Run Buddie
Considering starting a fitness routine?
Interval training is a concept to help get you from plain walking to running for a half hour or more by following progressive program of training to help develop your physical fitness and endurance.
Run Buddie is an iPhone and iPod Touch application to help time the intervals while you listen to your favourite music.
The training interval lengths (warm up, jog and walk) and the number of cycles are fully customizable to match your training program and are easy to adjust as you progress.
iPod control is built right into the application so you can play, pause and shuffle without loosing track of your interval progress. Google maps are also integrated just in case you need to check where you are going.
Run Buddie on iTunes - Click Here!
Instructions
Setup
When you first install the Run Buddie application it is configured with a simple program of walking and jogging to get you started, however it is likely you will want to customise this to your own needs. Visit one of the Interval Training Programs linked on the left for some example training schedules.
To enter your own intervals settings, press the “Setup” tab on the bottom right of the screen.
On the Setup page, press on the number of each interval you wish to modify, they keypad will appear so you can modify the entry.
The number of cycles setting will indicate how many times the program will loop through the set of intervals before reaching the cool down phase.
For instance, if you wish to set a Jog interval for 60 seconds followed by a walk interval of 60 seconds but repeat this 4 times, enter “60” in “First Jog” and “60” in “First Walk” and “4” in “No. of Cycles” (see example to the right).
If all your intervals are of the same length (like in the example) you can leave the other intervals (e.g. Second Jog) as “0” and they will be skipped.
Note: the maximum value for interval length is 3600 seconds (1 hour) and the maximum number of cycles is 10 (minimum is 1).
The order the program steps through the intervals is the same as in the setup page. Once the Warm Up period has passed, it proceeds to “First Jog” then “First Walk” then “Second Jog” and so on. It will repeat the Jog and Walk intervals as many times as specified in the “No. of Cycles” setting, then proceed to the Cool Down interval.
Modifying the intervals while the timer is running will stop the timer and reset it to the new values when you return to the “Running” screen.
Using
Once your intervals are setup, press on the “Running” icon on the bottom left of the screen to return to the Running screen.
When ready to start, press “Start” and the timer will begin (at the Warm Up interval).
The main time display tells you the time remaining in the current interval, the progress bar beneath this shows your progress over the entire session, with elapsed time on the left, and finish time on the right.
The bar beneath the Start/Stop, Next and Reset buttons will indicate which interval you are currently in (Warm Up, Jog, Walk or Cool Down).
When you finish the interval a sound will “Ding” (and/or the iPod/iPhone vibrate depending on your audio settings) telling you to advance to the next interval, and the current interval display will change accordingly.
You can pause the timer at any time by pressing “Stop” and resume where you left off by pressing “Start” again.
If you wish to progress to the next interval without waiting for the timer, you can press the “Next” button (with timer running or stopped) to switch to the next interval. This is handy if your training session is interrupted or you want to make a once off modification.
The “Reset” button will reset the timers to the start of the session (Warm Up interval) and cannot be undone.
Note: The Run Buddie application will stop your screen from automatically dimming and locking so you can keep an eye on the timer at all times. If you lock the screen manually (by pressing the button on top of the iPhone/iPod) the timer will stop, unless you are listening to music through the iPod (in which case it will continue running with the screen locked).
iPod Control
So you can listen to music while training and to avoid having to exit Run Buddie to control your music, iPod control has been directly integrated into the application.
Press the Play/Pause button to stop and start your iPod, and press the Shuffle icon to skip to the next track.
Run Buddie will play whichever playlist, album or song that is currently selected in the iPod application before Run Buddie was started.
If no playlist, album or song is selected, Run Buddie will shuffle your entire iPod library and start playing when the Play or Shuffle button is pressed.
The current track and artist will be displayed at the bottom of the Running screen.
If you exit Run Buddie with music playing, it will continue to play and you can control this through the regular iPod controls. (Note: if you exit Run Buddie, the session will reset to the Warm Up interval).
Map
For your convenience, you can also press the “Map” button at the bottom of the screen to show a map (loaded from Google maps) of the area you are currently in. You can scroll and zoom the map like in any other iPhone/iPod map application using your fingers. the “Re-centre” button at the top of the page will scroll and zoom the map back to your current location.
Note: the map may be unavailable on iPod touch devices or on iPhones without data service. You can choose to disable the map in Run Buddie from the iPhone/iPod Application Settings menu, this will help conserve battery and data usage if you do not require the map.
Further help/feedback
If you have any questions or would like to provide feedback or suggestions on Run Buddie, please contact us at info@quantumdice.com
Happy training and running!
Credits
Thanks to all Beta testers!
Tab Bar icons are courtesy of Joseph Wain and Glyphish.com
Disclaimer
As with any exercise, please consult with a health care professional before starting any training routine. Run Buddie is an assistant only and its Author takes no responsibility for injury or damage caused by its use.
Run Buddie Running screen
Interval Training Programs
For information on interval training and suggested training programs, visit these sites:
Run Buddie Setup screen
Run Buddie Running screen
Run Buddie Map screen
Website and applications Copyright 2009 by Robert Haylock
Run Buddie Application Settings