iPhone Apps Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

I have an iPhone. I love it. I love it in a sick kind of way. Last night as I was getting ready for bed I was looking for my phone (to tuck it in before bed.) I couldn't find it. Then I realized, I had left it in the car. Egad! My first thought was theft. I often forget to lock the car. What if someone stole my phone. Panic. I rush out the door to check. Forget my keys. (Just in case I remembered to lock the car.) Don't want Bob to know I am panicked about the phone so I calmly grab them and walk, unhurriedly, out the door to the car. Impending doom looming over me. I can feel the tears building.

Once outside I race to the car door and there it is. Right where I left it. In the cup holder. Looking forlorn. No, really, it looked forlorn. Did you ever turn around in a crowded place and can't find your two year old? The panic, the fear of losing your child. But then, when you turn around to start looking and there she is, right in front of you? You know that relief that floods your body? Yes, that's what it felt like when I saw my phone.

Now you know.

Part of the reason I have such an attachment to my phone are all the great apps I have. I have several camera apps. I can do all sorts of fancy things with my photos. I can make them look old, I can color them, I can blur the edges, I can crop and I can frame. I take pictures of everything these days. Mostly the cat. I have a lot of pictures of my cat on my phone.

I also have several games. I am not going to talk too much about the games because my family thinks I may have become obsessed with some of the them. Just for the record I can go a whole day without playing Pocket Frogs.

Words with Friends is one of my favorite apps. It keeps my mind sharp. Doctors say in order to ward off dementia you should play word games. So, playing this is like filling a prescription from my doctor. Yeah, I'm going with that.

Words with Friends is just like scrabble. Only on my phone. My sister, all the way in Florida and I play. I always have a game going with her and with my sister in law. My sister in law randomly puts letters out there and uses words I have never heard of that are worth about a million points and it really irritates me. I try and make up words using high scoring letters and it just never works for me. Not sure why I play with her.

But, what I really wanted to tell you about is iMapMyRun. This little app will log my walks, runs and even my bike rides (bike rides I am gonna do, eventually). It has a GPS so it very accurately tells me how many miles I have gone. It keeps track of the miles, how long it took and what my average pace is. Then it keeps a log of all the workouts I have done.

Before this app I would walk for an hour and be certain that I had done at least six miles. I mean, my body cannot possibly feel this sore and tired unless I had done six miles.

After this app I start recording at the beginning of my walk, walk for the hour and it tells me I have gone 3.23 miles in 55:01 minutes and yes, your body CAN feel that bad despite the fact that you were crawling along at 18 minute miles.

Apparently I was getting a better exercise before this app.

I like iMapMyRun because it keeps a real record. I used to keep a written record and would often round up to the next mile (as in 3.23 miles rounds up to six miles). I would also round down to the nearest minute (as in 55:01 minutes would round down to about 40 minutes because I stopped to let the dog pee and since I wasn't moving then I could legally shave off a couple of minutes-for accuracy.)

Because it keeps a log it will list all the workouts by date. It was hard for me to look at the log and realize that my last workout was in October of 2010. Arguably, I did work out on the elliptical a few times and those workouts are not listed in the log. Both of those workouts could be entered manually but as it has been awhile I am not certain of how many workouts there were and as you can tell I am all about precision and I don't want to guesstimate. We'll just say it's been a couple few weeks since my last workout.

You might say "Teri, only serious athletes need this kind of log." And I would say, meet a serious athlete. I could even toss out something like, "I need it because I am in training for the Disney Half Marathon in January of 2012."

It would be true. Crazy but true.

Let me say it again. I signed up for the Disney Half Marathon in January of 2012. Sounds funny coming out of my mouth doesn't it?

I thought it would be a great way to force myself to get in shape. Obviously I didn't think about this long enough.

Do you know what else I thought? I thought, wouldn't it be fun to blog about this? I am telling you, this blog is causing quite an upheaval in my normally calm life.

Oh and by the way, I am not getting monetary compensation for tooting this apps horn but I am not opposed to that idea so if any of you can hook me up with someone that could get me some money for this I'd really appreciate it.