Outrun
You can't outrun your past. But you can try.
Outrun is an iPhone and Apple Watch running app with the most honest motivation system ever shipped. Add up to nine photos of things you'd rather not think about: an ex, an old apartment, 2019. Pick a heart rate floor or a pace ceiling. Hold it, or one of those photos appears full-screen on your wrist, mid-run, until you speed back up.
Slow Down and Your Past Catches Up
Every run starts with a warmup, because nobody deserves to be haunted in the first two minutes. After that, the rules are simple. Stay above your target and the watch tells you you're doing great. Drift into the warning band and you get a tap on the wrist: don't slow down now. Actually breach the line, and a memory fills the screen until you've earned its exit.
The details
- Your choice of stakes. Set a heart rate floor or a pace ceiling with the Digital Crown, whichever kind of runner you are.
- Fair hauntings. Built-in buffers and confirmation windows mean one bad GPS blip never triggers a photo. Appearing and disappearing both feel like events, never a flicker.
- Real workouts. Every run saves to Apple Health as a proper running workout, so it counts everywhere workouts count, including Strava via Health sync.
- The share card. Every run becomes a story-format card ("I outran my past for 32:14") ready for Instagram, TikTok, or the group chat.
And after the joke stats, the run summary leaves you with one sincere line: you can't actually outrun your past, but moving forward is how you make peace with it.
The Book Behind the App
Built by Chris Weiss, inspired by the themes of memory in The Second Chance Cinema by Thea Weiss.
The novel is about a magical theater that screens your memories, including the ones you'd rather leave in the vault. Outrun is the same idea with a heart rate monitor attached. If the app's one sincere line lands for you, the book is three hundred pages of where it came from.