Best Websites for Runners

on March 3, 2011
in All Posts

I thought I’d compile a list of my favorite websites for runners.  Each one provides runners with a totally unique and special service.  Enjoy! 

 

Active.com:  Anyone and everyone who’s active (not just a runner) should check out Active for tons of resources about training and staying healthy.  The website is full of great articles with helpful information.  However, Active is best for finding local races.  Their sister site, ActiveGiving.com, is a great way to fundraise for a charity while completing a race.

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Racevine.com:  Want to know all the details about a race before you sign up?  Then check out Racevine.com!  With real reviews from other athletes on races and triathlons all over the country, Racevine.com is a great way to figure out whether a course is hilly, how big the crowds are, where the best water stations will be situated, and other insider tips.  You can also post your own race reviews (I usually just copy and paste my race recaps to Racevine.com so other people can easily find out more about those events).

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DailyMile.com:  I just joined Daily Mile – friend me!  DailyMile is a fun site where you can track your training, share it with friends, and help motivate others through wall posts and updates.  Friends can suggest running routes, and there’s also an event section.

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The thing I liked the most about DailyMile was how easy it was to sign up (three questions) and link the site to my Twitter and Facebook accounts so I could find my friends.   Also, who doesn’t love bar graphs of their running data?!  Bar graphs rule.

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Your Local Running Store:  If you live in a larger city, google “Running Store + [City Name]” to find the website for your local running store.  Charlotte’s Run for Your Life and Orlando’s Track Shack (where I lived until last June – well, Orlando, not Track Shack) both have extensive running websites with tons of resources for local events. 

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RunnersWorld.com:  RunnersWorld is a truly great website.  They have a killer injury prevention section, great forums, cool blogs, and tons of information about training.  As a matter of fact, whenever I have a running question, I Google “RunnersWorld + [Question].”  It’s that good!

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MapMyRun.com:  I don’t use MapMyRun because I have a Garmin 305 GPS watch, but MapMyRun is a great way to figure out how far you’re running and details about the best routes in your area.  Their Map My Route feature is really easy to use and very accurate.

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CoolRunning.com:  CoolRunning, like RunnersWorld, is a great general resource website for runners.  The crown jewel of CoolRunnings is easily the Couch to 5K program, which is probably the most widely recommended 5K program for beginners.  This program will take anyone to a 5K (3.1 miles) distance in just 9 weeks – so what are you waiting for?!

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Athlinks.com:  A reader reminded me of Athlinks yesterday!  It’s a pretty cool site that compiles race data from events all over the country and organizes them by name and age.  You can search for anyone and see how they’re doing with their training.  Frenemy and ex-boyfriend stalking may now commence.

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Do you use any of these websites?  What are you favorite websites for running or other sports?

{ 75 comments }

 

  • kalli@fitandfortysomething March 3, 2011, 9:12 am

    i love runners world especially Kristen Armstrongs blog called Mile Markers. great informative post cailtin!

  • Gracie (complicated day) March 3, 2011, 9:17 am

    I absolutely love Mapmyrun, even though I do have a Garmin now, because it inspires me to take new routes.
    One of my favorite websites is marathonguide.com, which lists a calender and reviews of all upcoming marathons (even out of the country). It also has a link to create a pace bracelet, and I like their format better than runner’s world’s. http://www.marathonguide.com/fitnesscalcs/PaceBandCreator.cfm

  • Angela @ Eat Spin Run Repeat March 3, 2011, 9:17 am

    Thanks for these links Caitlin! Runnersworld is pretty much my go-to for all things running, and I’ve used MapMyRun before as well. For Canadian races, I look at The Running Room (http://www.runningroom.com/hm/) which also has gear and training tips. Great post!

  • Natalie @ Will Jog For Food March 3, 2011, 9:18 am

    Great links! I love going on active to see what races are coming up…and runners world. Now if i can just do what I look at all the time, hehe.

  • Joyce @ Flowing to Fifty March 3, 2011, 9:18 am

    Thanks for the great recommendations. I’ve definitely used the C25K to start running. Going to check out RW on the coffee break. Lots of fun surfing to do…… 🙂

  • Gabriela @ Une Vie Saine March 3, 2011, 9:22 am

    I looove Runner’s World just because it’s such a big site and has so many tips. I’ve also been really into womenshealthmag.com for cross training workouts recently!! And fitsugar is another favorite.

  • Lauren @ChiGalLauren March 3, 2011, 9:24 am

    Thanks for this post! I love to find out about resources that other bloggers use, very helpful 🙂

  • Beth @ Beth's Journey to Thin March 3, 2011, 9:28 am

    What an awesome post! I can’t wait to check out some of these sites – especially RaceVine. I already get the active.com newsletter and its awesome!

    Another site I use is walkjogrun.net. It’s similar to Map My Run but I find it easier to use.

  • Emily March 3, 2011, 9:28 am

    I did not know about racevine…but love it. My other favorite is McMillian’s Running Calculator. It lets me obsess over my goal/projected race times for hours on end.

  • Kathleen March 3, 2011, 9:29 am

    Love The Daily Mile! My favorite part is the email they send every week that summarizes your training. Even if I only run 2 miles, the email is all like “Great job this week!” Totally adorable.

  • Margo March 3, 2011, 9:35 am

    I’ve been running for years and constantly use these websites as resources. I’ve never heard of Race Vine or Daily Mile though. Can’t wait to explore! Thank you!

  • lindsay March 3, 2011, 9:38 am

    Love your new head shot! Your hair really does look awesome. I know bangs can be annoying for working out, etc, but they just look so good!!

  • Kim @ girlevolving March 3, 2011, 9:39 am

    I love logyourrun.com, too. It’s a fast way to log your miles, get your average pace, and get weekly, monthly, and yearly stats.

  • Michelle March 3, 2011, 9:42 am

    I much prefer http://www.gmap-pedometer.com to mapmyrun to figuring out routes to take.

  • Lauren March 3, 2011, 9:43 am

    runningintheusa.com is a great site! You can search for races by state, by race length, and by month. I find it easier than active.com honestly.

  • Carolyn @Eat Well. Live Well. Be Well. March 3, 2011, 9:44 am

    Active.com and Athlinks.com are my favorite. imathlete.com is a new up and coming that is good too.

  • gabriella @ embracement March 3, 2011, 9:45 am

    I love daily mile. I’ve been using it snce I started half marathon training and its so encouraging to see how far I’ve gotten. Mapmyrun is a life saver for me because I don’t have a garmin so when I run outsisde its really fun to create new route and see their distance and elevation maps. Those are my top most visited running sites.

  • Evan Thomas March 3, 2011, 9:49 am

    I figured someone must have done a post on dailymile. I’ve gotten 3 friend requests in the past hour.

  • Marisa E March 3, 2011, 9:55 am

    That is too funny- I was seriously just on Active.com debating on signing up for a race, then went to your site and BOOM saw it as your first screen shot! Great post- thanks for all the references.

  • Theodora March 3, 2011, 9:59 am

    I love DailyMile for the encouragement there, but I REALLY love Athlinks. Almost any time I hear someone boast about a race time, I go to Athlinks to see if they’re telling the truth or not 🙂

  • Cyndi @ Weightless Life March 3, 2011, 10:04 am

    I use daily mile. I love seeing how many donuts I’ve burned! Plus, it’s cool to see my mileage per month, because then I can challenge myself to do the same or better next month.

  • Melissa @ Be Not Simply Good March 3, 2011, 10:04 am

    I will have to check out the sites that I haven’t seen yet. Thanks for the list! 🙂

  • Roselyn March 3, 2011, 10:06 am

    Woohoo Daily Mile! I love that website. FYI, you can also update your Daily Mile from you iPhone using the Electric Miles app. 🙂

  • Erin March 3, 2011, 10:08 am

    earndit.com isn’t specifically for runners, but it does interface with Garmin Connect, Nike+ and several other mileage tracking websites. If you link them together you earn points for every mile you run and you can trade the points in for fun things (like custom made energy bars!)

    There’s also a community over on livejournal called runners that I frequent (http://community.livejournal.com/runners/) where everyone is super nice and helpful and there’s lot of knowledge in one place.

  • Tina @ Faith Fitness Fun March 3, 2011, 10:09 am

    I’m thinking about creating a Daily Mile account but does it take a lot of time to keep updated and use?

    Going through Couch to 5K right now actually. First 5K 6 weeks from Sat!

  • Camille March 3, 2011, 10:12 am

    Great resources! I loove Active.com and I use it to find all my races. I am also on Daily Mile, but I found that I was getting obsessive about tracking every single mile and it was too time consuming. I still love it though!

  • Samantha @ Health, Happiness & Skinny Jeans March 3, 2011, 10:14 am

    I like Daily Mile for tracking my running. It really keeps me motivated and its a good resournce to look back on after a race as well.

  • Susan March 3, 2011, 10:15 am

    I use dailymile for the challenges, runnersworld for general info, and mapmyrun for planning out running routes. Of all three, I do think I love dailymile the best, because I can see how I do in the challenge I am in (top 30! whoot!). Plus the donut count is fun.

  • Kara March 3, 2011, 10:22 am

    I just signed up for Daily Mile…it sounds fun! I love graphs 🙂

  • Ashley March 3, 2011, 10:22 am

    I’ve been using cool running for the couch to 5k plan, but I honestly didn’t know there were so many resources out there! Thank you for this it’s extremely helpful!

  • Lauren March 3, 2011, 10:25 am

    I just found blog.trainingpeaks.com, and it has a ton of useful information! The athlinks sounds really cool – like a training facebook to stalk people, hah.

  • Amanda March 3, 2011, 10:25 am

    Great recommendations, Caitlin! When I was training for my marathon runnersworld.com was such a huge source of information.
    Any way you can do a similar post on good websites for triathlons. I am thinking of doing my first sprint this summer and your beginner triathlon posts are very helpful. Would love to know where I can get similar resources to these running websites but for biking and swimming as well!

  • Lauren @ Team Giles March 3, 2011, 10:27 am

    First of all, LOVE your new “profile pic”. You look fabulous. Did you darken your hair? bangs? Love it!

    These are great sites, most of them I’ve used/gone to, but a few I’ve never even heard of like runforyourlife.com — very cool! Thanks for sharing these!

  • LindseyAnn March 3, 2011, 10:29 am

    I also use Athleticore (www.athleticore.com). It’s another training log site, but this one is cool because you can create “teams”, so if you’re training with a group you can see what everyone has been doing. You can also log pretty much any other activity known to man on this site. I love it!
    There are a ton of Facebook apps, too. I use RunLogger, and I love it! It’s a fun way to keep track of miles and to share them with your Facebook friends (and maybe inspire a few non-runners to start running–I’m starting to see that happen to my friends! :D)

  • Katy (The Singing Runner) March 3, 2011, 10:44 am

    These are all great sites! I’ve never heard of Racevine but I’m eager to check it out! 😀

  • Amber from Girl with the Red Hair March 3, 2011, 10:47 am

    I love dailymile (friended you!) but I also use runningahead.com to track my mileage since I’ve been using it since I FIRST started running (feb 2009) and it has ALL MY mileage from all the races I’ve trained for on it! So I have a soft spot for it 🙂

    Also, I kind of laughed out loud when I read that you put the 6 miles on dailymile but hadn’t ran it yet. I will admit when I first saw that on Twitter I thought “wow Caitlin went for a run really early this morning!” haha

  • Eline Madeleine Schmeets March 3, 2011, 11:02 am

    Why are the Nike + website not on there?
    I love it and it has great training programs!

    Love Eline

  • Anna @ Newlywed, Newly Veg March 3, 2011, 11:06 am

    Ahhhh, I’m bookmarking this! Thanks for the great compilation!

    I just discovered the Runner’s Roundtable podcasts. It’s not a website (obviously), but it’s really helpful and fun to listen to (while running!).

  • Michelle... March 3, 2011, 11:08 am

    I LOVE Map My Run! I just have a standard HRM watch, so I map out all my runs with this. I also use Daily Mile to track my runs and walks (as part of a resolution to myself), and I find it really useful/enjoyable to be able to see all my training on a page like that.

  • Ellie @ The Mommyist March 3, 2011, 11:12 am

    Thanks for the helpful list of sites!

  • monicanelsonfitness March 3, 2011, 11:22 am

    so great to have. Thanks!

  • Caitlin @ The Caitie Experiment March 3, 2011, 11:27 am

    I use Daily Mile to keep track of my runs, too! It’s a great way to see everything build up, and at the end of the year, they send you a report that tracks EVERYTHING you did the previous year! I also used C25K almost two years ago when I first started running, and have both a 5k and a Bridge to 10k Droid App, even though I’ve been using Hal Higdon’s training plans now. The apps are great for days when I’m tempted to push myself a little harder than I should be, since they have built-in walk periods and play over your own music (as opposed to the Cool Runnings podcasts and their weird techno!).

    The sites you listed are great; I do the same thing for injuries/tips and Runner’s World. I also use http://www.runningintheusa.com for races that sometimes aren’t listed on Active.

  • Joanna@ Drizzle of Sunshine March 3, 2011, 11:30 am

    I’m new to running, but I JUST joined DailyMile on Monday! I requested you as a friend 🙂 I really like it so far because those colorful graphs really make me feel accomplished. It’s a great daily journal.

  • Kate (What Kate is Cooking) March 3, 2011, 11:38 am

    I think I signed up for dailymile last year, but I forgot to use it! I need to go see if my account is still valid 🙂

  • Julie (A Case of the Runs) March 3, 2011, 11:46 am

    You pretty much covered them all. =)

    I friended you on Daily Mile. I joined a couple of months ago, but it’s really hard for me to keep updating because I don’t have internet on my phone, though if I can find time to post mileage on my blog, I can certainly try to log in Daily Mile each day, right? Maybe I can set it as my homepage…

  • bakingnbooks March 3, 2011, 11:56 am

    Never heard of a lot of these.

    Do you blog/post on RW’s forums?

  • lisa @ early morning run March 3, 2011, 12:02 pm

    great roundup. I’ve been to all of these but two. Just joined DailyMile at the start of the year and have stuck with it so far. Easier than I had expected.

  • Kira March 3, 2011, 12:18 pm

    I’ve used active.com before and liked it. I’m definitely going to go and check out the other ones now!

    xx

  • Sam March 3, 2011, 12:21 pm

    Sparkpeople.com!

    For wannabe runners they have great c25k groups to get started, and for more active runners they have plenty of active groups for moral support. Also, importantly, they have good crowd-sourced information for larger* runners (because, yes they do exist! And don’t get a lot of support in mainstream mags such as runnersworld, etc.) You can track your fitness as well.

    Also, Jeff Galloway’s newsletter…

  • Kacy March 3, 2011, 12:21 pm

    Great list! I love Cool Runnings, but definitely want to check out the first two.

  • Natalia - a side of simple March 3, 2011, 12:29 pm

    Thanks for taking the time to compile this! I actually never use any of these sites and I really should since I run all the time. I think you’re definitely going to get me hooked on a few!

  • Annette @ EnjoyYourHealthyLife March 3, 2011, 12:33 pm

    I like mapmyrun. Cool post- thanks!! 🙂

  • Liz@FitLizzy.com March 3, 2011, 12:36 pm

    Great list! RunKeeper.com is also one of my go-to sites. AMAZING iPhone app that tracks all the details of your run using your phone’s GPS. Then you can review all your stats later on the computer. It really enhances my runs and makes them even more fun!

  • Erica March 3, 2011, 12:47 pm

    What a great list! Thank you for listing all these sites! I’ve never even heard of Daily Mile…but will go find it now.

  • Melissa @ TryingToHeal March 3, 2011, 12:47 pm

    I love daily mile and actually don’t use mapmyrun but gmaps pedometer because it’s so much easier. and you don’t have to be a member either!

  • Allison @ Happy Tales March 3, 2011, 1:01 pm

    Thanks for compiling all of these sites, I use a few of them already, but am going to definitely check out the others! Wooo!

  • Kristy@RunTheLongRoad March 3, 2011, 1:21 pm

    marathonguide.com is good too. Similar to racevine.

  • Lili March 3, 2011, 1:38 pm

    I use the iMapMyRun app for iPhone! I don’t have a watch w/ GPS – so this app comes in pretty handy – It maps your route and gives you time spent on your run/walk.

  • Alexa @ The Girl In Chucks March 3, 2011, 1:56 pm

    I use several of those sites, but probably the main “running” site I use would be RunKeeper (runkeeper.com). I didn’t really feel like I was serious enough to invest in a Garmin, but at the same time, I wanted maps of my runs. I wanted to know my pace and splits. What to do?

    Use RunKeeper on my iPhone! It use GPS to map out the run as I go, it will update me as often as I want (via audio cues) throughout the run with how long I’ve been running, the distance, my average pace, current pace or whatever else I want. It does the graph thing online too. There is a free and a paid version too, so you can spend money or not based on your needs. Very sweet.

  • Sonia March 3, 2011, 2:40 pm

    I LOVE my food processor!! I made nut butters, salsas, veggies,…I’d be lost without it!

  • Casper March 3, 2011, 2:41 pm

    I use (and love) running2win.com. I use it to track all my runs.

  • Jessica @ FitChickWannaBe.com March 3, 2011, 2:42 pm

    I love active.com! I register for all my races there. And it’s so easy to register once you’ve done it once because they save all of your information. And you can also register multiple people at a time, which is nice.

  • Lisa March 3, 2011, 2:57 pm

    Active is great. They also have an iphone app that is good too!

  • Laura @ Starting Out Fit March 3, 2011, 4:03 pm

    I’ve been using Daily Mile for about 4 weeks now and am LOVING it!!! It’s such a great tool and I think it will be very beneficial for my during my half-marathon training.

    ps. I just added you! 🙂

  • Mary @ Bites and Bliss March 3, 2011, 5:15 pm

    Thank you for this!! I’ll definitely be checking out racevine and the dailymile for sure!

  • Chelsea @ One Healthy Munchkin March 3, 2011, 6:54 pm

    Even though I’ve been running for 2 years, I’ve never checked out any of these sites. Thanks for posting them! 😀

  • Lee March 3, 2011, 9:02 pm

    Oh cool. These are some great resources.

  • Jenn @ Running Jennie March 15, 2011, 8:52 pm

    I’ve just started getting serious about running and also joined Daily Mile this week. I’ve requested you as a friend. 🙂

    • Caitlin March 15, 2011, 9:16 pm

      Yay! I shall add you next time I sign on!

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  • Phil November 16, 2014, 1:06 am

    I like iSmoothRun as a running app. If you want to run tempos, fartlets, or intervals at specific paces or times, you can set a customized run plan with audio feedback to help you stay on plan. To analyze your run data, I’d suggest you check out a site I’m developing: http://www.GraphMyRun. It’s meant for runners who are looking for a little more analysis than you’ll find on Strava or Garmin Connect. Best, Phil

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