{"id":81200,"date":"2015-05-05T18:06:56","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T16:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=81200"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:12:50","slug":"diary-of-a-fat-man-runtastic-road-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/diary-of-a-fat-man-runtastic-road-bike\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary of a fat man \u2013 Runtastic Road Bike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biking stands as an odd form of exercise for me. Not that riding a bike is strange, but I rarely (if ever) cycle anywhere for any reason other than to\u2026 well, get there. It is a means of transportation, and I can’t think of a time in the last 15 years when I have ridden anywhere just for fun. Because of this I never really considered how it may be benefiting<\/strong> me. So, when I spotted Runtastic Road Bike<\/a> I thought it would be the perfect way to squeeze a little extra, quantifiable exercise into my day.<\/p>\n

\"City<\/p>\n

So, day one of my test saw me hopping on a city bike to ride the 7km home. And I was impressed <\/strong>\u2013 initially.<\/p>\n

Beginning to ride I was treated to a voiced countdown<\/strong> that made me feel far more sporty than I had any right to. At zero I took off \u2013 straight into a red light (a pattern that would be repeated more than once on my journeys). A few moments later and I was properly underway. At the 1km mark I was politely told that I had been going for three and a half minutes \u2013 useful I thought, as the city bikes begin to charge for use after 30 mins of use and I am always worried about making it home in this time.<\/p>\n

\"Countdown<\/p>\n

Then, as the 2km mark rolled around, Runtastic announced if I wanted to continue my aural updates I would have to pay for the Pro version<\/strong>\u2026 predictable but annoying. And, in all honesty, at $5.99 it isn’t unreasonably priced.<\/p>\n

Making it home with four minutes to spare, I closed down the app and got my results \u2013 nearly 200 calories burned, and 7km ridden in 26 minutes.<\/strong> Not bad, and nice to see the various metrics available, including elevation, max speed, minimum speed, and average pace. I could even add notes about my general condition for the ride.<\/p>\n

Day two rolled around, and off I went again. Very little changed – which is to be expected – but I started to notice the problem that was going to dog my interactions with Runtastic Road Bike \u2013 red lights. It isn’t that they affected my training as such, but they put a limit on my pace, based on pure safety. Put simply I couldn’t go much faster without blindly riding through traffic<\/strong>. Cycling as fast as I possibly could still resulted in me having to stop at regular intervals, making it impossible for me to improve my time more than a few minutes. This rendered the app pretty much pointless to me, because I would never see a real improvement on my ride home, and I had no intention of ever riding for fun.<\/p>\n

\"Condition<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame, because Runtastic is certainly a well thought-out app<\/strong> and (especially if you pay for the premium version) the list of features would become incredibly useful for actual cycle training. The audio split-time counter, route tracker, music player, and other extras, create a comprehensive way to enjoy and record your sessions.<\/p>\n

So, Runtastic Road Bike is good but not for me<\/strong>. It is conceivable that when I drop a little more weight and fancy running on roads rather than treadmills (got to be careful with my knees) the original Runtastic could be worth a revisit. Until then, however, it\u2019s going back in the app cupboard.<\/p>\n

Next week I will be back on the diet tracking apps with Calorie Counter – MyFitnessPal<\/a>. It will have big shoes to fill after Noom<\/a> (which I am still using) but it certainly seems to have a winning feature set. Check back next week to see how it fairs.<\/p>\n

Related Stories<\/h3>\n

Diary of a fat man \u2013 Part 2 of the Noom chronicles<\/a><\/p>\n

Diary of a fat man – Noom Coach (no more excuses)<\/a><\/p>\n

Diary of a fat man \u2013 Fitivity (sometimes walls get in the way)<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow me on Twitter: @DoFuss<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biking stands as an odd form of exercise for me. Not that riding a bike is strange, but I rarely (if ever) cycle anywhere for any reason other than to\u2026 well, get there. It is a means of transportation, and I can’t think of a time in the last 15 years when I have ridden … Continue reading “Diary of a fat man \u2013 Runtastic Road Bike”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2049,"featured_media":81225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-81200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329588,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81200\/revisions\/329588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81200"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=81200"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=81200"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=81200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}