Pokemon Go has such an amazing potential so today I make an exception and write this post in english. On my run I took the iPhone with me today, just to see if there are Pokemons outside the residential areas of my town.

Yes there were some Pokemons out in the woods too, but that was not the most amazing part of it. There were teenagers out walking in the woods! I have been running in this area for many years and in all those years I have not seen more than five teenagers in total. Today I saw twice that many in just ONE run. Teenagers used to be legendary rare here. Now Pokemon Go has gotten then off their feet and walking about. Pokemon is a game and not optimized for health benefits, but I think it just might be the best thing for rasing public health ever.

With a few adjustments it (or some game like it) could be just awesome. If you add some logic to make rare and legendary pokemons/items only appear if you use a heartrate monitor and keep a steady pulse at say 70% of your VO max for more than 10 minutes. Or make quest to complete a set of intervals. Complete a 5 km run, 10 km run, register and complete a marathon… The possibilities are endless and the drive to collect fictional pixels seem unstoppable.

So how did it work out to run and Pokemon? Well, for starters you must stop and catch. Running or even jogging when something appears makes it impossible to catch. The creature are more away from vision of your screen than on it. So I made a few stops. And when you stop it is not too easy to catch it if the pulse is too high. It is a little like Biathlon. You have to stand still for a few  seconds to steady your heartbeat. When you have bagged it start running again. Make sure you really bag it. If you start running and it escapes it will be off screen again.

I am not big at doing interval excercises, but Pokemon Go forced me into that mode cause after I had nailed one I wanted to make up for that rest and jumpstarted  my run again. Todays run was 6,7 km and took me 37:33 min to complete. Which is about 2-3 minutes slower that I usually run that distance at a steady pace not stopping to get 10 pokemons and for Pokestops.

Will I take Pokemon with me on my runs? Maybe, not all, but I am sure I will take it with me when my motivation for running is low.