Mookers offers a better way to analyse and compare your favourite runs
Free web site launched August 1 goes where no GPS analysis tool has gone befor
Sure, running’s a solitary pursuit. But doesn’t it feel good to let friends know when you’ve kicked their butts on a favourite trail?
A new web site called Mookers (www.mookers.com) lets you do just that, as well as analyse and compare your runs every step of the way. And just like the way running makes you feel, Mookers is absolutely free.
Like other run analysis sites, Mookers crunches the data from your Garmin GPS device and gives you a comprehensive report on your pace, distance, heart rate, calories burned, and any other metrics your device records. But that’s where the similarities end.
Mookers offers three never-before-seen features that make it a much more useful tool than existing sites: automatic route recognition, specific-point analysis, and social sharing.
Let’s say you’ve got a favorite route you like to run. Even if you diverge slightly to dodge a parked car or sidestep a fallen tree, Mookers will automatically recognize the route each time you run it, allowing you to easily compare each run. You can even watch an animated “race” of all the runs you and your friends have logged on that route.
With Mookers’ specific point analysis, you can also mouse over any part of a route to see the data for that exact moment of your run – not just laps or splits. So if your run contains a particularly grueling hill, for example, you can see what your heart rate was at the exact moment you were powering up it.
All of these features are very cool. But Mookers gets even better.
Mookers’ Facebook-style social component lets you connect and share your run data with other runners, and automatically tells your friends when you’ve logged a new run, route, or personal achievement. With the ability to search for friends by name, location, or even route, friendly competition is always just a click away, even if you don’t have a local running partner. Don’t want to share your runs? Adjustable privacy settings make it easy to keep your data to yourself.
It’s this social component that’s key to the Mookers experience, says Mookers developer Mike Read, a British ex-pat and former Ironman competitor now living in British Columbia, Canada.
“Say there are 10 people in a running club,” explains Read. “They become friends on Mookers, and any time they run a route all their friends know about it. If they record a personal best, or the fastest time on that route, their friends will know. The whole premise is friendly competition.”
Race organizers, he adds, can promote their race and challenge participants to compare their run with friends simply by adding their route to the Mookers system.
Though originally designed for runners, Mookers also works with Garmin cycling computers and analyzes bike-specific metrics like cadence and miles per hour.
Mookers currently only works with Garmin GPS devices.
To sign up and start using Mookers for free, visit www.mookers.com
