So you've decided to start riding a bicycle, congratulations—hope you don't mind a little black lung! But seriously, now that you've gotten used to riding with lots of traffic and taken our tips to heart, we have a hunch you might be looking for a way to keep your new commute interesting—and also make you feel less guilty for skipping out on the gym. One way we've found to do that is by tracking our trips and what do you know, there is an app for that.
In fact, there are many apps out there that will help you track how far you've traveled, how many feet you've climbed and how many (estimated) calories you've burned. And we've tried most of them. But each time we try one, we invariably come back to Cyclemeter by Abvio. The $4.99 app is simple, elegant and surprisingly fun to use. And if you are the kind of person who is looking for a reason not to have to do cardio at the gym, it'll give you a reason to smile after your ride.
Using it is easy. Just open up the app and hit start before you hop on your bike and then hit stop when you get off (you can also start and stop trips with the earbud remotes). When you are done you'll get a GPS-created map of your trip with breakdowns by mile that you can e-mail to yourself, tweet, or share on Facebook if that's your thing. If you want, it can also use its auto-stop detection to keep your numbers extra specific. Save a few routes in and you can compare your commutes day by day, or even "ghost race" with past trips. Also, if you are obsessive, you can even see exactly how many miles you biked each day, week, month and even year (i.e. in 2010 we biked 611.42 miles with an average trip of 4.19 miles going an average speed of 10 MPH).
And the app doesn't just track cycling activities. Though we can't vouch for any of the other settings it does have them for hiking, running, skating, downhill skiing and swimming (we DO NOT suggest you put your iPhone underwater). Still, there are a number of other cycling apps out there—have you found another one you like?
