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First ride using the Strava cycling app

Posted: June 02, 2013 in Cycling

Last week I downloaded and installed the Strava cycling app for my Android phone.  It's a GPS-based cycle computer that tracks your ride.  It gives you things like total distance, ride time, and average speed, as well as mapping your ride.  It also lets you share your ride on Facebook, so you can brag to (or be embarrassed by) your friends.  The Strave website also gives you a cool dashboard that shows you various stats, including a more detailed map, an elevation profile, total feet climbed, and some other useful tidbits. 

Battery drain wasn't too bad, as it used about 20% of the battery on my Droid Razr M on a 3-1/2 hr ride, which included some ringing in my backpack as my mom was phoning me.  I think it's safe to say that battery life wouldn't be an issue for any sane riding distance.

While it doesn't quite give all the details that my Garmin Edge gives, it's one less thing to carry, and you don't have to do anything special to get the data to the website.  Plus, having your rides saved online means you don't have to worry about having a file on your computer to worry about backing up.

One other really cool thing about the Strava app is that you can not only compare your ride time for a given ride to your other time, you can compare them to other people's times on that same ride or segment of a ride.  They have a leader board where you can see how you place, which is pretty cool.

There's a free and a paid version of Strava, although I'm not sure what the premium account adds that I'd really be interested in.  All in all, for a free app, I think it's pretty decent, and if you're carrying your phone with you anyway, you might as well make it do some of the work!

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