A member of the technical cavalry

[MarkyD]

Hello fellow forum members,

I'm taking a peek in to Active 10. Some of you may know me from the C25K, Bridge to 10km and Marathon Running communities. But I learned about Active 10 and thought I'd say Hello.

I've been running for a little while now, have a big 'golden' birthday in January that I'm trying to ignore. And I work in the electronics industry and have some knowledge of fitness trackers and all kinds of gizmos. So I might provide some encouragement for you to be more active along the way, and will endeavour to help you out with any technical questions, should you need some gadgety help.

A fitness tracker is not essential, and certainly does not make you put on your shoes and go out for a walk. Only your motivation can do that. But once you've committed to be more active, something that records your daily progress can make it all more interesting.

Time to walk to the post office now, so Stay Active.

[Realfoodieclub]

What a wonderful post, thank you So much for coming over to help and offer encouragement,

[runswithdogs]

Ah great post. There's something so nice about seeing your progress and how far you've come in a week, a month, a lifetime. Some days it's the extra oomph to get me out the door if I'm close to a goal.

[Ceals]

So it there a better fitness tracker to use? There are so many of them it is quite bewildering.

Just finished C25K about 5 week’s ago and I think addiction is kicking in!

[MarkyD in reply to Ceals]

There's a gadget for all budgets!

A vastly over-looked approach to fitness is keeping an old-fashioned activity diary. You know, with paper and a pencil. It will not record your steps accurately, but a diary gives you time to reflect... how many minutes did I walk today? What did I see, feel, hear, smell? What was the weather like, and did I feel an improvement on yesterday? You don't get all that for free with a gadget, and your diary never needs to be recharged, and you an easily flick through it. Totally under-rated by anyone under 60

A modern smart-phone can record your activity... in fact it probably already is recording your steps. No doubt you'll have a phone with you anywhere you go, and there are plenty of apps that will record your position with GPS, and show you a plot of where you went, and how many steps you took. You'd need something relatively modern, running the Android operating system, or an Apple iPhone.

FitBit are the go-to activity tracking brand. Of course, there are plenty of other makes, but FitBit are (mostly) wrist-worn replacements for a watch. There is a wide range of prices... the lower cost ones don't have GPS, so cannot accurately record your position. But they'll count your steps, and estimate how far you've walked. As you pay a bit more, you start to get 'running' features like heart-rate tracking and it is very easy to get carried away with features and metrics and data. Most of which are not very important or relevant.

But as you are a C25K graduate, you may want to look at an entry-level running watch... Garmin are the most popular brand, and you could consider a ForeRunner 10, 15 or 35. These will track your run with GPS, and allow you to see speed, pace, time and distance whilst you are running (you can glance at your wrist). Whilst a smartphone can probably give you all the same information, it is a bit unwieldy to get out an look at whilst running. Battery life on the running watches should be about 5-7 days, and they may well track your steps (and sleep) it you want.

[Ceals in reply to MarkyD]

Thank you that is all really helpful.

[poppypug]

Thankyou , youre a star MarkyD xxx

[Hidden]

Oh boy - I'm of the old- fashioned activity diary crew! Mainly because I really don't understand modern "gadgetry" - but I shall read your posts with great interest and maybe, sometime in 2018, I'll know enough to take the leap into the 21st century! Thank you!