RunnerMate: Cycling

Showing posts with label Cycling. Show all posts

Exercise or travel? Why not both?!

January 15, 2017 No comments :

The first title of this post was "Saving money by exercises when travelling". I changed that, as it only reflects one aspect of what I want to say. My main point is not to avoid certain types of transportation means in order to save a bunch of money. What I want to advertise is the idea of occasionally including / combining healthy activities when one needs to get from point A to point B. Sometimes it saves money / time. In some cases it does neither, but reduces the CO2 footprint, or just makes the time spent travelling more joyful.

Rate my setup - my bikedesk

November 27, 2016 3 comments :

Everything started two and a half years ago, when I decided to register for my first triathlon race. As I was not biking a lot at the time, I decided to buy a stationary bike, and follow this rule:

"Watching the new episodes of series is only allowed while riding the stationary bike."

The most awesome medal hanger

September 22, 2016 2 comments :

If You are a runner, cyclist, etc. who goes to races, sooner or later You will have to face the problem of finding the proper installment suitable for the medals.

New year resolution of 2015 in retrospective

January 29, 2016 No comments :

To be honest, I have never had any explicit resolutions for 2015 (or any of the previous years for that matter), but I've had a simple ambition, so to speak:

By the end of the new year, I will have accumulated at least as many kilometers from each type of activity as I did in 2014.

So, have I made it?
The short answer is no, however...

Ten points to HRC

October 09, 2015 No comments :

The House Cup of the Hogwarts Running Club is a ton of fun, as I have already mentioned in my previous post. The Headmistresses of HRC publish a "Miles Monday" post at the beginning of each week about the current state of the "competition". Following up on a crazy idea, I scrolled back on the page until the 11th of July, when the whole thing started. I have put all of the data into a spreadsheet to make some charts, hope You will find them interesting!

Navigation and tracking at once: a first look at OsmAnd

October 06, 2015 No comments :

Navigation is something that we probably all miss from our tracking software, especially if we go out and run/hike/bike at foreign places, and thus want to stick to a predefined route. RunKeeper's support for routes could be considered as a very basic feature in that direction, but it has some flaws, as I pointed out in my previous post. As we were talking about this, one my friend suggested me to have a look at the OsmAnd (OSM (OpenStreetMap) Automated Navigation and Directions), and this post summarizes my first impressions.

The magical trinity: running, wizardry, and charity

September 25, 2015 No comments :

I came across the Charity Miles app a couple of years back, but I uninstalled it after a while, because I found it very cumbersome, that it can not export the tracks, or sync the data to the HealthGraph or any other database. However, after my Harry Potter Marathon I was surfing on facebook, and I ended up at the page of the Hogwarts Running Club.

Checked luggage like a boss!

September 07, 2015 No comments :

So today I flew to Oujda (Morocco), where I'll be spending two months. My baggage is usually far from the weight limit, but today I managed to make it 19.5 kg, so pretty close to the allowed 20 kg. The reason for that is best illustrated by the photo below (that shows around 4/5 of my whole luggage. Yep, I've brought some normal stuff with myself too).

So basically:

a Rollerblade skate
3 x 2-item protective gear (palm, knee and elbow)
(bike-) helmet, that will be used for skating too
my old Asics GT 1000 running shoes
RP Outdoor 1l running backpack
running/cycling/skating shirts and shorts, compression and other sport socks
swimming gear (cap, glasses, trunks)
2 x 494g Biotech USA Nitro Pure Whey protein + shaker
Biotech USA Vitamin complex, Vitamin D, Coral Ca/Mg

Everything ready to collect a serious amount of miles in the house cup for the Faculty Lounge of the Hogwarts Running Club!

Top 6 RunKeeper features/bugfixes I long for

September 05, 2015 No comments :

I could (and maybe I will) write a long post about why I chose RunKeeper as my (main) tracker application, and health database. I made this decision for over two years now, and I still believe that RunKeeper and its HealthGraph is the most suited to me (although sometimes I use other compatible apps for tracking such as AeroTrackerPro or Zombies, Run!).

This being said, there are quiet a few features I miss, and bugs that annoys me. I present a 6 item top list of them below, but please, keep in mind, that despite the seemingly negative attitude, the purpose of this article is to provide constructive ideas, suggestions. And why 6 not 5 or 10? Because 6 is perfect.

Awesome "heatmap" of activities

August 19, 2015 No comments :

It is summer, and we all have those friends, who flood our Facebook feed with tons of selfies taken during vacations across the globe. These people can buy themselves a nice Scratchmap to track which countries they have or haven't been to, or just simply do it online on one of the many sites, e.g. here.

Image source: http://www.coroflot.com/bsales/scratch-map-travel-edition

For a long time now, I wanted to do something similar based on my activities on RunKeeper, as I always try to bring my running shoes with me, wherever I go. (See the second section here.) So, I got really happy when I found AllMyRuns among the web-applications, that can connect to RunKeeper. It does exactly what I was looking for... or more precisely, it is supposed to do so. I was sad to realize, however, that I always got the error message “Authentication error: Invalid response” whenever I tried to connect to RunKeeper. (If it works for any of You, please let me know.)

Although the results are not perfect, I thought I would share an other quick approach with You, some may find it interesting. So, here it is:

RunnerMate