There are two great motivators to shedding your winter blubber: Realizing the extent of the holiday eating damage or having access to Nike's sublime iOS app that lets you track your runs. "Tracking" is perhaps putting things lightly, because this $1.99 baby serves up more stats than you could possibly need on every run you take. That means it's versatile enough to sate seasoned road warriors (the GPS function tracks both your pace and path) and wobbly newbies (it cheers you on when you break your own records).
By offering access to lots of information about your own exercise history, it enables users to feel both empowered about their own accomplishments and realize what weaknesses they should work on. For example: Do you run mainly on Wednesdays? What's your farthest run? Fastest 1K? It can give you pause to figure out why that is and what you need to do to shake up your routine. Or, why is it that you usually slow down one particular stretch of your usual run? You can also indicate the terrain, mood, and location (it works both indoors on a treadmill and outdoors on anything you can feasibly run on), which is great if you like getting bogged down with such minutiae after the fact.
Mainly, though, the slickest thing about Nike+ is how easy it is to use. You simply select "start a new run," "continue," hit the "go" button, and let your feet do their thing while the app does its job. If you want, the app can play you pre-stored "power songs" to help you maintain your pace, but you can also flip around your iPhone's songs as well while staying within the app. Be warned, though, if you get a call while running, you have to select an option to tell the app to keep tracking your progress while you're flapping your gums on the go. Then you might be doing all that running with no digital benefit from it at all!
That's one tiny hiccup that's been addressed with a simple checkbox in the options screen, whereas the social aspects of Nike+ GPS are a bit of an appendix in the app's current iteration. Many users aren't even aware of options like tag (where you try to outrun your other friends who also have the app), and adding friends is a bit cumbersome, but you can get pals to cheer you on via Facebook or share your run instantly via Twitter. And really, that's kind of the whole point of Nike+ GPS: Motivation to do your best, whether it's provided by you or those closest to you. Really, though, you should want to be fit for you, not your Internet buds shouting accolades in all caps from Facebook.
The Best is a weekly column in which we spotlight the most helpful or impressive iOS app to fit a certain need, whether it's a part of your day-to-day life or just something cool that might come in handy down the line.
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