Sony Lifelog, free
A fantastic way of setting goals and monitoring your progress towards them over the weeks. Using the sensor technology in your Xperia Z3, SmartWatch 3 or SmartBand Talk, Lifelog tracks your activity each day. A glance at your phone will show how far and fast you ran, the calories you burned and steps you took, along with interesting stats such as how many hours you slept, how long you were on public transport and how many minutes you spent texting, emailing or talking on the phone.
iFit Outside, free
An app that’s designed specifically for Android Wear, rather than phones. Use it with your Sony SmartWatch 3 and you can leave your phone at home when you go for a run. Using the built-in GPS in your watch, the app gathers all the stats you could wish for: speed, distance, elevation and heart rate.
Runzi Cadence Running Tracker, free
Boosting your cadence (the number of steps you take per minute when you run) can help improve your speed and technique, and stave off injury by reducing the impact on your feet. This app uses your phone’s accelerometer to monitor your cadence and you can listen to a metronome to keep pace.
Strava Run, free
The popular app for runners with a serious competitive streak. Not only can you compete against yourself by trying to do the same run faster, you can also pit yourself against friends and total strangers on whole routes or just segments of a route. Warning: trying to become the fastest on a leaderboard can become dangerously addictive.
RockMyRun, free
This clever app matches your movement to your music. Choose your genre, from pop to hip-hop, start running and the app will adjust the tempo of the music to match your running pace. Start hearing slow tempos and you’ll know it’s time to step it up a bit!
Couch to 5k, £1.30
This app will help you get from total beginner to running 5k in just nine weeks. It starts you gently with running interspersed with walking and builds you from there. You run three times a week in sessions no longer than 30 minutes. Once you’ve patted yourself on the back for achieving that, you can get the 5k-to-10k app (70p) to bring you up to the bigger distance.
Pocket Yoga, £1.89
The muscle tightness that arises from frequent running can lead to injury, but you can combat this by complementing your running with yoga. If you don’t have the time or money to attend a yoga class, use this app to choose from 27 different sessions to do at home, with both voice and visual instructions.
Epicurious, free
If you want to get fitter and eat healthily at the same time, Epicurious is a great place to search for recipes – it has 28,000 of them. You can search for healthy options (and some not so healthy for when you’ve earned caramel chocolate brownies), create shopping lists and save your favourite recipes to make again and again.
Map My Run, free
A great app for when you’re in an unfamiliar place and want to go for a run. You can access interesting local routes generated by other runners, rather than ending up doing a boring out and back to prevent getting lost. It will do all the usual stuff as well, such as telling you how far and fast you ran.
- Content brought to you by Sony Xperia
* All apps are available on Google Play
