I was lucky to stumble upon a wonderful Android app and I'm going to sing its praises here. This is MapMyRide, a great utility to keep track of my location, elevation, distance, time, pace, average speed and burned calories during a ride. I'm thrilled I no longer have to retrace my route in my vehicle to guess how far I've gone.
When I first found this application, I was sitting at my desk and used my laptop to plug in the route I travelled earlier in the day. That task was a bit tedious until I forced myself to read and follow the directions. I rarely use this feature but plan on pre-mapping out some new routes to get an idea of what kind of hills I might encounter in advance. I hate unexpected hills! So, when I finished this task I wondered if there might be something like this for Android, so I did a web search and, lo and behold, I found MapMyRide for android!
There is a free and no-so-free version of this application available. I have the free version and find the occasional online advertisement to be tolerable. I may download the non-ad version in the future, but for now this one works fine for me.
Using the app from my android phone is simple. I launch MapMyRide, select "Record" from the menu, then press the "play" icon. I sleep my phone, stick it in my pocket and I'm off on my ride. When I finish my ride, I wake up my phone, tap the "Pause" button and then confirm that I want to save my route. That's all there is to it! My route has been mapped! I can later sit down at my leisure and fill in any missing information about the activity - including tagging spots along the route, adding my comments, naming the route, etc. I can also choose to keep my route private or I can publish it to the MapMyRide web site for other's to see and, hopefully, use. There's also the option provided to share my route on Twitter or Facebook.
There's probably a lot of other features available that I have yet to discover. I'll keep playing with it and I'll write more if I find something else that I find amazing.
MapMyRide is a very useful application. If you want to keep track of your biking activities and own a smart phone, I highly recommend giving it try. You'll be glad you did.
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