I am a man of numbers; I want to know how much or how little I will do all my things. When I drive, I watch my MPG, when I workout I track my calories and heart rate. When I first started biking, I would head out for 20-30 minutes and cycle around. I did not know how far I would go, nor how fast. This was not acceptable to me… I needed the numbers.
Finally, looking up a site like MapMyRide, which has a pretty good system of maps to put on your route, and will tell you how far you’ve walked. The problem with MapMyRide is that if you don’t convert to a huge terminus then you won’t be able to get an accurate distance and therefore your speed will be inaccurate.
Then I switched to the iPhone app; and MapMyRide Cyclemeter searches. Cyclemeter was better for me. The free version of MapMyRide drove me crazy and already paid Cyclemeter, but even Cyclemeter’s accuracy seemed much better. Granted, it was more than a year ago that I ran the comparison, so there have probably been improvements for MapMyRide, but not Cyclemeter or Laurie based on it.
MapMyRide.com is great for planning a trip and seems to have a very strong community, which Cyclemeter doesn’t have. But for me, Cyclemeter has always been the best app to ride with.
It is simple to use and quite accurate. When you want to start riding, you can either choose a previous route and enter the beginning or start a new one and name it later. Then just put it in your bike bag and forget about it until the end. If you want, it will give you voice updates and intervals, but I tend to turn on Pandora while I ride for some music. Safety note: if you listen to the listen to music with traffic, only carry one. ear-bud… it is vital that you can hear the ears around you.
When you’re done with your ride, just pull up the app and press stop. It will give you the option to continue or you can choose to proceed. Through its settings you can tell it where to place your data when you’re done riding. I post my rides to facebook, twitter and dailymile.com.
Daily Mile is a great website. If you’ve ever used the Facebook + website, it’s very similar, but without the strong community. It allows you to pull the start of the ride and see all the vital status you want. It will also count how many donuts you eat, or how many televisions you are capable of with your riding, but the truth of these calculations has not been revealed and I find more slander than actual facts to worry about. circuit
I want the Daily Mile website to have the same community that Nike+ does, because when I started running, I absolutely loved Nike+. But they are slow to accept the knights. They have an app that could be used for cycling, but there is no indication that you are running instead of running. If they ever add that functionality to the app and their website, I’ll have to reconsider my choice of tracking tools. For now though, I recommend spending a few bucks for the Cyclemeter app and signing up for free accounts with MapMyRide and Daily Mile. You’ll love all the stats you have access to and be able to watch to improve your riders.
