BiM (Bones in Motion) Active has merged GPS-enabled cell phones with the Internet, so runners, cyclists, inline skaters, and the like can track their progress. You can track your path using the BIM service, upload it wirelessly to the Internet, then merge it with data about weather and terrain, for example. At any time during your workout, you can check the phone’s screen and read the distance you’ve traveled, your pace, your calories burned, your split time, and your total elapsed time.
When you’re done with your workout, you can log onto the site’s community space to share your favorite routes with others (and view cool places to go in your area). You can also check progress charts and summaries of your daily activities on the web site. All this high tech sophistication probably won’t improve your times, but it can make your training a little more interesting.
If you’re a track coach, or you’re just helping someone train for a race, you need a stopwatch. You need to be able to keep track of the time, so you can see if your protégé is getting better. Now, you can get all sorts of fancy timing gadgets today, but there’s something neat about this old school-style stopwatch from Ultrak. It’s just the sort of thing gym coaches all had back in the day, so it can bring back some memories. Whether you were actually around back then (or you just remember enjoying the Wonder Years), you can get that old school feel for less than $50 from Online Sports:
There you are… running along, on track to make a personal training best, and suddenly you feel the flopping of an untied shoelace smacking you in the shin. You’ll wait and deal with it when you’re done, you decide. But soon the shoe starts loosening, the flopping becomes really aggravating, and you can’t take it any more. You drop in your tracks to tie your recalcitrant shoe laces.
What you need is some laces that won’t come untied. In fact, how about some shoe laces that you’ll never have to tie again? That’s what the Yankz system is all about. You secure the laces with a toe hook and pull on the cord loop near the tongue, and your laces are nice and tight until you release them. The lace lock system will cost you $7.50, and when your current running shoes wear out, you can simply move it to the next pair.