I decided that I needed to exercise so I started walking this week. Being a geek though I couldn’t just start walking I had to have an app that could track my miles, route and progress. However I also didn’t want to carry another gadget along with my iPhone, so I started looking for an app and I found several, but for now I have decided to use a free app called RunKeeper Pro for the iPhone. It is very easy to set up, you tell it the activity you are going to be doing whether it is running, walking, cross-country skiing, elliptical training to name a few. You then input the route you are going to take, you can choose a public route that someone else has enter or use a previous route you have taken. If you want you can add your route to the public data base. You can then add an iTunes playlist if you want. This morning I used Pocketcast and had a podcast playing in the background and that worked fine also. Finally you can decide if you want to be coached or not. If you do decide to use a coach, you have three options, target pace, intervals or fitness class. Finally when you are ready to go hit start activity. In my case I was walking, about every 5 minutes it would let me know how far I had gone and the pace I was walking at. When you are finish, it will let you know the time, distance, pace and how many calories you burned.

All this information is then uploaded to the RunKeeper Web site. If you want you can share the information publicly or with just the people you are connected to on the site through Facebook or Twitter or you can keep it private. You can share all or part of the information with whom ever you want. For $4.99 a month or $19.99 a year you can become an elite member. With elite membership you can enjoy real-time tracking and the ability to broadcast your activities live. You also get a 50% discount on the fitness classes. Fitness classes are programs that are devised by fitness experts. These programs can get you ready for a 5k, a marathon or to lose weight. If you are an elite member you also get advance fitness reports and alerts.

The one negative about RunKeeper is that all it’s fitness classes are targeted toward runners. So although you can use it for other activities at its core it is true to it’s name RunKeeper. Despite this, I like using RunKeeper, it is great for keeping track of my progress. If you exercise how do you keep track of your progress, do you have a favorite iPhone, or Android App.