RunKeeper now lets you set specific fitness goals and tell all your friends

We’re big fans of all things fitness & health here at The Next Web, and RunKeeper is one app that’s never too far away from our thoughts. Available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Symbian, RunKeeper is a mobile fitness platform for tracking and monitoring your every move, from running and hiking, to walking and cycling.

Last month it rolled out its fitness button, allowing users to share health and fitness content from across the Web selectively, with friends who care about the same types of articles, rather than with everyone in their network. And this ‘sharing’ and ‘competing’ aspect of RunKeeper is one of its core underpinning tenets.

Today, RunKeeper is rolling out a new feature designed to make it easier for users to hold themselves accountable when trying to achieve a specific goal. It has announced that you can set yourself specific fitness goals on your RunKeeper profile page, and track how you are doing against those goals over time. There are four types of goals in total you can set:

• Achieve a specific distance. For example, complete a 10-mile run by June 1, 2012
• Achieve a cumulative distance. For example, run 50 miles in total by April 30, 2012
• Complete a race. For example, run a marathon by August 1, 2012
• Lose a specific amount of weight by a set timeframe.

In keeping with its social principles, you can also share these goals with your friends on Facebook or Twitter, and invite those not active on RunKeeper to follow your progress and cheer you on. If nothing else, this will ensure you have folk on your back if you’re not keeping to your personal fitness promise.

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“Tracking is a key foundational element of what we’re doing, as without frictionless tracking, there is no data,” says RunKeeper founder Jason Jacobs. “Once the data is there, it is the motivation and accountability that can be layered on top that will truly help people achieve sustainable improvements to their health.”

➤ Runkeeper