Perfect August, Day Seven Recap: "Tech This Out!"

It's the end of Day Seven of Perfect August, and I'm too excited about getting through the first week to wait until tomorrow to blog. Tonight I'll blog about the day, and tomorrow I'll write a recap of the month so far.

First, the checklist. I ate right, exercised, skipped alcohol and diet soda, drank water, stayed within my calories, tracked it all, and am blogging (again) before I get to bed and get a full night's sleep. (I think I listed everything, but if I forgot, no worries. I hit all the checkmarks today.)

Now, to the great stuff. Today. Wow, today. It was Cool-Tech-Day for me. First up was my new music app for running. It's called Rock My Run, and it's continuously mixed playlists with all songs by the original artists. They are all upbeat, fast pace, easy-to-run with songs and they are a welcome addition to the fitness music genre. Instead of remixed, remade, cheesy tracks sped up to near Chipmunk speeds, I can listen to real music that I know and enjoy. The best part? It's free. The app itself is free and many of their thirty-minute mixes are free. You can download one per month and you can stream many others. There is a premium option that I will probably choose, but for now, the free stuff is fine for me.

Even better than the music app was a new running program I found called Virtual Active. It is a first-person, forward motion video that lets you run courses, trails, and roads all across the world.

This is my iPad sitting on the treadmill just after my run. You can see that I was running on a trail, and the video kept moving at my own pace. If I ran faster, it went faster. If I ran slower, the video slowed down.

And this is what happened when I stopped running completely. The app said, "no exercise detected," and the motion stopped completely. It really added to the feel that I was running, in this case along the beautiful lakes and rivers of Northern Italy.

I will blog more about this application (and my new involvement with the company that is making it), but for now, I'll just say that running like this today made my five mile, nearly one hour run go by in a snap. I really was able to enjoy the "view" on my iPad and not think about the running.

And of course, the inevitable selfie. This one was shot after my run, and I think my Marine Corps Marathon 2013 "Determination" tech shirt looks pretty damn good.

Perfect August. So far, so good!