A GPS watch works very well, especially for running and hiking. Like a phone, you have it on you anyway. Very easy to keep on top of the battery because you see it whenever you look at the time. Easier to interact with (check distance so far, to the next waypoint, pause, etc) than getting the phone out and switching to the app that's doing the recording. Saves the phone battery for photos, alerts you when you drop your phone and start to walk away, acts as a perfect smart lock. Garmin's newer one gets 52 hours of every second GPS with the screen always on, they have another version with a solar charger too (but that doesn't really work here).

You already have something that works well for you so not much reason to shell out hundreds of dollars to basically wind up in the same place. But since we're talking about data and recording anyway, I wanted to put that out there because it's really an underappreciated solution.