The story of my latest app

In the past week, my latest app , RunNow Pro was approved and released in the Apple App Store. The app project began about 6 weeks ago. My wife and I were talking about running and my wife decided she was going to try to run a half marathon next fall. While it is pretty far away, we decided it was best to get started with a run / walk program so she'd be ready to hit the road come spring.

I looked up some plans online and thought there would be an app out there to help with this.  There are lots of them actually, but of all the ones I looked at, none seems like the right one.  Later that week, I got an evening home alone with the kids and the idea struck me to make the app for her myself. That night, I had the kids record encouraging messages of when it was time to run and then when it was time to walk or recover.  After I got the kids to bed, I coded up the app and it was ready for her run the next day.

Over the next few nights, I cleaned things up, added a settings page for controlling the workouts, and added a log so she could see the workouts she did.  It wasn't too fancy, but it worked well.  The personal messages were fun and it was very customized to exactly how she worked out.  She ran a timed workout of 20 minutes so she'd just run/walk for 10 minutes, the app would remind her to turn around and she be back in the driveway when her workout was done.  I decided I would make a version for release soon after.

Over the next few weeks I spend a few more evenings polishing it up and sent the "Pro" version to the app store.  I removed the kids voices but added other notification options. It has a built in couch to 5k workout plan, but still has the manual settings which will make the app work well for running intervals or just doing a custom run / walk plan.  It runs great on our old original iPhone with iOS 3.1.3 which is the device my wife uses it on.

I'm working on the free version of RunNow as time permits with less features, ads, and the ability to upgrade to the full version with in app purchase.  It is not my top priority, but I’ll hopefully be able to finish it up some time in the coming weeks.  It was fun to see this simple project come together so quickly and was a nice break from my larger iOS project that I’ve gotten back to in the last week.