With the day light hours getting shorter and the night’s drawing in, we shift our attention towards training and more importantly training safety. If, like us here at Kayathlon, you like to head off into the trails to catch some miles, some peace and some quiet, then you are more than likely going to be scheduled in the countryside somewhere. What if you have a spill, go over on your ankle or worse still, fall bang your head and are left unconscious. You are at the totally mercy of the elements. Well we did a little bit of digging and found this doesn’t have to be the case.

We came across a phone app called RoadId. Basically how it works is as follows; Before you head out, you start a session on it. You put in a point of contact on the app. Set your exercise duration time. And hit go!

So what’s so great about this you might ask. Well if you stop moving for a predetermined amount of time e.g. 5 minutes, your phone will start buzzing. If you do not move/respond to it within 2 minutes, a message with your GPS coordinates are sent to the point of contact you assigned earlier. They in turn can respond to you, either phoning you to see you are ok, make their way to the GPS position or probably best advised, calling a safety authority that you may be in trouble.

There is also live GPS tracking on it, so they can track your every move. Once you finish your run/cycle or whatever, you get a link to a full report of your exercise. Oh and did we mention, it’s free!

Definitely worth considering before heading out on your ownio.