iphone. I like it alot, it has never lost signal even if I were to crawl. It makes really nice posts to the web as well as the ability to embed into your webpage as I have done here before. Right now however at the time of this writing, their website is down and I can not post my logs to their site.

Runkeeper was the very first app I ever put on my phone relating to walking/running and I have just now got back to using it. Mainly because the Trailguru website was down. I am glad I relaunched the use of this fabulous free program.

Today Justin and I did the regular 1 mile nature trail near the tennis courts at Grenada Lake. We ran it mostly and walked it in spots. We did it twice playing with the app runkeeper.

Below are the results using runkeeper. I think so far out of all 3 apps, I like it the best.
First time through.

Second time through.

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Ok @leggett and I decided to hike the Lost Bluff Hiking trail together yesterday and this time I wanted to try trailguru again an use it to take pictures along the way to see if it would put the pictures on the map as we progressed the trail.

I learned a few things yesterday doing this.

While using trailguru, if you press the iphone’s lock key to blank out the screen, you turn gps off.
Also if you get a phonecall or reply to a text message, during your trek, it will stop the timer and mapping so you will have to start it again after the phone call or text. You will not lose already mapped data, you will just have to press start again on the app to pick up where it was paused.

I know now that the app has its own lock button that I can use instead of the iphones lock button. This prevents the GPS and app from going to sleep and losing trail data.

I posted the map below to show you that during screen locks and phonecalls it really messed up the mapping of my hike. It did however do as I expected and put the pictures on the map.
You will have to click on the plus sign and zoom in on the trail to see the pics. YOu will notice the broken trail lines where the gps got deactivated.

I want to do this will MotionX gps next and give it another shot. The reason I am liking trailguru (free app) over MotionX Gps (pay app) right now is that it doesnt lose GPS signal like Motion X does.