By Bonnie J. Fladung

Eastman’s winter wellness program kicks off

January 1st, and who doesn’t need motivation? Even those of us with the best of intentions get sidetracked. Now there’s a fun and easy way to track your progress and meet your fitness goals.

One of the hottest free apps available for your iPhone is Runkeeper. It not only tracks your daily activities by activity type, but provides all sorts of cool charts and graphs. You can track up to 14 different activity types: cross country skiing, running, cycling, walking, hiking, skiing, rowing, etc. So, how does it work?

A few weeks ago, my husband, Dan, and I decided to explore the trail to Cole Pond through Eastman. We headed out to the parking lot at Hilltop Drive and located the trailhead. I started the app, set the activity to “Hiking” and made sure the iPhone's GPS was set to “On.” I put the phone in my pocket and started up the path. Every so often, a voice from within the depths of my jacket would tell me how far I had gone and what my pace was. When we stopped to admire a view or grab a sip of water, I set the app to “Pause.” (The trick is to remember to “Resume” when you start hiking again.)

When you complete the activity, just save it with a name and it automatically pushes it to your online account at Runkeeper, where you can

keep a journal of your activities. Here is a visual of the round-trip hike to Cole Pond. (You can click the image to enlarge.) Notice the mileage chart as well as the elevation and pace chart for the round-trip hike. You can see that it saves the date, time, distance, calories and more!

Within a few minutes of completing the hike, I found a message in my Inbox: “This is a RunKeeper FitnessAlert to let you know that you achieved the following milestones with your most recent hiking activity: Farthest distance.” Wow! Instant recognition and feedback before I even arrived back home

With Runkeeper, you can even set up a

list of local users and invite your friends! Create your own “Street Team.”

If you'd like to participate in Eastman's Winter Wellness Program, and possibly win a trip to Cape Cod!, contact Recreation for details, 863-6772, or download information from our website.

Tags: cross country skiing, Eastman, fitness, fun, nordic skiing, snowshoeing, wellness, Winter, X-C Skiing, XC skiing

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