Virtual Races

Who knew there were virtual races??  This is perfect for me!  First, I work most weekends, and with race season coming up, I'm saving my requests for racedays. But with virtual races, there is a time frame of a few days to actually run the distance.  Second, I don't always want to drive to some locations to run (the one in Newark, I'd be running for real!) so I can decide where I want to run.  The ones I'm looking at for the next couple of months send you a completion medal after you run.  AND you can order an actual race bib.  I think I'm collecting them.  Not sure what my plan is - but there it is.  Since you have to go back on and submit your time - I'll use an app on the phone for that, but I'll take the run more seriously and be able to see how I'm actually doing.

The two I'm signing up for coming up are:

The Lucky Leprechaun "in" Trenton.  There's a 5K, 10K and half marathon - let's not get crazy I'm doing the 5K. You can run anytime between March 14 & March 22. It benefits Prostate Cancer research - and the fun part? The medal is also a bottle opener!

The next one I've signed up for  Dark  Helmut -Calla's run.  Also a 5K or 10K run.  These are being run all over the country apparently.  I signed up for Newark because technically it's closest.  I can run it any time in April.  It's for the medical bills for someone who had a brain injury - if the fund supercedes the medical bills, the rest goes to Traumatic Brain Injury Foundation.  But realistically - I'm doing it for the medal - I mean Dark Helmut?  Space Balls?  I must have this!!!

Fitness Trackers and Apps

I'm looking at a few different fitness app and trackers.  I'm also looking at a couple pain tracker apps.  I keep saying I'm going to track my headaches, and migraines but never actually do.  The magic of me and my phone is I'll actually use apps on my phone. I have a list of 20 different apps I'm checking out, so it will be awhile before I've drawn any conclusions about them.  Quick note: when I wrote about the water app last week I got the name wrong. It's actually WATER YOUR BODY.  Really sorry about that.

Right now I'm shopping for a wearable tracker.  There are phone apps that will track some of the data I'm interested in - but most are for iPhone, and I'm never leaving Android, and most kill the battery pretty quickly (since battery life was a HUGE deciding factor when I got my phone - I can't live with having to recharge halfway through your day- this is also a consideration for apps as well)   There are a LOT of wearables on the market.  I didn't look at iOS only products, I also didn't look at products that weren't reviewed in what I consider "reputable review sites". The top three for me when I'm in the market for electronic devices are: PCMag.com (ironic since in computers I'm definitely a MAC girl) CNET.com and Wired.  There were a few devices that the only reviews I found were on Amazon, and other retailers, and I don't necessarily trust those reviews, so I eliminated them from the lineup.