runtastic User of the Month December – Francesca Rizzi

Francesca Rizzi is our runtastic User of the Month for December. She is from New Zealand but lives in London. She has always been passionate for running and thanks runtastic she got even more motivation and energy.

Read her interview to know more about her.

– Introduce yourself? (Your city/country, your name, your age, etc.)

My name is Francesca Rizzi. I am a Kiwi-Brit, born in Canterbury, New Zealand, but living in London. I am 37 and I have been running since I was fourteen, but never competitively. I switched to longer distance running, from 5-10km runs, in early 2011 and these days long-distance (20km or more) is all I want to do. Everyone I know in real life and in the runtastic community urges me to run a marathon. I know I could do it but I haven’t taken the plunge yet! I probably will one day, since my distance to date is capped at 35km, and I seriously doubt it is possible to get through the next 7km without the help of race crowds!

– How long have you been using runtastic? Why did you start using it? Which apps?

I used another vendor’s running app at first but changed to runtastic sometime in 2012 and imported my activity data from before over to here. I care about distance, pace and elevation, but I don’t measure heart rate. Live tracking/cheering and the Facebook add-in are by far the best aspects of the runtastic app beyond its ability to track the running itself.

– How many times per week are you using runtastic?

I am running about three times per week at the moment. In October I had thirteen activities (all running, all over 20km except the first one, which was a recovery run after a calf-strain) and I completed 295 km, which was about double my previous monthly record. If you want to know why that is, I am convinced it is the peer-support and motivation that comes from other members of the community here! Apart from recording activities, I am active on the site several times most days checking out what my online friends are doing!

– Did runtastic change your life / your health / your sports or fitness habits?

As I’ve said already, the social-networking side of runtastic is what has made the biggest change in my running. I never would have believed that, before I started linking up with others via friendships. But the experience of mutual support and encouragement with a much larger, more diverse group of people with common interests is so powerful that it (still) amazes me, and makes me want to get out running a lot more, just to hear the cheers!

– What do you think about the runtastic fitness portal/community?

I underestimated the difference a virtual support crowd would make to my runs; I would have found a place like this sooner! Once you start interacting here the level of mutual encouragement just explodes in my experience. Keep the social functionality up to date and I am sure runtastic will be a big magnet for enthusiasts of all relevant sports.

 Team runtastic congrats Francesca for her motivating force and we hope that the runtastic users will be more important to cheer Francesca!

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