A mile squared, a love letter to RunKeeper

Ten years after starting to use RunKeeper I just crossed 5,280 miles.

5,280 feet in a mile.

5,280 miles.

A mile squared.

My adult running career began with this post by Mac Developer and personal hero, Cabel Sasser.

I was inspired and the following year I bought a pair of Nikes and the Nike+ system and started slogging miles. I ultimately logged over 1,000 miles with the Nike+ system. I loved the Nike+ system. The Nike+ system was tied to the iPod and so it was a late innovation for a technology that was an evolutionary dead-end.

In 2008, I bought my first iPhone, an iPhone 3g, and downloaded one of the first running apps, RunKeeper. It used GPS to log your distance. The early iPhones had lots of holes. RunKeeper couldn’t play music, burned the battery, and crashed my phone. But the program kept getting better. Features came. Features left. The scrappy Boston start-up behind RunKeeper was bought by Big Shoe (Asics). But the program kept getting better.

For awhile I was alternating between Nike+ and RunKeeper. That was until September 19th, 2009. It was my 40th birthday and I went out for my first 20 mile training run. At mile 8, Nike+ crashed my iPod Nano and stopped recording my run. That was the last time I used it. Since that run, RunKeeper has tracked every run. Here is my review of RunKeeper after 1,000 miles. And my review of RunKeeper 2.0. And my review of the first RunKeeper Pro.

Since then I ran a Marathon (a better post), a number of half marathons, I spent a year where I averaged 3 miles/day everyday. And though my running has decreased, as is clear from the nomogram, there are very few months where I failed to get out there and run. I have successfully kept fitness high on the priority list.

Miles per month

Items at the bottom of the to-do-list never get done. And because you never get to the bottom, things that are important can’t be put there. If you only exercise when everything else is complete you will never exercise. You need to take care of yourself before everything else is done. Not before anything else is done, but before everything else is done.

Run on.

#NoRestTilEverest