HRM and Runkeeper vs Endomondo

I got my HRM (the polar wearlink + bluetooth) to work today - I reinstalled both apps and took my phone outside and yay it worked, I was getting quite concerned!

So my friend Alex has started using RK (runkeeper) as he and a few work friends have challenged themselfs to run 10Km or something - this massively sways me towards using RK myself. I also far prefer their web interface - the stats are just presented so much more clearly than on Endomondo- see for yourself here:

RK:

http://runkeeper.com/user/stowgood/activity/23478193

Endomondo:

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/v3xh353uXr8

RK is a little more babyish but the info is so much clearer. RK also asks you how you think you activity went on your phone before you upload your data to the web which give your tweets more meaning which is great. RK also e-mails you to say if you have beaten your best efforts.

There are a copuple of things that make me really want to stick with Endomondo however.

RK has this elite membership that basically unlocks things you can do for free on Endomondo such as:

• Track your improvements over a longer period and see all your stats.

• Lets people watch you running in real time.

Endo also has some exclusive features:

• Beat yourself mode - the audio cues help you to improve on your last outing - can only be a good thing.

• It also lets you send messages to people as they are doing a exercise - a bit of a gimmick perhaps but I bet that is really fun and I'd like to be able to do that even if it's something I rarely use.

I prefer the Endo App and they seem to have more features than RK and without a subscription - however RK has closed that gap with their big update at the end of 2010 actually adding HRM to their apps for example.

At the moment I'm going to continue trailing both apps - probably using both at the same time as I've yet to do a proper run, yet alone with either of these apps running :p

I can see my decision going both ways - I could:

• Just use RK and decide if I want to take a punt on the elite membership.

• I could convince Alex - (the only person who I actually care about talking about stats with who is actually using a running app) to jump ships to Endomondo - although this should not really effect my choice of app but it would be nice to compare stats in either a RK street team or a whatever Endomondo calls their running groups stats.

• Endomondo improve their web interface.

• I could try and find a way to automatically export data from one to the other so I could look at Endomondo for my long term improvement and full stats and use RK to compare with Alex and get the nice encouraging automatic emails.