New website to track and compare runs

If you’ve got a competitive streak, you may want to check out a new website that lets you analyze and compare your runs with other runners.

The site, called Mookers, lets you upload data from your Garmin and gives you a report on pace, distance, heart rate, calories burned and other metrics. But unlike other sites that analyze your data, this one also offers automatic route recognition, specific-point analysis and social sharing.

How does it work? Once you’ve uploaded your data, it will automatically recognize the route each time you run it, allowing you to compare each run. You can even watch an animated “race” of all the runs you and your friends have logged on that same route.

Then, you can mouse over any part of a route to see the data for that exact moment of your run – not just laps or splits. So if your run contains a particularly gruelling hill, for example, you can see what your heart rate was at the exact moment you were powering up it.

Finally, Mookers’ Facebook-style social component lets you connect and share your run data with other runners, and automatically tells your friends when you’ve logged a new run, route or personal achievement. With the ability to search for friends by name, location or even route, friendly competition is always just a click away, even if you don’t have a local running partner. Don’t want to share your runs? Adjustable privacy settings make it easy to keep your data to yourself.

Prince George, B.C. resident Mike Read, a former Ironman competitor, developed the site, and says the whole thing is based on friendly competition.

“Say there are 10 people in a running club,” he says. “They become friends on Mookers, and any time they run a route all their friends know about it. If they record a personal best, or the fastest time on that route, their friends will know.”

The site is free, but currently only works with Garmin devices.