Gadget Guru
A fountain of tech knowledge, our man answers your burning questions. This month, how to improve your running training, and how to find your remote control when you subsequently collapse on the sofa.
AGuru will presume you’re insinuating one of three things. One: that you’re utterly bored of jogging up and down the same path again and again. Two: that you’re so embarrassed by your ‘flailing marionette’ running style, you feel the need to jog in relative privacy. Or three: that you’ve done something so awful, fleeing the country is your only option. In which case, this answer has probably got to you too late.
In the first case, the combined vanity and altruism of the hardcore running community has you covered in the form of the Good Run Guide (goodrunguide.co.uk). The website- and-app mix compiles lots of usersubmitted routes categorised by difficulty, length and location. Each has a leaderboard so that you can sweat a bit harder in pursuit of entirely arbitrary records, as well as GPS routing so that you’ll never have to read a compass. MapMyRun offers something similar.
On count two, running in private – at least outdoors – isn’t always possible. Guru tends to lock the family in a cupboard and take a trot around his palatial estate when he’s feeling really self-concious, but he’s aware that you likely don’t have a secure cupboard. So you’ll want a treadmill – one with a hefty motor, a rock-solid frame, and guts more hardened than those of an omelette-loving base jumper. The Reebok One GT60 (£1,399, with integrated speakers, programmable incline adjustment and a 2.5hp motor) will suffice, providing your credit card can contain its excitement at purchasing such frivolous equipment.
As to the third possibility, Guru recommends the Atlas Of Remote
Islands (£28, brilliantly subtitled “Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will”), a fascinating mixture of maps, isolationist disaster stories, and inspiration for bleak escape locales. While there’s no guarantee you won’t be discovered on one of these rocks, you can at least be reasonably sure your pursuers won’t want to find you.
“Each of the routes has a leaderboard so that you can sweat a bit harder in pursuit of arbitrary records”