Ryan is covering for Paul today as he returns from his lunar voyage.
As I mentioned, I recently got a Garmin Forerunner 201 to help me keep track of my running routes, distances, and times. Yesterday, I found the best accompanying application for the Forerunner: Motion Based. It’s still in beta so it’s free for the moment, but it’s something I’ll gladly pay for when it leaves beta.
Motion Based takes your Forerunner data by using either a standalone application to transfer the data directly to the site or by uploading the XML export from the Forerunner logbook software. Once your runs are loaded and classified, you can view very detailed specifics about any given run, including average speed, fastest speed, a graph of the elevation over the course of your run, and even weather statistics for the course of your workout. But the really cool stuff comes with their use of the Adobe SVG plugin where you can playback your run on a street map where you’re represented by a dot. You can also pinpoint any specific point on your run and find out how fast you were running at that moment, the elevation, and how much time had elapsed. Taking the playback option even further, you can “race” several of your own runs against each other and because of the community nature of this project, you can also race yourself against others who have uploaded their data.
It’s an incredibly slick web-based application that is very well designed and functions wonderfully. About the only fault I can find is that it requires IE. Other than that, though, this is exactly the type of information and functionality I was hoping to get when I bought my geek watch Garmin Forerunner.
Posted in Miscellaneous