If you haven’t figured it out yet, I love apps that use geolocation. That’s why I’m such a Foursquare freak. Tonight Maryam and I went on a date and I checked in along the way with Foursquare, Gowalla, and Yelp. I regularly let my friends watch where I am on Google Latitude, etc.

But, one of the things I want to improve in my life is I want to get back in shape. My son has been running and has lost a lot of weight and looks, well, hot!

So, I’ve been looking for some motivation and here I’ve found two apps I’m trying out when I go for a run: Runkeeper and Runmeter.

So far I like Runmeter slightly better, but here’s the CEOs of both companies showing me their apps:

1. Runmeter/Abvio’s CEO, Steve Kusmar.
2. Runkeeper/FitnessKeeper’s COO, Mike Sheeley.

One thing is that these apps work great for other kinds of sports too, like cycling, walking/hiking, or skiing.

Why are they motivational? Well, with these you can share your run with the world and how fast you have gone. It even, while you’re running, shows you your previous best pace so you can see if you are going faster or slower than you were going last week. By sharing your runs with the public there’s some public pressure to keep it up. I haven’t yet gotten brave enough to share my runs, but I will soon.

Do you use apps like these to keep track of your exercise? What do you like about them? Which is your favorite?

Why should Foursquare or other location-based services pay attention to them? Because they are great ways to add more data onto locations. People who run around Golden Gate park, for instance, are far more likely to know the ins and outs of the park than other visitors. Plus, it’d be fun to hook in different courses/runs into Foursquare or Gowalla. Gowalla has something called “trips” but that isn’t granular enough for a hike, a run, or a cycling tour.