I‘m often asked which running app I’d recommend for training.
I’ve been using the free Nike+ app for many years and found it to be very good and I’ve played around with another free app, RunKeeper which is also very good, however I’ve recently upgraded to iSmoothRun Pro GPS which costs about $6.50 (one off fee) but I think this is the best running app. This running app has a lot of great features that the others don’t have that I find really help with training. Some other apps charge monthly or annual fees (via in-app purchases) to achieve the same thing.
I recommend iSmoothRun for training because it has so many useful training features.
I particularly like the interval and workout editor and the metronome function that lets you set your target cadence to practice staying at a particular pace. You can also set this to Auto, which means that the metronome only comes on if you go below the cadence you set for the run.
It also has a cool feature called ‘ghost run’ that enables you to run against yourself on a previous run over the same route.
Like RunKeeper, you can also link it to a heart rate monitor and set your heart rate training zones etc. Plus you can edit your info and you can use it to record bike rides as well which I find very useful.
There are heaps of cool and very important features that aren’t on other apps. You can read all the features at iSmoothRun Pro GPS/Pedometer Tracker for Runners
Another plus for me is it also allows me to sync all my running data back to my Nike+ account so all my years of training runs are still recorded in the same place. In fact it exports to all the major sites such as Daily Mile, Garmin Connect, Strava, MapMyRun, RunKeeper, FitBit and others.
Well worth the money in my opinion.
One of the cool things about the iSmoothRun is that you can export your results to a group of running sites (and other apps), so my runs sync to five different sites and I can look at the results on any or all of them. Different sites offer different user experience. Because I used the Nike+ app with the old shoe sender unit for 2,142 km I used to use their site for quite a while, but these days, I now have years of data on a few different sites and it is all collected and sent by iSmoothRun. I still occasionally look at my stats on the Nike website.
RunKeeper is another app I like, as well as Strava and MapMyRun. They have different ways of presenting the data which you can view even though you collected it initially on iSmoothRun.
Don’t miss out on a free download of my City2Surf training calendar that you can download and import into your computer or phone calendar.