Along with running, eating and being with Chicken Face, one of my other passions (and my career!) surrounds all things digital. With this geeked-out passion comes an obsession for discovering new apps, especially those that relate back to pounding the pavement. Yesterday, while standing on Bart (damn you train for having no seats available), I was perusing the app library and found a great, new free app – perfect for the lazy/math-challenged runner: “Running Pace Calculator by Andrew Wyman” a.k.a. PaceCalc. (Please note that this is an iPhone app. I am unsure as to what other smart phones it is available on). I wanted to share it with you in a new feature, “Digital Favorites,” where I’ll share my favorite, geekiest, digital finds and turn you into an uber-nerd too!
In it’s simplest form, this app is a pace calculator that will “help you find your pace based on your most recent race time and distance, or a goal time.” It goes on to calculate pace, projected race times and training paces. While there isn’t anything groundbreaking to the app and there are plenty of sites that can already do this for you, I love it for a few specific reasons.
- It’s free. Thus, that’s two more dollars that I can put towards Gu, Chomps, and some new songs on iTunes.
- It’s an app. Like mentioned above, there are a plethora of online sites that can do this for you and sure you can access them on your smart phone anyways. But having an app that is optimized for your mobile phone makes life that much easier – especially after a long run when you can barely think about anything other than food.
- Caters to the lazy. I’m not a math person – plain and simple. I did perfectly well in school, but when it comes to personal preference, I’d much rather write a 10-page essay than sit in a calculus class. Thus, this app only furthers my math laziness and I love it!
- Training times. While I love the projected pace and race times it spits out, the most valuable part to me are the estimated training times. How fast should I be running my easy run? Tempo run? The app provides estimates based on the information you entered in the first screen – the pace calculator.
What pace tools to you use?
Happy Running!
Whenever I see the fun things you can do with your iPhone I get jealous that my BlackBerry doesn`t do that!
I love that you are a digital dudette. Remember that time we were at the hotel for your bachelorette party & you couldn’t figure out how to plug in your ipod? 😉 ok, I hope that wasn’t too mean! This actually looks really cool, and as a non-math person myself, this would be insanely useful.
Hey now, hey now…I got it plugged in but the damn thing was broken! 😉
I’m with you on this one, hate those math thingies…
nice that’s super convenient to have on your phone! I use the one on runner’s world all the time!
Thank you for sharing this! I have been looking for a good app that does exactly this!!
I will definitely download that app! I think Aron did a post a while back on running apps, I also like iPace and Race Pace, they are very similar to the one you talk about above.
headed to DL it now. the guy who made it needs to send you a little of his profit 🙂
I use that app too! I also use Pacer and PaceCalc. I have like a whole folder thingie on my iPhone for just running apps!
I need to get an iphone.
What a great app! I just downloaded it. I never know how fast I should be running. Looks like I’ve been doing my long runs way too fast! Maybe that’s why I keep getting dumb little injuries.
Gonna download this now!