MapMyRun: up the pace with this run tracking app

It's Mobile Nations Fitness Month, and that means we're going to be highlighting a few apps that can help you meet your own fitness goals. We know that not everyone is a runner, but if you are you know that it can be hard to keep up with a pace and on a schedule from week to week. MapMyRun does just what you'd expect -- it gives GPS-based mapping of your runs, and offers a lot of insight into your workouts. Best of all, the app displays this great information in a clean and designed UI.

Stick around after the break and see if MapMyRun is what you need to keep up the pace.

The interface of MapMyRun is pretty basic, but has been updated quite a bit in the last few months. Right at the top of the home screen you get the important parts -- "Record" and "Log" -- that let you start a workout or enter a previous one that wasn't tracked. The record function lets you dive straight into a run and start recording, but its nice to be able to enter a workout that you had done separately and maybe forgot to track at the time.

Once you decide to start a run and record it, hitting the record button lets you jump into a settings screen and choose the workout type, your route (you can have it auto-populate the route as you run), and whether you're going to want to send this workout to Facebook and/or Twitter when you're finished. The app has always locked on to GPS quickly and tracked accurately. If you choose to have "Live Tracking" during the run, you can see your time and pace as you go. If you'd prefer though, every piece of data you'd want to know about in the run can be found afterwards.

When finishing a workout, after waiting a little while for it to save and show up on your account, it can be accessed from the "workouts" button on the home screen. You're taken to a listing of your recent workouts -- categorized by week, month and then "older" -- with a few pieces of information like the date, distance and time. Tapping into a workout will give you every detail you'd ever want out of a run tracking app. The basic view gives your time, distance, pace, calories burned and a snapshot of the map of the run.

Diving into the "View Route Details" button will give you even more information. Here you can see a more granular Google Maps view of the run, which is detailed enough to even show what side of the street you were running on. If you're interested, you can even see the elevation gains and drops throughout the run. The "Courses" tab will show you a listing of the different routes that you have ran if you'd like to compare.

Most users may not even dive into the more granular information available in the app, but its nice to know that the option is there if you want it. The interface is easy to use, and has all of the features anyone would want -- from casual workouts to marathon training. Even if you just use MapMyRun to just see courses ran, distance and pace, you won't be disappointed. Best of all you can get a full-featured app -- if you're willing to put up with a few ads -- for free.

If you're a runner looking to get more data on your workouts, or maybe just someone that wants to get in on the Mobile Nations Fitness Month, MapMyRun is certainly worth a look.