Lock the iPhone while using the C25K iPhone App
One of the most requested features for the C25K iPhone app is the ability to lock the iPhone while using the app. The reason for this request is that it is possible that the interval timer gets accidentally paused during the workout. Some also mention the battery draw of having the screen lit up, but in my tests that didn’t prove to be significant.
Although version 1.2 improved the workout screen to eliminate the chance of accidental pausing, you still can’t lock the iPhone screen. If you do lock the screen (using the top hardware button, the C25K app prevents the iPhone from auto locking) you run the risk of pausing the interval timer and not getting the audio alerts.
There is, however, a way to lock the iPhone screen and still get the C25K audio alerts. But it involves following very specific instructions.
Here’s what needs to happen:
- Make sure your iPod’s music is playing during the entire workout. As long as your iPod’s music is playing, you can lock the screen and the C25K app will still give you the audio alerts. If your iPod’s music stops playing and the screen is locked you will not get the alerts.
- and, don’t lock the screen while a C25K alert is playing.
So if you keep fidgeting with your iPhone while you workout and no smart screen deactivation feature will prevent you from accidentally sliding the pause button, you can lock the iPhone screen but please make sure you satisfy the two conditions above.
The best way to prevent your iPod’s music stopping while your a working out is to set your playlist to loop. Here’s how to make sure your playlist or album is set to repeat:
- Go to “Now Playing” screen on your iPod app
- Tap the album art area, the control bar will show on the top of the screen
- Tap the repeat icon in the bottom left corner of the control bar until is solid blue
Now your playlist or currently playing album will continualy repeat. Here’s an image that ilustrates the steps.
Set the playlist or album to repeat
Happy running!
Skipping days in the C25K iPhone app
One of the less apparent features of the C25K iPhone app is the ability to skip days. I’ve seen a couple of comments mentioning the absence of this feature, so here’s a quick post showing how to do it.
On the app’s main screen tap on the “Edit”button:
Tap the Edit button reveal the day skipping feature
You will then see a little plus sign by the next workout day:
Tap the plus sign button to mark the day as completed
Tap the plus sign button and the workout day will be market completed unlocking the next day.
Happy running!
Couch to 5K: Week 5, Day 3
The time came this Sunday for the much anticipated Week 5, Day 3 workout. As I wrote last week, the running time increase from 8 minutes to 20 minutes seemed like too much to me . Even though I’ve been doing the C25K workouts for more then a month now (without a break) I thought that this might be a workout I would not be able to complete.
However, it turned out I was wrong. I was able to complete the twenty minute run after all. Was it easy? It wasn’t a walk in the park, but it definitely wasn’t as difficult as I have anticipated. The first half was great, my posture and stride were great and felt pretty good. From 10 to 17 minutes it started feeling like hard work, and I had to start talking myself up. The last 3 minutes were the most difficult of course. I felt like stopping or decreasing the speed but at that point I just kept telling myself: “Ok, you ran all this time, you are not stopping now… just 2.5 … 2.0 … 1.5 more minutes, just 60 … 30 more seconds… done!”
What didn’t help:
I placed my iPhone on the treadmill console, so I was constantly looking at the timer. I prefer not knowing how much time is left until it really gets tough. And I’m pretty good about not letting myself look at the time. But when my iPhone was just a glance away I couldn’t stop myself from looking at it constantly. That made the workout seem longer.
What did help:
I watched the documentary Man on Wire the night before. Ok, I’m not trying to compare walking the wire between the Twin Towers to running 20 minutes, but thinking about Phillippe Petit and the unimaginable challenge he completed helped me stay on that treadmill when I wanted to quit. Great documentary, by the way. I was surprised to see it mentioned in the Academy Awards news today, but I’m not surprised at all that it won the best documentary feature award.
Happy running!
Couch to 5K: Week 5, Day 2
Eight minutes of running might not sound like much, but for somebody who spends most of his time sitting in an office chair… eight minutes is a lot.
So far, Week 5 has been the most challenging for me. Week 5 is where the program takes you from “little run/little walk” to “you’re gonna really run now”. And for me it’s been a mental challenge as well: so I know I can run for five minutes now but can I run eight minutes straight? It turned out that I could, in fact, endure the eight minutes of running. Something that I wasn’t able to say before I started C25K.
The big test is going to be W5D3, when you are supposed to do twenty minutes of running without a break. That’s more then double my record continuous running time (which is 8 minutes that I did this morning), and that sounds like a lot. But come Sunday morning I’ll be in my basement trying to overcome that challenge.
Happy running!
Couch to 5K: W5D1 Report
Completed my W5D1 run last night. Running for 5 minutes at a time was kind of tough, especially the last 5 minutes, but I managed to pull trough. The 3 minute walks in between the runs really help.
I increased the treadmill incline to #2 in order to add some resistance and come closer to outdoor running conditions. My calves were hurting during the run, probably because of the higher incline. However, they were not sore after the run. I’m not confident that increasing the incline alone will make me better prepared for running outdoors.
Happy running!
Where do you run?
I’m not a big fan of treadmills, but the winters here are cold and snowy and dark that I can’t bring myself to go out and run. So I’ve been doing my Couch to 5K runs on a treadmill in my basement.
However, this past Sunday I had a chance to workout later in the day and the temerature was in the low thirties, so I decided to venture out and go for a run in my heighborhood. Now, I’ve read somewhere online that running on the treadmill is quite different than running outsite, but I didn’t fully comprehend that until this Sunday.
I did the W4D3, which is two repetitions of 3min run / 1.5min walk / 5min run / 2.5 min walk and even though the previous two days I did fine on the treadmill, running outside was pure suffering. I knew I was in trouble right after the first 3min run, my leg muscles started to hurt, my lungs started burning, and I realized that I really wasn’t prepared for this. I suffered trough the rest of the workout barely making it to the walking sections, and at the end of the last 5min run I felt like I was going to pass out.
I would very much like to be able to run outdoor this Spring, but I’m not really sure how to preparte for it on the treadmill. Anybody made the transition from treadmill to outdoor running? Any suggestions you are willing to share?
Update on C25K iPhone app version 1.2
Roughly two weeks ago in my post about the coming update to my C25K iPhone app, I wrote that I was doing last minute testing and was ready to release it soon.
Well, two weeks later and I still haven’t released it. Here’s why…
One of my goals for 1.2 release was to make the app work even when iPhone’s screen is locked. While prototyping the feature I though I’ve found a way to do that (By the way, there’s no “built-in” way to do this with the current version of iPhone SDK). However once I started coding and testing the feature I found that it wasn’t possible to make it reliable. There were a few cases where the audio alert wouldn’t play if the screen was locked. For example, if you pressed the lock button while an alert was playing, or if you received a phone call and ignored it while in a workout. Even though it would work most of the time, I felt like I couldn’t release something that had a possibility of not working correctly.
So, I decided that this is just not going to work and that I needed a different approach. What I ended up doing is implementing a slider button, very similar to the “slide to unlock” button when you wake up the iPhone. The slider is much more difficult to activate on accident than a regular button. In addition to the new slider button to start/pause the workout timer, I also added a “lock” screen button. When you tap the lock icon, the workout screen will be placed in the “lock” mode, where all user controls will be disabled. You can really rest assured that your workout timer will not be accidentally paused whether you put your iPhone in your pocked or hold it in your hand while you workout.
I did three workouts with this version of the screen, one while holding the iPhone in my hand and two while keeping it in my pocket. I haven’t had an accidental pause happen. So I’m really confident that this version will be better and remove the need to lock the iPhone screen. As in the current version, the iPhone is prevented from auto-locking the screen while the workout timer is active.
Here is how the new screen will look like:
C25K app 1.2 screenshot
Here are the other improvements in the new version:
- Added the “half point” alert. You will now hear a short audio alert when you reach the mind point of the workout
- Current interval text and countdown. As the running times increase I find myself wanting to know when do I get to walk again. So, I added a countdown timer for each run/walk interval. In case you prefer not knowing how much time is left, the font size is small enough so that you really have to look for it in order to see it.
- The timer color changes according to the intervals: blue for warmup/cooldown, green for run, red for walk
I’m submitting 1.2 version for Apple’s approval today and hopefully Apple approves it within a week like in the past.
Thank’s to everyone who sent in feedback and suggestions! If you have any suggestions please post them here. Any questions? Email me here.
C25K Week 3 Complete
This weekend I completed W3D3. I don’t remember when was the last time I stuck to a workout for so long without skipping a day. I’ve made completing this a priority and I’m planning to stick to it. Some days it’s still challenging to go on a treadmill and exercise, but I’m hoping by the time I complete the C25K plan I’ll be used to working out every other day that it becomes a second nature. I’ve heard somebody say you need to repeat something X number of times before it becomes a habit. Anybody knows how many times is that? I hope its less than 27…
When I started this, I planned to workout every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But for the past 3 weeks I haven’t been able to do it on those days, and Monday is to blame. I just cant gather enough willpower to get up early on Mondays. So, for week #4 I decided to stop fighting it and plan to do my workouts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, like I’ve been for the past 3 weeks.
I’m especially looking forward to this weeks workouts. It should be warmer outside so I’m planning to do at lest a couple of runs outdoors.
Happy running!
iPod tip: skipping songs while app is active
Here’s a nice little iPhone feature I discovered a couple of weeks ago:
Double tap the home button while your screen is locked and it will bring up an iPod control where you can play/pause iPod music and skip tracks in your playlist
iPod control when screen is locked
But wait, there’s more. If you have an app open and are listening to your music, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to pause or skip tracks without exiting your app? Well, you can do that too. Just double tap the home button and you get a similar looking iPod control displayed on top of your app.
iPod control over an active app
This comes really handy when using the C25K app during a workout. Sometimes a song comes up on my playlist that I’d rather not listen at that moment. So instead of exiting the C25K app (which pauses your workout timer) and going to iPod and skipping a song, I can just double tap home button and skip to next song while my C25K app still keeps time. Pretty sweet!
Happy running!
C25K W3D2
In case anyone was wondering, yes, I’m still keeping up with the C25K program. I’m a lot less regular about posting to this blog then I am about keeping up with the C25K schedule.
Today I completed Week 3 Day 2. Running for 3 minutes at the time was much easier. W3D1 was kind of tough. The first time I ran for 3 minutes straight was the first time I though about giving up. But today’s workout proved much easier, so I’m again thinking maybe it is possible for me to complete this plan and run for 20 minutes straight.
I’m still maintaining the same pace: walk at 3mph run at 5mph. This seems to work well for me. I feel like I’m pushing myself a little bit but not to the point that it hurts. And with that pace it comes out to 15.5 minutes for 5K so that seems reasonable. I realize running on the treadmill is not the same as running outside, so I might add a little elevation to compensate for that. Right now I’m running on zero elevation.
Happy running!
