I’ve been running a lot lately, training for my first 10k race. Some of these runs are longer than I’ve run before…did 7 miles today and it took a little over an hour. You know, it’s good to listen to music when you run, but unless you’ve got a huge library, or buy lots of new music, it can get a little old. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the Bootie and Hood Internet mashups.

I started thinking that maybe I should listen to audiobooks, but that gets either expensive, or troublesome if you try to check out an audiobook at the library (don’t get me started). So during spring break with the family, I poked around at some of the podcasts I’ve subscribed to but never listen to. You know what I’m talking about. Somehow I bumbled over to the B&B Podcast (great, btw) and one of their sponsors was Instacast. Never heard of it, so I grabbed it and gave it a try. It is excellent.

First of all, it’s for your iPhone. If you don’t have an iPhone, this is probably reason enough to get one. I’ve got a 16GB phone, and I’ve got a lot of apps, and pictures I keep making but never delete. So space is at a premium. This thing, Instacast, it lets you subscribe to podcasts, but stream them over the air. So smart. You can d/l podcasts, too, if you think you’ve got manky reception coming up or something. But this streaming dealio has been great for me. Saves me a ton of space, simplifies podcast discovery, I can subscribe to a bunch more podcasts without affecting available space, and it makes my long runs way less tedious.

Excellent product, highly recommended.