Track your training with your cell phone
The best way to know you’re making progress in your training is to keep track of your mileage and times. You can do that with a basic pedometer, stopwatch, and notebook, but I’ve never found a pedometer that was especially accurate, even when calibrated for my walking style. I also forget to write things down, and I hate to wear a watch when I’m working out.
If you want to get more sophisticated and spend more money, you can invest in a GPS unit. Some of them are designed for training and keep track of your pace, mileage, time, and calories burned. Some have heart rate monitor functions and can design training programs for you. You can upload workout data to your computer by uploading the software and connecting the device, and some even let you share your training with other users. They can be expensive, complicated to use, and bulky on your wrist.
Trimble Outdoors has created an easy, elegant solution to the challenge of tracking your training. Most of the athletes I know never leave home without their cell phones, not because they’re addicted to being 
connected at all times, but for safety reasons. With Trimble’s AllSport GPS application, you can turn your cell phone into a training tool for walking, running, road and mountain biking, and hiking.
Once you’ve installed the application on your GPS-enabled phone, all you have to do is open it, choose your sport, and hit a button to start tracking your pace, distance, elevation, and calories burned. At the end of your workout, the phone automatically uploads the data to your page on the Trimble Outdoors web site. By the time you sit down at your computer, the information is there to compare yesterday’s run with today’s, to share with your training partners, or even to post to your Facebook page.
If you want to check your stats while you’re in the middle of your workout, all you have to do is look at your phone. All the information is there in an easy to read format. You can see past workout information on your phone as well as on the web site. If you’re getting bored with your regular routes, you can download trips from the web site to your phone. These come from other Trimble users as well as from cycling, running, and backpacking magazines.
It’s simple and, at $5.99 a month, an inexpensive way to get an accurate training tool without having to buy extra equipment like shoe pods or cadence counters or carry another chunk of electronic gadgetry. The only real drawback is that you have to have a Blackberry or other GPS enabled phone, and the application doesn’t run with all cell phone service providers. Trimble provides a complete list of phones and providers on the web site.
If you’re into other outdoor sports like backpacking and geocaching, Trimble has cell phone applications for those too. You can also access the Trimble layer in Google Earth to plan your next outdoors adventure.
Sign up for a free account at the web site to take advantage of all the information and training tools.
If you use a GPS when racing, be aware that you will always think the course was long. It probably wasn’t.
Certified courses are measured using the shortest tangent on every turn so that nobody will run less than the certified distance. Most runners make wide turns and actually run a bit longer than what they expect.