I ran with the iRunner app for the first time yesterday. Just about everything about this app is amazing, but it was the totality of the experience that blew me away.
As usual, my head was a virtual disco thanks to the Beats by Dr. Dre headset and the Digitally Imported (DI.fm) app, through which I was blasting the always uplifting Disco House channel.
At every mile, the iRunner app would very politely turn the music down slightly and announce in a female voice like Siri’s the time it took for me to run that mile, my total run time and my average pace. It would then allow the music to resume at its old, pleasant, loud volume.
About midway through the run, my mother called. The iPhone gently halted the music, announced the phone call, which I answered by clicking on the function button of the Beats headset. I spoke with mom briefly, and when she hung up, the iPhone gently resumed the disco house music playback through the di.fm app without my doing a thing.
Throughout the whole process, iRunner kept track of my run, and generated the statistics below.
I am not a betting man (nor am I a gaming man; that euphemism is perhaps the corporate correctness term I hate the most; it’s akin to calling ecstacy Pez; “gaming” avoids all of the serious consequences that gambling contains), but had someone bet me that I would be keeping complete track of my workouts while I listen to CD quality disco music piped via the internet and answering phone calls–all with a device strapped to my arm–five years ago, I would have taken the losing side of that bet.
If I had the iPhone 4S, of course, I could have been dictating my novel as I run, too, supposing for a moment that I were writing a novel.
The wonders never cease, and the rapid pace of progress is astounding. This will positively become a regular workout routine, whether I’m biking or running, because all this technology literally allows one never to miss a beat.
