i had time to investigate on the spotify - sportstracker bug. i tried it with 0.9.11 and qspot (since it is the only spotify client that is still getting updates) and i had no problems, the music and tracking worked fine.
next time i'll try it with the current unstable (which is working great so far!) and report back.
so if you use your n9 for sports, there is a (temporary) solution!