I ride my mountain bike two to three times a week. The rides aren’t long, usually an hour and the distances are reasonable, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five kilometres.
The amount of information that gets collected, while using an app is staggering. I have tried many apps on my iPhone 5S but this one is my favourite. Strava has quite the following and comes in free or premium versions. Currently I use the free version and may eventually switch to the paid version. The premium version offers; Progress Goals, Real-Time Segments, Suffer Score, Power Zone Analysis and many other features… I’m just not ready for that.
It captures all the usual details regarding your ride; time, distance, calories, etc… What’s different about this one is how it captures, automatically, segments.
Segments are short portions of your ride that are tracked, named and compared against other cyclist and yourself. It’s a great way to set goals for yourself and to see how others are doing. For someone like me who rides on their own, it gives you a sense of belonging to a group… even though you’ll likely never meet any of them.
See my YouTube video on Strava Segments.
On today’s ride I achieved:
- Eighth overall on the ‘River Path’
- A personal record on the ‘Elmira Drag Strip North’
- The second fastest time on ‘Elmira Road (Fife Rd. to Paisley Rd.)’
Not bad… looks like I have some work to do on the River Path.
The only thing I question is my Maximum Speed of 75.6km/h. That’s not very likely, must have been a glitch. At one point though, I was racing a backhoe down a city street. Caught up with him twice!
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