DW Runners

In cold weather, I have trouble keeping my stomach warm, and a cold stomach both makes me run slower and increases chances of runner's trots.

Piling on more/warmer clothes is a solution, but not a very good one, since the rest of my body overheats.

I've long been thinking about buying a haramaki or fashioning something similar, but I'm not very good at sewing, and haramakis both seem too expensive and too nice to run in - and I wasn't at all convinced they'd stay in place and not roll up.

Then I thought of and found these - medical stomach/kidney/back warmers/supporters.

I've been using one since November, and I love it! It keeps my stomach warm without overheating the rest of me. The latex makes sure it doesn't roll up, but stays in place. If you have trouble with cold stomachs during runs, I highly recommend getting one!

(And if you find one that's higher than 29 cm and still affordable - they look higher in pictures than they are in AL - I'd love a link, because on the coldest days, I could use more coverage below my stomach as well.)

I've been using a Garmin 305 for years, and I really like it, except it takes so long to find satellites. At home it's not too bad--if I turn it on while I get dressed it's ready to go by the time I am--but there have been times when I've been traveling that it's been really inconvenient. One one trip to New York it never did pick up satellites, even after two hour-long runs. And of course it doesn't display the heart rate while it's locating satellites, so it's really useless until it's got them.

So when I was in California in February I thought, I'm going to be carrying my iPhone anyway, why not use its GPS instead of the Garmin's? I downloaded an app, and it worked great. When I got home I looked into ways of turning the iPhone into a heart rate monitor, too, and it turns out you can buy an adapter that lets an iPhone read a Garmin strap or a Bluetooth strap. The Wahoo version works with various apps; apparently DigiFit makes one as well that only works with DigiFit apps. I went with the Wahoo Fitness dongle.

Since then I've been trying out a bunch of the apps that work with the HR monitor. Mostly I've been happy with them. The Garmin is better in a lot of ways, but I like the voice feedback a lot--with some of these apps I hardly look at the display because I get regular status updates.

On to the reviews, which only cover the free version of these apps. Most of them have paid versions with more features. And I bet there are Android versions of most of these, but I have no idea how they'd work.

( Nike+ GPS )

( RunKeeper )

( iMapMyRun )

( Endomondo )

( Runtastic )

( 321Run )

( Wahoo Fitness )

( iRunner )

( Conclusions )

I would like to get running tights for winter, but worry about them being long enough (I like pants to be as long as possible without me tripping in them).

I wear pants with a 35" inseam, but running tights are always shorter in the inseam compared to pants - although it may be long enough, 29½" just sounds awfully short to me.

Could you give me examples of what inseam tights are long enough for you compared to what inseam you wear in pants? I'm hoping that'll give me a better idea of what minimum inseam I need.

ETA: I'm looking at Under Armour's women's ColdGear Frosty Tight, which has a 32" inseam - have only heard good things about Under Armour, but would love to hear your experiences, too. Or, you know, not, because apparently getting a size small is next to impossible, or will cost me $118.56, wtf.

What shoes do you prefer for running? My old sneakers have developed holes in too many places to ignore, so I went to the sports shop and bought a pair of athletic shoes from the sale section. They fit and were cheap, but I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to get a more expensive pair (and possibly better?) from the Running section of the store next time. Or is that just marketing?

For those of you in the US - I don't know if these sites are reasonable to use from elsewhere - walmart.com is selling the Garmin Forerunner 305 for $99 with free shipping; amazon.com has matched it, which site has the advantage that tax won't be charged in most states. The 305 is an older but still excellent model runner's GPS with heart-rate monitor. I have an older model, the 301, and jumped on this to upgrade as it's got a much better GPS chip.

Unfortunately, it's a ridiculously huge thing that only vaguely resembles a watch. But it's amazingly useful for giving you instant feedback on pace, for alerting you to intervals (you can set it to track run/walk intervals, or speed intervals), and for calculating exactly how far your run was. Then you can upload the data from it to your computer (I use SportTracks, but there are lots of other programs and websites) and track your improvement.