Recently work and family life has taken a big hit on my let's say happiness, so now looking for the exercise to help pick my mood up, which seems to be working. No longer am I looking for faster lap times or race times, I am running just for the hell of it, sure Strava gives me great insight into how I am doing but any runner will tell you how well a run went, suffer score not required however fun it is to look at.
I am now living in a new part of Manchester which my only running link being the Moonraker 10k course, which sadly no longer takes place. So in one way is nice to be able to train on the course but if you have ever raced it... Windermere Road is a heck of a climb!
So to help me get about and not get lost, I tried out Rungo which works in the same way as Strava but you can download your running route to the watch and it gives you turn by turn directions in your ears.
This worked well in a trial and paid for the premium plugin to enable among other features, the ability to sync with Strava.
This worked very well and as soon as the watch connects to the phone (just like Strava), the activity is uploaded to the website. The Rungo website itself is very basic but is enough to get your route, pace and splits. The focus seems to be on community and routes rather than out and out the detail of how you performed.
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| Rungo |
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| Strava |
When I checked out what information was synced to Strava it struck me straight away that there was no HR data passed across, so checked back at Rungo and it too does not store HR data, the watch app, however, does display your HR all be it in a grey font, small at the top of the screen.
This was a complaint of forum folks and it is believed that the ability to customise the watch interface is on the roadmap, just change the font to red and larger!
I have to say the technical support for Rungo is good, with the responses being quite prompt and knowledge placed at the right level.
So, in a nutshell, I am having to run both apps when running new routes and configure Rungo not to write to activity as it duplicates data. Once the HR issue is fixed I can see myself going fully to Rungo and using Strava to collect the data.... unless that is Strava mans up and does turn-by-turn navigation...
So my last challenge of the day was how to get back into the house, no longer do I have the luxury of someone to open the door for me. I have worked (and paid) hard to cord-cut and minimise stuff that I have to carry when out for a run. The Apple Watch as discussed in my Back to running post handles everything from tracking the run, phone for emergencies and paying for stuff. I don't have to have an armband, running belt... nothing, however I do not to be able to get back in the house.
The solution back to the old days, thread the key into your laces... simples.
My back issue if you are wondering... persists and my physio's last words to me "stretch" still ring in my ears.
Keep running
Mark
