Blend Music and Running with Marx Runner

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Run tracker or Music Maker? Yes! Music and Running Combined!

Runners who are looking for a new way to motivate themselves might want to give Marx Runner for the iPhone a try the next time they go out for a run. Marx Runner is an interesting idea that I’m not sure if it would work for serious runners who are all business but I’m sure it could be a nice distraction for casual runners who just want some entertainment value while they pound the pavement! Some apps are running trackers and some apps are music apps. Marx Runner is the first app I’ve seen to combine Music and Running

After the title screen loads you are face with the main screen. This screen looks more like a recording app or a DJ app than it does a run tracking app as it has beats per minute, drums, inst, mute all, sfx, and vocals. Also on the screen is a shuffle all button, miles per hour, and reset & run. Here’s why users need all these “non-running” type controls for this screen. When someone first loads the screen
they press the shuffle all button. Once they do that a pre-recorded song starts to play. Once a song, that the user likes, is playing they stop hitting shuffle all and hit Reset & Run. When the user does that the Reset & Run button changes to say Stop Running. You could say that hitting Reset & Run is when the run starts!

Speed It Up or Slow It Down

After starting the run, runners can change the way the song that is playing sounds by adjusting the speed setting. The speed setting is what tells the app when to changes the sound of the song that is playing by a certain running speed. In other words when a runner hits a certain MPH during their run the song sounds different. An example would be like this: Drums @ 4 MPH, Instruments @ 5MPH, Sound FX: 5.5 MPH, and Vocals @ 6.5 MPH. Something to note here is that runners can turn off speed motivators and this functionality won’t come into play. Runners can also mute individual instruments by pressing one of the buttons I mentioned earlier in the review. Pressing drums toggles drums on or off, inst toggles instruments, same goes for sfx and vocals. Runners can also toggle all instruments on or off with the mute all button as well. One thing to note about Marx Runner is that it only works for outdoor runners. It is not designed for treadmill runners because it keeps track of distance and MPH based on GPS. If a runner is on a treadmill they are in one place therefore GPS has no way of knowing how long, fast, or far they ran and the app won’t function properly.

Sharing is Fun!

Runners who are not shy and like to brag can share their running stats on Twitter or Facebook. After pressing the “Stop Running” button a screen pops up with running stats on it. Stats like average speed, distance ran, and time elapsed are shown on the screen. Also on this screen are Facebook and Twitter share buttons that let runners share their stats on their Facebook profiles as well as tweet them to their Twitter followers.

iPhone App Review Guy Rating: ★★★★★ 4 out of 5 stars.

While I think this app is a cool idea i’m not so sure somebody really into running would get the benefit of it. But besides that it’s a really interesting idea and some of the song beats are pretty cool!!

More Screen Shots…