My phone is in my hand ALL THE TIME. It’s my secretary. Most of the times it’s in airplane or, my favorite: DO NOT DISTURB mode, but I do use it like a paid assistant. You know, life has gotten more complicated these days, I barely have the attention span to remember anything so I either dictate it into the calendar or take a picture of it. Training, plus having more than 1 job, coaching, sending reports, having a social life, plus just living in NYC, I do need an assistant: my phone!

Below the apps I can’t live without, all free apps. I’ll be waiting for your favorites too, please share with us which ones you love and can’t live without!

Any.do is my to-do list. I have about 10 “to-do” lists apps. This one is the simplest and bestest. And it has a desktop version. I can’t even think of life without it.

I just discovered SWORKIT last week (on shark tank, best show ever). And I am hooked!!! it’s like a class in the palm of your hand! you just pick cardio, strength, yoga, or stretching, you tell him how much time you have and voila, it tells you what do you, and a little video pictures. I am the cardio or strength person. As soon as I pick strenght, you can pick upper body, core strenthg, lower body, whatever. For cardio you get plyometrics, bootcamp, it’s INTENSE! I love it. At least 5 minutes every morning, cause why not?

I also use Circuit Timer for my regular workout routines, it’s very basic and not fancy at all but it gets the job done. You input your 30 seconds of plank (maybe 15 who am I kidding?), a rest of 5 seconds, and so on, and you’re all set.

The Road Id app is great for when you have to meet up with someone, like when it’s raining and my husband is meeting me off the bus from work to bring me an umbrella. It tells whoever you want exactly where you are (usually delayed by a minute).  Or so I know when he’s coming back from the super and I am meeting him after some other errand. Or when a friend and I are meeting for a run, but she’s already in the middle of it, I can just catch her, as I see where exactly she’s running. The point of the app is safety, you text someone you’re going for a run and that person can check on you, if you “stop” running, it’ll send an alert to that person… It’s awesome.

Footpath is a great app to very quickly measure point a to point be with just a stroke of the finger. I do sometimes plan runs or need to decide if I want to walk home or to my next errand, just open the app, slide your finger from A to B, and it’s all done. Way faster than anything else.

Charity Miles will donate money for each mile you run/walk to your favorite charity, so, just do it. There’s 36 charities you can pick from and you can use it for cycling too. You can also create “groups” and see a leaderboard! I like it because it’s quite simple to get it going and being on the other side (I work as a Development Director at Autism Speaks, managing fundraising athletes) I have gotten the CM check, it’s awesome.

Pace Calc. You input any distance you run, and it’ll shoot out predicted finish times for any other distances plus also your training paces. All you need.

SloPro and Technique, I use these two sometimes when I coach and my real slow-speed cam
era is out of battery or somewhere else. I’ve used Technique more times as I like the feature where you can wheel frame by frame but both are great. It’s a great tool to use, even to look at your own running form, once in a while. I also have RunForm but it find it a bit messy compared to the other two.

Sleep Time is the ONLY app I’ve ever paid for! I love looking at my stats, how many hours I slept in deep rem and how long my cycles are. I only get to use it when Juan travels but it’s great information to have so you know when to set up your alarm for! When I am out of town or sleeping at a weird hour, and can’t fall asleep, I use the other two: Fire and Train just put me out!

When I started eating healthy, my nutritionist recommended You Food. it’s great, you can sort out recipes by effort level and “save them in the fridge”, very manageable for someone like me who gets scared by the oven. Or the microwave. Or a pot.

By then, I also got My Plate. I had no idea how much to eat and what, so he helped me figure out my daily caloric intake and how much should any of my macro nutrients (carbs/fats/protein) be, so I was tracking it all here for about 6 weeks until I got the hand of it. It was a great learning opportunity.

Onto the randomness. Ulmon made our trip to Italy way funner than it could have been. When you travel, how do you keep lists of places you want to see, you want to run on, you want to eat at…??? You get this app (specific for each city) and you can find the spot in the map, put in on a list (you can make all separate lists for food, attractions, etc) and you can even insert notes. So you’re walking around, open the app and you see WHAT is close to you from your lists! Plus, SOMEHOW, it works offline. SERIOUSLY. We had no signal and this map saved our lives (mostly in Venice!!), it’s amazing.

Pocket is great for reading offline. I realize in NYC we’re way behind and we sit on the stooopid train underground with no wifi forever so you need something to read. But it’s useful to save those long NYTimes articles on Ryan Hall no one has time for but you know they’ll be a hoot. Very easy to use, with a web interface – if you later want to ready Ryan’s article at work! 🙂
Grocery G is great for grocery lists. you can make a few lists (by store maybe) and share your list. My husband and  I both put stuff in the list and whoever gets to the supermarket first (who are we kidding, it’s always him, sorry) gets the goods. Always updated and in your hand!

Two things:

1- if you’re still typing, figure out how to dictate to the phone. Saves SO much time!!!

2- use the typing shortcuts (Settings/General/Keyboard/Shortcuts) I use it for sooo many things. For example, my email address (I just type the first 3 letters!), my name, my address, long hashtags, you name it. If you typed it more than twice, you should have created a shortcut, do it!

so, which apps can’t you live without??? tell me!!!!!