Ride with GPS Blog

Riding in the Catskill Mountains

2013-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

Here's a guest post from John Ferguson, a long-time Ride With GPS user, avid long-distance cyclist, and recent transplant from New York City to the Catskill Mountains.

Where can you get isolation, killer climbs, beautiful scenery, and polite drivers, all within a few hours of New York city? The answer, of course, is the Catskill Mountains, easily accessible by a short 1.5-hour train ride from Grand Central Station.

On September 17, 2012, I finally left New York City behind and moved to Olivebridge, New York, nestled neatly between the Catskills and the Shawangunk ridge. I had been riding up here for years, taking the train from Grand Central and then leaving from Poughkeepsie. I always had this notion that someday I’d live here. Well, now I’m here in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, and this is the view from my window.

Living in the city had its benefits and drawbacks. The benefit, of course, was that I always had someone to ride with. The drawbacks? I lived all the way downtown, so a trip out of the city involved 10 miles on the west side bike path, followed by the squeeze over the George Washington Bridge, and then miles of suburbia before getting to the good stuff. 9W, as always, was crowded with cyclists, and for good reason—it is the only decent way out of the city.

I’ve had a chance to ride most everywhere in the Tristate area and beyond, and—take it from me—the Catskills/Shawangunk area contains some of the best riding to be found in three states, and perhaps anywhere in the US. All of it accessible by train from New York City. I mean, where else within reasonable reach of the city are you going to get roads like this:

Or this:

Or scenery like this:

And did I mention we’ve got miles and miles of gravel?

We’ve also got some of the steepest, longest climbs in 5 states. Legend has it that one, called Platte Clove Road, caused pros to get off their bikes and walk. I’m talking about extended 22% grades, and there are many more like it. The rewards for surviving these climbs are tremendous:

In terms of traffic, let me put it this way: I went for a 75-mile ride last weekend, and except for a brief 1-mile section on a busier road, I saw maybe 10 cars all day.

The only thing missing? My fellow cyclists.

In the roughly 7 months I’ve lived here, I’ve had only a few sightings of other cyclists. Part of that, perhaps, is because I ride throughout the winter, whereas most people have more sense and pack it in when the weather gets cold. Still, cyclists are few and far between. Being unfamiliar with the area, I used Ride With GPS to plot dozens of 50- to 100-mile routes, which I subsequently explored thoroughly. And since I created all those routes, I thought it would be a great thing to share.

That’s when I decided to start a blog. It’s called Riding the Catskills, and it can be found here. Its purpose is to provide guidance on the best rides in the Catskills and Shawangunk ridge region, including where to start, where to refill your water bottles and eat, and what to avoid, and it includes Ride With GPS routes to take some of the guesswork out of riding in a new area (although I’d encourage you to explore). I also talk about my bikes, post product reviews, and an occasional pet picture, although I try to limit the latter to the worst part of the winter when I’m stuck inside.

If you visit my blog, I’d recommend starting by clicking on the tag “Worth the Trip.” I’ve written up the eight biggest climbs in the Catskills here, again, complete with Ride With GPS routes. In addition, I’ve posted a spring route roundup here with multiple routes that range from easy, relatively flat 50-milers that can be completed even by inexperienced cyclists to 100-mile+ rides that will challenge even the most experienced. Of course, there’s much more beyond these few posts, including detailed ride reports and reviews. If you want to skip the reading and go right to the routes, my Ride With GPS routes are here. Using a Garmin—or at the very least a detailed cue sheet—is absolutely critical out here, as many of the best roads are unmarked.

If you’re a New York area rider, you owe it to yourself to skip 9W one weekend (or every weekend) and come out to Ulster county for a ride that will make the Bear Mountain run seem…well…kind of sad (trust me, I did it approximately one million times). It’s easy to get here by train, and when you look at it rationally, how many junk miles and how much time do you put in just getting out of suburbia? Take that time, grab your Garmin, ride to Grand Central, and get on a train!

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Enable Email+Password Login

2013-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

If you initially signed up for your ridewithgps.com account using facebook, it is a good idea to edit your ridewithgps profile and add an email address plus password as a backup method of logging in. When you register through facebook, we often do not get a valid email address, and no actual password is stored on our servers. This means you will be unable to use your ridewithgps.com account with third party mobile apps, and you might miss out on important site updates via our newsletter. Adding an email address and password is simple, watch this quick video to learn how:

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Cue Sheet, A Great Android App For Navigation

2013-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

One of our long time users, Geoff Matrangola, grew tired of waiting for an Android bike navigation app. For the last two years he has been tinkering with his app Cue Sheet, which provides turn guidance for pre-planned routes using the ridewithgps.com route planner. This latest update provides automatic cue advancement, many bug fixes and an updated UI. Additionally, the latest release has a premium voice guidance package available for $4.

Cue Sheet is easily the best turn guidance app for Android and using it is simple if you already have a Ride With GPS account. If you have an account on ridewithgps.com but signed up through facebook, you'll need to enabled email/password based login to the site. Instructions for doing so can be found here: Enabling email/password login. Once you install the app and input your ridewithgps email+password, you'll get a list of all your pre-planned routes from your account. Simply draw a new route using your computer, then jump on the app and refresh the route listing to see your most recent map listed.

Download Cue Sheet here

Geoff appreciates bug reports and suggestions, which can be made through at the Google Group for Cue Sheet.

We recommend picking up the pro-version of the app, available as an in-app purchase. It enables voice activated turn guidance and is currently on sale at an introductory $4 price.

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Screencast: Generating a Cue Sheet for a Trip

2013-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

Step-by-Step Instructions on how to create a cue sheet from a pre-existing trip.

Open up the trip page, then click the "Copy to my account" link in the right sidebar.
Click the link to the new route, then click the Edit link when the route view page loads.
In the right sidebar, select Add/Remove Control Points.
Click along the route, on the blue ball that follows the mouse, and add points to your route.
Grab and Snap the route back into place between Control Points. Cues will be generated for the section being 'snapped' to the road.
Save

Tips: The more you zoom in the more control you'll have, and as always be careful to not click on intersections.

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Screencast: Splitting Up a Route

2013-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

Step-by-Step Instructions on how to split up a route.

If the route isn't associated with your acount, copy it to your account.
Edit route
Add/Remove Control Points. Remove control points that aren't necessary and add control points where you want to chop the route.
Add/Remove any additiona POI's you want.
Save the Route, and Update
Click "Undo" until you remove the route back to your first POI.
Save the route again as a New Route
Continue mapping
Refresh and then continue to click "Undo" until you get to the next control point.
Repeat until you split the original route into as many smaller routes that you want.

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I Could Have Gone Harder

2013-03-20T00:00:00-07:00

After last weeks post on Getting Ready For A Century, I decided to talk to a friend of mine who is a coach about mentally preparing for an event. Below is what he had to say.

About a month ago American super runner Galen Rupp set the second fastest American time in the indoor mile at 3:50:92, a second off of Bernard Lagat's record. This was the fifth fastest mile ever in the world and just last week set the new American indoor 3,000 meter record. Galen, by the way, also won the silver medal in the 10,000 meters in London last summer. You're probably asking what this has to do with cycling, I'll get to that.

I've been racing primarily triathlons and running races the past 9 years with an occasional bike race lightly sprinkled in, both here in the states and in Italy. In those years of racing, there have been several standout events where I can vividly remember being in absolute physical agony trying to beat someone to the finish or meet a personal goal. In my case, more often than not, this seems to happen in the final miles of the run. Without getting into a long explanation of why, I'll just say that I'm proportionately better on the bike than the swim or run. Trying to maximize my performance with a power meter against fellow age group three-sport competitors on the bike is what I usually aim for.

In 2010 I raced a sprint distance triathlon in Florida against one of my best friends who is also an excellent three-sport athlete. I remember my pre-race plan and even my recorded normalized power on the bike from that day. He's about seven inches taller (thus a great swimmer), so my plan in the swim was to attempt to draft right behind him (totally legal and sometimes encouraged in triathlon). Surprisingly, I was able to get out of the water seconds behind him then quickly chase him down getting out onto the bike course. After passing him on the bike, I kept the effort high and put some good time on him starting out onto the run. It was on the turnaround on the five kilometer run that I knew I was on borrowed time and had to push harder than ever to hold him off. As we got closer to the finish line he caught up to me with about half mile to go and stuck to me like glue. We both put small but seemingly futile surges to try to drop the other. I was in a deep dark painful place with funky abdominal noises happening and the noises of the spectators in the finishing shoot up ahead. Surprisingly, he seemed to slow for a brief moment so I put one last hard surge in - it was a bad decision. In an instant, remnants of my pre-race gel, water and stomach acid came up into my esophagus and up and out of my mouth with about 100 yards to go. Was I at my so called limit for too long? I hit the ground on my knees and kept barfing, he passed me mumbling something in concern. I got back up and tried to chase him down, but repeated the scene surrounded by friends and innocent bystanders. I could see the finish line...

My friend ended up beating me to the line in that race. To this day we joke about the experience and cherish the memory, both good and gross. For most of us, suffering is an essential part of the sport of cycling, at least at dire moments of chasing a breakaway, surf dogging with friends, individual time trials or even sprint finishes. Achieving personal growth in our sport without some intense moments of discomfort is not as satisfying or interesting.

Last summer I, like you, watched the Tour de France. Usually for me, this is done when in Italy with a friend or two after eating the typical lunch and lieu of having a siesta. We watch in real time, so it really heats up around 2-4 pm. I remember a french rider, Thomas Voeckler, he was in the yellow jersey for over a week. He tore himself inside out trying to stay at the top into the big climbing stages but inevitably couldn't keep muscling his way to the win. After all, it's more than just pure guts that allows you to win here. My friends in Italy and I joke about Voeckler every year, as he has an almost annoying looking painful grin. We even at times mimic his face when doing group rides. However, I must give him credit for his ability to hurt and motivate his country.

So, how often do you say "I could have gone harder" after a hard effort, race or fun town line sprint? If you say it often, why? Is it because you realize you had more in the so-called tank? Maybe a better move could have opened up a cleaner line to the finish? It's easy to say, "I could have gone harder," once it's over.

Over the years I've become more interested in the role of the brain in sport. As a coach, I feel it can only help the overall goals of an athlete. It's second nature to take our mind for granted during intense moments of physical exertion and our mind doesn't receive as much recognition as it should. We can set, for example, a pre-specified power range for a time trial, but it's the empirical sensations of pain or joy that are regulated by our brain. The signs of discomfort are registered between our ears - not in our muscles. Pushing our physical boundaries alone is only part of the picture to achieve our goals. Over the years I've become a believer that there's more to fatigue than just mechanical failure of the body and that our brains could have more involvement in that process to regulate balance and act as a buffer to protect our bodies.

Two people that have sparked my interest in this area, are the sometimes controversial Tim Noakes and his Central Governor Theory and author and coach Matt Fitzgerald. Not everyone may agree with their view but I feel there's more to be learned about athletic performance than just physical stress, recovery and adaptation. In order to be a great athlete we need to manipulate our thinking, not just our muscles. We can to a point, once trained, override some of that discomfort and achieve new levels of athletic performance without jeopardizing our well being.

Back to Galen Rupp. He didn't believe he was ready for the indoor mile, as his coach Alberto Salazar told him to enter only three weeks prior. In his post race interview he was asked about how it went. During the final laps he was unable to hear his coach give him his splits due to the fact of the insanely loud cheers from the crowd, nor did he realize how close he was to the record. He was both elated and surprised at the finish. Was the atmosphere such that it played a distracting role in Galen's amazing performance for his brain to override his physical pain a bit? You be the judge.

After your next key event or breakthrough workout, take some time to reflect and ask yourself if you could have gone harder; such as my experience racing against my friend, Thomas Voeckler powering his way to hold on to the yellow jersey, Rupp's super fast mile. Was the risk of more discomfort worth the level of reward? This is individual, but I feel once you learn more about the role of the mind in sport performance the outcomes will be much more satisfying and interesting.

If you really want to feel the energy of Rupp's run and let it push you in select moments of mindful discomfort: watch the race here.

A little bit about Marco

Sports and clinical massage therapy background. Multisport coach since 2008. Certified Youth & Junior Triathlon Coach. Swim Coach at Lakeshore Athletic Club. Mentored under Bob Seebohar. Qualified and raced in two Ironman 70.3 World Championships. Qualified for two Age Group Nationals and Olympic Distance Worlds.

Feel free to email Marco regarding coaching. We invite you to comment below regarding I Could Have Gone Harder.

Getting Ready For A Century

2013-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

Day light savings is here, the days are getting longer, and the rides are starting to stretch out. With spring rapidly approaching we are creeping close to event season. A fair of amount of you will be doing some sort of cycling event this summer, so we reached out to our friend Thom Kneeland to ask for his advice on preparing for a century. Here's his top 8 tips on making certain you and your bike are ready for the challenge.

Choose the century wisely. You’re going to want to check out the route to make certain you’re up for the task at hand. A 100 miles through the heart of the Rocky Mountains is certainly majestic, but if you are a flatlander, you might not be prepared for the amount of climbing that there will be. A pan flat century has it’s own difficulties. You are going to be pedaling the entire time. The flip side to climbing hill is that at some point you get to come down them and that means coasting. Not much coasting when the biggest elevation gain and loss is a freeway overpass. Plus, flat rides are often affected by winds and if you have to do the last 50 miles of a century into a headwind, it’s like climbing the invisible hill that never ends.
Use your computer for something other than FaceBook and Twitter and do a little research on how well the ride is supported. You want lots of rest stops well stocked with all sorts of goodies treats. Is the course well marked? What’s the after ride meal like? These are all things that will have a very memorable impact on your century.
Know the route as best as you can. Most rides provide maps, corner markings, and people to assist you at all the aid stations. Knowing your route is key. Not much will shut a rider down like thinking you just have to be almost done and then finding out there’s still one more climb and 25 miles to go. If you have the elevation profile, you won’t get tricked on climbs by the false summits. Also, you can always figure out a shortcut if needed. No one is getting a pro contract because the suffered through a century and if shaving off 12 miles keeps your spouse from mutinying during the ride, then that’s a smart time to pack it in early.
Training is good. You should do some. Ride enough so that after you do the century, you don’t throw your bike into the garage and leave it there for a month or until the idea of sitting on a bike seat no longer fills you with dread. You can get very specific in your training and hire coaches and download workouts, but a good rule of thumb is that you should be able to do some rides that are at least twice as long in duration than your regular rides and be okay afterwards. If your body falls apart during a 3 hour ride, it will fail during the century.
Wear good clothes. There’s a reason that some bike shorts cost as much as they do. You get what you pay for in chamois quality. Your undercarriage is worth the investment. Use a chamois creme. They work very well at keeping anything important from getting chafed. You’re gonna sweat and that sweat dries out leaving a nice, salty, abrasive that does wonders at irritating, so do what you should never do at a car dealer and pay for the undercoating. Oh BTW, don’t wear underwear under your shorts. It’s like hiking with a wrinkle in you socks, except if you think a blister is bad on your heel, wait until you get one down there. Not good. Trust me.
Make certain your bike is working and safe to ride. Don’t try and squeeze one more ride out of some worn out tires. New ones will ride smoother and easier, plus if you have a blowout and crash taking someone with you, you’re gonna ruin someone else’s day. Remember that you aren’t out there by yourself.
A common refrain of mechanical advice is to never do anything to your bike right before you do a big or important ride. This holds true for many things, like I would never recommend a new seat the night before or a different shoe/cleat set up. However, bikes aren’t mystery machines ruled by witchcraft and voodoo, so if your bike isn’t shifting right on your after work rides, by all means get it down to your local shop and let them fix it. Pros who make their living racing bikes get recently worked on steeds all the time. Do you think they go into the Tour de France with a bike that hasn’t been lubed in 3 months and hope for the best? No. What’s most important is you have a bike that functions like it should, meaning it shifts smoothly through all the available gears, brakes are adjusted with plenty of brake pad material, handlebar tape is intact and not sloughing off, cables are smooth and unfrayed, tires are round, in good shape with no cuts, and plenty of rubber, and your wheels are true and tensioned. If your bike needs fixing, fix it and fix it properly. You’re going to be doing a ride with a few hundred other people and you’re going to have to sign a waiver stating that you and your bike are ready to go, so you have a responsibility to see that you are.
Most importantly when it comes to doing a century, is go into it with clear intentions of what you want to get out of it. If you just want to ride a hundred miles to see if you can, don’t have expectations of sitting in a fast group and trading pulls all day. Conversely, if you need to crack the 5 hour time, don’t go the the century with friends who are looking for an all day social ride. And always know when to call it a day if there’s an early out option.

We hope that these tips help you when selecting and preparing for your summer events. You can follow Thom on Twitter and Facebook, and check out his website here. We invite you to comment below regarding Getting Ready For A Century.

Screencast: Route Embed

2013-03-07T00:00:00-08:00

Here's an informative screencast on how to embed a route from Ride With GPS in your blog, website, and forum.

Here's an example of an embeded route. Check it out and then click here to get started embeding your first route.

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Activity Center - Advanced Filtering and Tagging

2013-03-07T00:00:00-08:00

We just released some great new additions to the Activity Center, one of our flagship premium account features that lets you explore and manage all of your ride/activity data with ease.

Advanced Filtering

Now that we've built out our advanced filtering tool, you can explore your data in new ways.

Here are some examples of what you can do:

Graph the time you spent commuting this year.
See all the times you've climbed 5k feet or more in 2012.
Get a list of all 30-40 mile rides you've ever recorded.

These queries are so simple now that it's actually fun to explore and organize years of ride data!

Bulk Tagging

Find the rides you want to group, select them, and add tags. It's fast and straightforward to get your rides organized exactly how you want.

Graph what you want

I wanted a graph of all my commutes in 2010. No problem. Visualizing exactly what you want to see is so easy you'll actually do it.

Video Walkthrough

Interested to see how this all works? Check out this short video below where I walk through advanced filtering and tagging in Activity Center.

Have any questions or ideas for us? We invite you to comment below regarding Activity Center - Advanced Filtering and Tagging. Thanks for reading!

Comp Wrap Up: Cold-as-Hell Challenge

2013-03-06T00:00:00-08:00

The Cold-as-Hell challenge proved to be our hardest individual challenge to date. The weather was miserable for most, and the distance goals were lofty. However, in spite of the difficulty, it was a huge success! Not only are the sheer numbers of rides, hours, and miles impressive but the pictures that participants shared made this event come to life more than any of the others we have put on.

The feedback we receive from participants of these challenges is extremely positive.

I had entirely too much fun. This was first time ever riding in the snow, thanks to the Cold as Hell Challenge and thanks to Michigan actually having winter this year. I had a heart attack a couple of years ago, so I'm highly committed to having fun staying fit. - Dan Spangler

Here's how awesome the participants are

140 Mile Challenge Recap

350 Mile Challenge Recap

840 Mile Challenge Recap

First, we'd like to highlight our two 840-mile finishers and one participant who surprised us all. 840 miles in two weeks is incredibly ambitious, and to make it across the finish line is a huge accomplishment. If you were paying attention to the leaderboards toward the end of this challenge, you would have seen these two gentlemen neck-and-neck for the final week: Jeffrey Timm completed with 845.5 miles, in 52.1 hours. Congratulations Jeffrey on inching out that finish, winning by only 2.5 miles! Jeffrey is no stranger to putting in big miles in our challenges, completing 2040.5 miles in our Tour de France challenge last summer. Nico completed with 843 miles, coming in at only 46.6 hours. Incredible to see another finisher in this difficult challenge. Great work! We were watching you and Jeffrey swapping spots toward the end. While we were watching the 840-mile contenders to see who would take it, pgsky, who entered the 350-mile challenge, snuck right by both our 840-mile finishers and completed with an inspiring 875.9 miles in 58 hours.

Lottery Winners

140 Mile Challenge: Fuuga, John Gavin, and Chris D.

350 Mile Challenge: tom2407, bawbag, and James Harrison.

840 Mile Challenge: We'd like to recognize the two runners-up in this challenge, for giving it a serious shot: Richard Church with 569.3 miles in 38.6 hours, and Ian Hoogendam with 441.2 miles in 26.6 hours. Congratulations to both of you! Knocking down that many miles is no small feat.

Honorable Mentions

Carolyn is the 140 Mile Challenge finisher with the most rides; 28 rides in total.

Russell Carson is the 140 Mile Challenge finisher with the least rides; 2 rides in total.

pgsky completed the 350 Mile Challenge with the most hours. A total of 58hrs

aejc completed the 350 Mile Challenge with the fewest hours. A total 21hrs

Dan Spangler is honorable mention for the most shared photos during the challenge!

Lottery winners and honorable mentions will all receive a Ride With GPS free water bottle and T-shirt. We will be contacting each individually.

Photos

Thank you to all who participated and took the time to share photos!

We invite you to comment below regarding Comp Wrap Up: Cold-as-Hell Challenge, and share any fun stories you might have from participating in the challenge.

March 1st Update

2013-03-01T00:00:00-08:00

The first couple months of 2013 have been especially busy for us here at Ride With GPS HQ. We've been focused on launching a lot of new features, as well as updating and resolving some outstanding issues. In February we turned our attention to the Route Planner.

We'd like to announce that all known route planner bugs have been resolved.

As many of you know, the route planner has had a handful of "difficult to reproduce" issues. Drag this, drop that, add a control point, and now your elevation profile has a huge spike, or your route is disconnected, or worse. We are extremely pleased to report that after putting our heads together and taking a step back, we were able to fix some fundamental flaws with the route planner which allowed us to resolve every bug we were aware of. For all the details, check out the notes under 2.13.0 in our changelog

We believe the route planner is rock solid now, and want it to stay that way. Can you still break the route planner? Let us know how to reproduce the bug and we'll send you a Ride with GPS water bottle to keep you hydrated on your next ride - just mention this newsletter.

As we look ahead to March, we will be focusing on improving the Activity Center for Premium members, bring more features to Groups, and more features to Events.

We invite you to comment below regarding March 1st Update.

Winter Bike Commuting

2013-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

The date is February 27th which means: I'm cold! The chill comes on every winter at some point in late February, and once it happens I can never seem to shake it. Here's how the story goes:

There are three stages of winter and they break down like this:

Early Winter: November and December
Mid Winter: January
Late Winter: February and March

Winter starts and life is easy during this timeframe I call "Early Winter." The cold mornings and chilly evenings are met with eager anticipation after a long hot summer. The leg-warmers, arm-warmers, vest, wind jacket, long sleeve jersey, thermal jacket are all dug out of the closet and stand ready for whatever mother nature decides to throw at me. However, the temperature doesn't really affect me much. In November and December I can be fine for my commute in approximately 30 degrees with leg-warmers, arm-warmers, a vest, and a cap.

Mid winter sneaks up and life begins to change. One of the more notable changes is the wardrobe, and in particular, the fact that items are added to it. The wool socks, neck gator, shoe covers, and lobster gloves now make their way into the rotation as do the thermal tights. Also at this point of the season, preparation time for commuting, or riding outside at all, starts to take longer and longer to the point where sometimes I think I spend more time getting dressed and undressed than I do riding.

Late winter might best be described as having a splinter that is so deep you can't remove it. There's a moment, when on a ride the wind will cut through my layers and chill me to the bone. From this point on logic and reason are dismissed from the wardrobe selection process and instead I just wear every piece of warm clothing I own, because, well, it's cold and dark out. At this point, the temperature that in "Early Winter" didn't even warrant a long sleeve jersey now deserves a thermal jacket and tights.

Usually in late winter I can also feel the drain of the winter bike commute mentally as my decision making on and off the bike diminish. Just last week I was riding to the office on a cold morning after a snow storm, and instead of riding the snow bike (the obvious bike to ride) I convinced myself that the road bike was adequate for the conditions. I made it out the snow covered driveway, and down the snow packed alley to the ice skating rink that is called "the street" and within 100ft I was reminded of why I wear a helmet. Special note: there's nothing like sliding down an icy street on your backside to start your day off right!

I wouldn't trade or stop bike commuting for anything, so luckily there is a positive aspect of the "Late Winter Chill" and that is, it means SPRING is right around the corner. Soon the afternoons will be filled with warm rides that wont require leg-warmers, arm-warmers, caps, or any other similar layers. The moral of the story is, don't let old man winter get you down!

Do you have any similar winter riding or commuting experiences? We invite you to comment below regarding Winter Bike Commuting.

Product Review: Bar fly

2013-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

The Garmin mount system has historically sucked. I didn't like it for the 305 or the 705 when they were a zip-tie system, and I liked it even less when they switched to the pseudo rubber-band system with the 500 and 800. I have seen more than one rider lose their computer hitting a bump during a race. Not cool! Due to my frustration with the standard Garmin mounts, I was excited to get my hands on a Bar Fly mount from Tate Labs.

Pros:

Better position for viewing the display: This is one of those situations where you don't realize how bad something was until it changes. The Bar Fly puts your computer in a much more natural viewing space than when it's on your stem. Also, since you can adjust the angle of the Bar Fly you can make sure that you have the right viewing angle for your riding position. This is not possible when the unit is mounted to your stem.
More Secure Mount: The bolt on Bar Fly isn't going anywhere. The mount, once attached is solidly in place. I like the fact that as I ride over rough terrain the mount doesn't deviate from it's desired position. This is a big improvement from the standard Garmin mount.
More Secure GPS Bracket: The first time I attached my Garmin 800 to the Bar Fly I wasn't actually sure that the Garmin was going to fit it was so tight. Now after a couple months of heavy use, the connection between the two still feels as solid as it did on day one. I have gained a lot of confidence in the Bar Fly, and I trust that my Garmin isn't going to fall off my bike.

Cons:

Material: The polycarbonate material does not feel as strong as I would like.
Cost: $40.00 is a challenging justification for a piece of 'plastic'.

Final Thoughts
I received my Bar Fly as a Birthday present. Before using it I could not justify the additional $40 purchase. Now that I have been using it for a couple months I really can't imagine not having it. I think that the added security it provides outweighs the cost. Lets face it, if I lose my Garmin it's going to cost me more than $40 to replace it. There are a few more options similar to the Bar Fly that are out on the market now, and that is helping the cost come down to a more reasonable price. As of this writing, you can get a Bar Fly on Competitive Cyclist on sale for $25.

Lastly, this is a great gift idea!

If you have any questions about Product Review: Bar fly email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Cold-as-Hell February Challenge!

2013-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

February is finally here, which means spring is just around the corner. Join us in our winter base mile competition for some encouragement in getting your season started early. By the end of the challenge you will have established a solid base, and calves, to carry you through a spring full of riding. During the competition you can post your rides to twitter using the hashtag #coldmiles. Motivate your fellow competitors as well by tweeting the photos you take along the way!

Sign Up Here Cold-as-Hell Challenge!

Event Details

When: Friday, February 15th - Thursday, February 28th

Options #1 - 140 miles (equivalent to 10 mi/day)
Options #2 - 350 miles (equivalent to 25 mi/day)
Options #3 - 840 miles (equivalent to 60 mi/day)

Where: Everywhere, just bring your GPS unit or mobile phone!

Why: Base, base, and more base

Sign Up Here for the Cold-as-Hell Challenge!

By completing your respective challenge, you will be entered into a lottery where prize winners will be selected randomly! Each challenge will have its own prizes awarded, so push yourself in a more difficult challenge to increase your odds. As usual, we will also award prizes to some noteworthy competitors based on our own criteria.

If you have any questions about Cold-as-Hell February Challenge! email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Activity Widget

2013-01-29T00:00:00-08:00

We are proud to release an all new Ride With GPS feature, the Activity Widget! Members can now embed this widget in their own site to display a list of their recent activities for either their personal account, or a group they are a part of. Optionally, the widget can also include weekly, monthly, and year to date totals. The Activity Widget is customizable with multiple options for how much data can be displayed.

How to setup your Activity Widget:

Step 1. Navigate to your Profile Settings

Step 2. In the upper right corner select "Manage Widgets"

Step 3. On the left-hand side of this page you can "Configure Your Widget"

Configure Your Widget Notes:

Choose display units
Choose display account
Chose how many recent activities to display
Chose summary stats
Set widget width

Step 4. On the right-hand side of this page you can preview the widget to make sure it looks good before you embed it into your website.

Step 5. Once you're happy with how the widget looks you can copy & paste the code in section 3, which is below the preview on the right-hand side of the page.

See the Activity Widget in action on the Sonicboom Racing website.

We think that this feature will prove to be valuable for use on personal websites and blogs, team and clubs websites, as well as for coaches on their websites.

Get started setting up your Activity Widget Now!

Additionally, the work that we have put into this feature has allowed us to turn our attention to our map embed features, and we will be looking to update those embeds very soon. Hint: multiple route embed for personal, group, and event accounts.

If you have any questions about Site Feature: Activity Widget email us at info@ridewithgps.com

To Wear Or Not to Wear

2013-01-22T00:00:00-08:00

In the ancient days of lore there were no shields to defend soldiers in battle. Then one day, a brilliant man or women realized that they could block an incoming blow if they carried around a piece of wood and the shield was born. Throughout centuries the shield was perfected and many lives were saved. We can extend this analogy to the modern cyclist, with his helmet being the shield.

Before moving to Colorado in 2011, the only riders I was used to seeing sans helmet were around town commuters. However, once I moved to Colorado that all changed. I was shocked to see so many cyclists riding with naked heads. It has really made me think about the reasons people choose to ride without proper safety gear.

Back in the old days of bike racing, racers didn't wear helmets. As technology progressed and they became lighter, more aerodynamic and most importantly more comfortable, adoption has soared. This brings me to my main point: there is no valid reason to not wear a modern helmet. The main argument I've heard against them is weight. Well, they are so ridiculously light now the argument doesn't hold water. Another reason I've heard is "I'm just not use to wearing one", which can be immediately shot down by pointing out all the other tech on the persons bike they have had to get used to.

I don't really fault or have issue with someone not wearing one when they ride by themselves. However, if someone showed up helmetless to a group or team ride that I was leading I would not let them participate. It's not safe nor is it fair to anyone else on the ride because if something happens to that person then the entire group has to deal with it. No ride leader wants to think "if only I had not let them ride without a helmet" for the rest of their days.

The big question I keep coming back to is, why wouldn't you wear a helmet? An explanation that makes sense to me is bravado. You just think your too cool. However, we live in a society where we all have the freedom to make our own decisions, and each person can decide for themselves if wearing a helmet is what they want to do.

Yes, it's true they may not save your life, but it dramatically increases your chances of surviving the majority of crashes. I've crashed at 40+ mph in a group of 50+ riders and I can tell you one emphatic take away I have from that experience, I will never ride my bike without my helmet. And every time I see someone riding along without one I will always ask myself, why?

If you have any questions about To Wear Or Not to Wear email us at info@ridewithgps.com

What they don't tell you when you decide to become a bike racer

2013-01-15T00:00:00-08:00

One indisputable fact of racing is that someone always wins, and in the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, "If you ain't first, yer last". New racers can be heavily influenced by the preconceived notion they can win bike races solely because they've watched them and thought, "I can do that!" It's true that some people can in fact do that. However, the majority of people who race bikes have never won a race and probably never will. They've come to terms with that truth, but still go out to the battlefield because it's what they love to do, and because there's always a chance they could win!

There are a lot of things about racing that people don't tell you when you decide to get into the sport. One of these helpful tips is that you'll finish dead last more times than you will win. Which is to say, you will do well to ever win a race. Finishing off the back, in the groupetto, or DFL is a very real part of bike racing. It's something you have to either learn how to cope with, handle, or embrace, or you won't be a good racer.

I believe this is the exact reason why no one tells you that you'll finish off the back more times than you'll win. For them it's so much a part of the process and experience that it never occurs to them that you might even for the slightest second think that you're going to go out and ride everyone off your wheel and win a race. Instead, they are excited to have someone else to race and ride with, so they encourage and let the bike racing do the humbling.

If you have any questions about What they don't tell you when you decide to become a bike racer email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Quick Tip: The when, how, and what for lubing

2013-01-09T00:00:00-08:00

Last week I wrote a quick tip post on how to wash your bike when you don't have a hose. The post sparked some great conversation about the importance of lubing your bike. I thought this would be a great opportunity for a follow up piece, and decided to shed some light on the topic by getting a professional opinion from a long time bike mechanic and friend, Thom Kneeland.

Here's what he had to say on the topic:

When it comes to lubes, there are many beliefs, superstitions, processes, "secret" tricks that exist. Working at, then managing, then owning my own shop, I can tell you that every customer is looking for the magical elixir that allows them to sloppily apply lube whenever they like, however much they want, and have it last forever, run cleanly with zero maintenance, and cost nothing or as close to it as possible. Unfortunately nothing like that exists. Whenever people say they have found the perfect lube and it sounds too good to be true, it is. Most people that have success with any alternative lube system usually achieve their success by finally having a system they follow that provides better results than their previous lack of effort and thought they put into maintaining their chain. It's like dieting. Most people do okay with whatever fad diet that is out there because they are finally paying attention to what actually goes into their body and that alone produces results, albeit short lived and sometimes to harmful effect.

Chains are made up of links, pins, and rollers. That's it. The only part that needs lubrication is the space inside the rollers that the pins reside in. Nothing else. Motorcycles use o-ring not to seal out contaminates, but to seal in lube. Most people use too much lube, too often and at the wrong time and without wiping it off as much as possible after lubing.

All lubes (heavy, winter, ATB, wet, road, dry, wax, light, whatever) are basically made up of two main components. One is the actual lube. The other is an evaporative carrier. The evaporative carrier essentially thins the lubricant and allows it to penetrate into the rollers and pins and between any and all nooks and crannies. The evaporative carrier then does its job (evaporates) and leaves the lube to do it's job. Heavier lubes use more lubricant and less carrier. Lighter lubes use more carrier and less lube. Whatever lube you use, the evaporative carrier needs time to dry up and go away, or else it keeps the lube in too thin a state and doesn't allow it to stay in the places it needs to live. pedaling will force the lube to the outer portions of the chain and once there, two things will happen. One is the inner parts of the chain will dry out faster and need to more frequent lubing. Two the now wet with lube outer parts will attract dirt and grime and become the black disgusting messes you see. One more thing about grime on the outside of the chain. A lot of riders will say, "So what? As long as my chain has lube on it, I don't care if it's dirty." Well, all that oily gunk on the outside of the chain does a couple things. It acts as a great cutting compound, wearing your drivetrain components much faster than they should. It also pulls any lube inside the chain to the out side, where it doesn't do any good. Think of throwing kitty litter on an oil spill. It soaks up the oil on the driveway, and not just the surface stuff, but oil down in the concrete. Dirt on outside of the chain works the same way.

This is where I always get someone bringing up the Spring Classics bikes, where the mechanics seal in a lubed chain with grease. "They don't care about a black, oily mess of a chain, then why should I?" Because those chains only have to work one day and then they are thrown away. As a bike shop owner, I'd gladly do that for any customer, but I don't think any of them want to pay that much.

Chain lube works best when applied AFTER a ride, to a clean chain. You don't have to remove it and soak it in solvent if you do your chain lubing this way. I never do anything to clean my chain other than run it through a rag after a ride for a few pedal revolutions and my chains are clean and quiet. Shift the bike into the big ring and the small cog. Now put one drop per roller on the chain. Run the chain around a few times after doing so and then give it another wipe with your rag. Thats it. If you need pictures, I'll send you some of my mountain bike after a full season of OBRA mtb racing and my cross bike after a full season of cross. Also, the time to lube a chain that hasn't been washed is whenever you hear it. It can look dry and even feel dry, but if it doesn't sound dry, then don't lube it. If you wash a bike with soap and water (like Dawn, or something that cuts grease) or it gets the pro mechanic pressure wash, then let it dry and lube it then. Otherwise, don't sweat it.

The lube manufacturers bank on riders forgetting to deal with their bike until right before they ride and so they always market chain lubes as super clean, or self cleaning, or shit like that. All that means is the lube falls off the chain easier, taking the dirt with it. Wax is the best at falling off a chain, that's why so many riders swear by it. It does actually kinda clean the chain as you ride. It also does a pretty crappy job of lubing. The good ones use the wax in the evaporative carrier and if you apply it after your ride, the wax will stay on the outside of the chain. If you put it on before your ride, all the lube and wax will fling off your chain, leaving it clean, but squeaky and you'll have a waxy build up all over your bike, chainrings, pulleys, and derailleurs.

Pledge is a cheap, over the counter, aerosol form of wax based lubes with a pretty fast acting evaporative. It also, like all aerosols, goes everywhere and is really good at messing up disc brakes and pads. It's a dry climate's answer to the PNW's home brew lubes of motor oil cut with mineral oil.

I like a heavier lube and my favorite is the Motorex Wet. I use it on everything and all over Oregon's climates and soils without ever changing my process. It lasted through a wet 3hrs of the Mudslinger which was the wettest, muddiest mtb race I've ever done and it lasted through all the dry, dusty Bend mtb races. No squeaks. But ultimately, you could use most anything. The lighter stuff won't last as long as the wet and the wax ones are basically just light lube with a built in feel good for the dust. I think they are pretty much snake oil, but if you have a system that works for you because you adhere to it, then by all means, go ahead. Just don't expect to walk into the dollar store and walk out with a lemon scented genie in a bottle that will cure all your chain woes. Cleaning and lubing a chain is just like dealing with your bathroom. Do it often and it's easy and doesn't take long. Let it go and it's a nasty job.

- Thom

After reading Thom's thoughts I realized that I am currently or have been guilty of most of what he described. Also, there's a lot more to this topic than I had previously considered and really good food for thought. I hope that it helps you with keeping your bike rolling smoothly and quietly!

You can find out more about Thom and his shop by checking out his website: Service Course Velo, and following him on Twitter at @SCVelo.

If you have any questions about Quick Tip: The when, how, and what for lubing email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Challenge Recap: Pre-Resolution

2013-01-07T00:00:00-08:00

The Pre-resolution Challenge is over and we've sorted through all the results. Despite the short, cold, holiday filled days everyone who participated in the Pre-resolution Challenge really put the rubber to the road. We are once again impressed by how much people are able to get out on their bikes, and we have some cool numbers to share with you from this challenge.

Challenge	Participants	Completed Challenge	Total Hours	Total Miles	Total Elevation Gain (feet)	Total Rides
10 Hour	160	70	1,536	17,760	698,029	922
20 Hour	151	68	3,734	36,340	1,593,108	1,385
35 Hour	80	39	2,830	32,719	1,391,260	979
Grand Totals	391	177	8,100	86,819	3,682,397	3,286

What a way to ride into the new year!

The honorable mentions from each tier of the challenge are:

Dean: Most miles in 10hr Challenge with 10 rides, 308.8mi, 17.9hrs
ErtKing: Fewest Rides to 20hrs with 5 rides, 298.1mi, 23.6hrs
bluefleet: Most hours overall with 39 rides, 1121.5mi, 72.4hrs! Wow!

The lottery winners from each tier of the challenge are:

10hr Challenge	20hrs Challenge	35hrs Challenge
Teresa Filleman	joe	Colin Campbell
Steve R	Ramón Torres	Rich Waldschmidt
Bob Brown	Blake	Merksy
Carl Green	Grandpa Steve	cmc

We want to again thank and commend everyone for participating in this challenge. We will be contacting the lottery winners and honorable mentions individually with their prize information.

Our next competition is set to start later this month, so keep your eyes open for that announcement!

If you have any questions about Challenge Recap: Pre-Resolution email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Quick Tip: Pressure Washing!

2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00

In some ways bicycles are a lot like cars. They require upkeep and, for the most part, they are neglected. There's no denying that one of the best things you can do as a car or bicycle owner is preventative maintenance. One of the things I have learned over the last 10 years of being a competitive triathlete and now cyclist is that the best thing you can do for preventative maintenance is wash your bike.

Washing your bike may seem like a basic and easy concept, but this is not always the case. Some mechanics recommend that you wash your bike after every ride, others say that just keeping your drive-train clean is what's most important. According to them, if you take 15 seconds after every ride to spin the chain through a rag you can dramatically increase the lifetime of your chain, cogs, and cassette--not to mention you'll have a smoother and quieter ride. However, what I found is that this is easier said than done.

There are plenty of limiting factors that can prevent someone from dedicating this type of care to their bike. One of those factors is obvious: time! For those of us who have a full time career, a competitive schedule, and a husband or wife and children, time is always going to be a precious commodity. It's almost always the first excuse we use to avoid taking better care of our bikes. However, there are other limiting factors that I didn't learn about until recently.

If you currently live in an apartment complex, one of the key tools that you need for washing your bike is not available--a hose! Not surprisingly, you need water and water pressure to be able to sufficiently clean a bike. The best and cheapest way around this conundrum is a 1 gallon pesticide sprayer.

I like the 1 gallon size because it's small enough to fit under a kitchen sink, and 1 gallon turns out to be the perfect amount of water to clean one to two bikes without having to refill. Another nice part about the sprayer is that you can fill it with super hot water, which on a cold winter day can be the difference between washing your bike and not. Since sprayers are so portable they're also easy to pack in the car for a race, ride, or bike trip. If I drive to the start of a mountain bike ride I don't leave home without the sprayer. I can ride through water and mud during the ride, and use the sprayer to clean off my bike, shoes, and clothes at the trail head when the ride is over.

Sprayers also super cheap. I bought mine at my local hardware store for around $10. As far as value per dollar spent, it's one of the best tools I have ever bought.

If you have any bike maintenance tips or if you have any questions about Quick Tip: Pressure Washing! email us at info@ridewithgps.com

January Google+ Hangout

2012-12-19T00:00:00-08:00

Back by popular demand in 2013 Google+ Hangouts!

We are excited to announce our first Google+ Hangout of the 2013 calendar. This first hangout will be on the topic of route creation. We have launched some new site features since our last hangout on this topic, so we want to go back over it again with you. The new features are super cool, so you're not going to want to miss this one!

Reserve your spot!

Date: 1/26/13
Time: 11am Pacific, 12pm Mountain, 2pm Eastern
Duration: 1hr
Presenter: Zack Ham
Topic: Route Creation - Out and Back, Reverse, Undo/Redo, and more!

Reserve your spot!

The way the hangouts will work is that the first 8 members to join the hangout when it starts will be able to interact with us through their webcam and mic. The rest of the people who join will be able to watch the Hangout live on Youtube and interact through the Hangout's chat feature. If you don't use Google Plus that's okay because you can watch live through Youtube!

If you have any questions about January Google+ Hangout email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Sponsoring Sonic Boom Racing

2012-12-18T00:00:00-08:00

We are excited to be sponsoring our first cycling team, Sonic Boom Racing p/b Lucky Pie Pizza & Taphouse. SBR is a community cycling team focused on developing Colorado riders. SBR team members range from competitive riders at the junior level to riders at the National Racing Calendar pro level, and has a place for riders at every stage of racing. SBR is committed to racing clean, promoting the sport of cycling, and mentoring young, talented cyclists.

This sponsorship is a great opportunity and we believe that it will help both Ride With GPS and Sonic Boom grow. It will allow us to work closely with a group of competitive cyclists who can test the site features in ways they really haven't been tested before. This will help us create more functional and appealing features for groups, clubs, teams, and events.

When asked about the sponsorship, Colby Ricker (Cat 1 SBR Rider) had this to say: "I'm really excited to have a forum to plan, review, and share the progress that we're making both as individual racers and a team."

We are excited to see how the 2013 season goes for the team riders. Don't forget to check out Sonic Boom's website, and be sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter!

If you have any questions about Sponsoring Sonic Boom Racing email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Wrapping Up A Great Year

2012-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

Looking back on 2012, we can't help but feel incredibly lucky for our Ride With GPS fans. Many kind reviews and word of mouth promotion propelled us to new traffic levels, leaving us feeling thankful for such a solid support base.

In 2012 we brought on two new employees, Travis Caldwell as social media and marketing coordinator, and Stefanie Sahl as our support and shipping specialist. Looking forward to 2013, we should have another developer on board which will help us quickly crank out new features and bug fixes.

2012 brought our first Challenges, allowing users to motivate themselves and others to stay fit and on top of their riding. We fully understand how easy it is to fall behind with a busy workweek and family life, so expect a series of attainable and enjoyable Challenges in 2013.

One of the more personally exciting events of the year was shipping the first runs of merchandise out to users. Our waterbottles and jerseys proved to be a bigger hit than we expected, leaving us planning another jersey print, this time in a more relaxed club fit. Hopefully we can get enough kits out there next year that we'll actually run into people wearing them while riding! Two word hint: matching bibs....

We can't do it without you! 2012 proved to be an amazing year, full of opportunities and great conversations with users. Looking back on the year and realizing how much we accomplished with your suggestions and support, with so little resources, we can hardly contain our excitement for 2013. Here's to a great New Year!

Happy Holidays,
Cullen, Zack, Stefanie and Travis

If you have any questions about Wrapping Up A Great Year email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Pre-Resolution Challenge!

2012-12-03T00:00:00-08:00

If you are in any way similar to us, you'll busily spend most of December eating some of the best food all year. Fight the holiday pounds and get a jump on your new years resolutions with our pre-resolution challenge! Starting on the 14th participants in this competition will battle the elements and short days in an effort to start the new year off rolling!

Sign Up Here for the Pre-Resolution Challenge!

Event Details:

Who: You!
What: Ride 10, 20, or 35 hours
When: Friday, December 14th - Tuesday, January 1st
Where: Everywhere, just bring your GPS unit or mobile phone!
Why: Get a head start on your 2013

Sign Up Here for the Pre-Resolution Challenge!

By completing your respective challenge, you will be entered into a lottery and be eligible for prizes! Each challenge will have its own prizes awarded, so push yourself in a more difficult challenge to increase your odds. As usual, we will also award prizes to some noteworthy competitors based on our own criteria.

Nasty weather this time of the year where you live? Trainer rides will be included and are encouraged.

Don't forget to take photos, they will appear on the competition page and will be included in a special photo contest portion of the event.

If you have any questions about Pre-Resolution Challenge! email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Route Planner Updates: Out-and-back, reverse, undo/redo, more!

2012-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

The route mapping tool is the cornerstone of the site and we are continually working to enhance it. Recently we released several new features for the route mapping tool, also we were able to fix a couple outstanding issues. Below are details:

New feature: Out-and-back

The Out-and-back feature regenerates comands based on the paramaters you set initally. for the directions one control point at a time, back to the start.

New feature: Reverse

Generates directions for your route reversed, one control point at a time.

Comprehensive undo/redo support.

Now you can undo your drag/drop operations! This works with cuesheet entries, POI, control points, drag/drop operations... everything!

Additional Highlights

Ability to add to cuesheet, and add control points, by clicking the elevation profile. If you need to add a custom cue or drag/edit an out-and-back route, it is now possible (we have further improvements planned, but this is a good stopgap for now). Drag/drop editing for OSM/RWGPS/OSMCycle maps fixed. Copied routes default to "private" now. That means they don't clutter search results any more! POI don't disappear anymore when you reload the route planner to restore an auto-saved route.

If you have any questions about "Route Planner Updates: Out-and-back, reverse, undo/redo, more!" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Announcement: Tour de Cure using Ride with GPS

2012-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

We are very excited to announce that Ride with GPS will be the official route planning software for the Tour de Cure!

The Tour de Cure is one of the largest cycling events in the United States and stages charity rides across the country to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. In 2011, more than 55,000 cyclists in 80 events raised over $18 million to support the mission of the ADA: to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.

It is a huge honor for us to be the new mapping system for these events and to be associated with this wonderful charity. Our goal is to help provide the best route maps so that each event can maximize its ability to promote and raise money for the American Diabetes Association.

Events will play a significant role in the future of Ride with GPS. If you want to talk to us about your event, please get in touch!

If you have any questions about "Site Announcement: Tour de Cure using Ride with GPS" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Segment Revisions Pre-release

2012-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

After our first iteration of our Segments feature we've been busy behind the scenes listening to feedback and planning our next set of improvements. The major feedback that we received, beyond the feature being cool, was that it wasn't intuitive enough or prominent enough on the site. We have been working on our Segment Revisions project, which has the internal name of "Segments Everywhere". This project will bring segments to users, groups, and events. While working on this project, we have already completed a bunch of great changes, though, and decided to do this pre-release. The final update to segments will be coming shortly! Below is an outline of the changes that have already been deployed.

Search: We've added the ability to search for Segments from the Search drop down menu. This search works just like the ride, and rider searches do. This has proven to be very useful right away.

New Segment Tab: We have added a new tab on the left hand side of the screen. All Segments associated on your trip will now be displayed here as well as laps, splits, best efforts, and annotations.

Creating a Segment: You can now create a Segment from any selection you have zoomed from the ride. After zooming in on the elevation profile, click "select segment" in the bottom right below the graph.

Next you are given the opportunity to "Zoom out", "Re-center", "Save", or "Cancel".

Once you have fine tuned your selection and you're ready to save you'll be give the option to either save the selection as a Segment or a simple annotation.

If you decide to save the selection as a Segment premium users will have a new option: now you can save a private segment that only matches against your rides!

To make the Segment "Public" or "Individual", simply select the option you prefer from the drop down menu, and then click save.

We will be releasing more features soon, but in the meantime happy segmenting!

If you have any questions about "Site Update: Segment Revisions Pre-release" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Why Do I Ride? The Brandywine Tour.

2012-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

Submission by: Kevin Riddle

One of the reasons I ride.... where else do you find great countryside like this? Between the Amish in their horse and buggies and the covered bridges, it's like going back in time!

Kevin Riddle

Marlton NJ

If you have any questions about "Why Do I Ride? The Brandywine Tour." email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Garmin Sync with Edge 500

2012-09-25T00:00:00-07:00

If you have any questions about "Site Feature: Garmin Sync with Edge 500" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Elevation Calculation

2012-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

The one aspect of our site that has generated more questions than any other has been our elevation calculations. Since every site and piece of software generates different elevation gain and loss figured for a planned or recorded ride, user are often confused as to which is the most accurate. Hopefully this bit of information, and a pending site update, will help clear the waters.

Imagine riding a perfectly flat ride with not a single inch of elevation gain or loss. As you are riding your GPS unit is recording what it thinks the elevation at every point along the ride is. However that GPS unit has a certain amount of error in it, so it may say 10 meters at one point, 11 meters at the next and 9 meters at the one after that. If we added up the gain and loss on this perfectly flat ride, we might end up with a figure of 1000 meters or even more depending on how long the ride was. Obviously this isn’t acceptable, we have to use some method of removing the error from the elevation data, which is where we come to filters.

A filter is usually a simple math operation that is similar to an average. Actually, there is a filter called a simple moving average which is about as simple as you can get - you average each point’s value with the value of the preceding and following points. However, we need something more complex than a simple moving average, because each elevation source (poor elevation data from a smartphone vs good data from a quality barometric pressure based altimeter, etc) has a different amount of error. Your smartphone might be off by 20 meters up or down, whereas an Edge 800 might be off by only 2 meters up or down. So a simple filter that works well for quality data might not come up with good elevation gain/loss values for elevation data from a poor source.

This is the main reason why some people see our calculated elevation gain/loss as perfect, while others see our numbers off by as much as 30%. Our current filtering method doesn’t account for the different amount of errors.

What we are about to release is a more simple filtering algorithm, however it’s much more tuneable. I can now change the amount of smoothing used, from light to very aggressive, based on whether or not the GPS unit used to record the ride has a barometric pressure based altimeter. Additionally, I can smooth elevation for routes drawn using our route planner more or less aggressively based on where they are in the world, meaning, which world elevation dataset was used to draw the route! This is important, since each elevation dataset has a different amount of accuracy and density of coverage.

We are finalizing the smoothing parameters and doing some last minute bug fixing, but are hoping to release elevation improvements in the coming week.

If you have any questions about Site Update: Elevation Calculation email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Hot Summer Nights Recap

2012-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

The Hot Summer Nights Challenge has been over for a few weeks now, and we've finally been able to sort through all the data and results!

See the final leaderboards here

This was a really fun challenge, and as has been the case with each event, competition, or challenge that we have hosted so far, we are impressed by the participation level and the results. It's really cool to see how much everyone gets out on their bikes!

In total there were 400 Participants for the entire Hot Summer Nights challenge. 169 participants completed their respective challenges. And accross all three chalenges 14,141 total hours were riden, 155,323 total miles, and an accumulative 7,058,057 feet in total elevation gain were climbed!

Everyone who completed their challenge was entered into the lottery pool for prizes. We have randomly chosen five lottery winners from each challenge. Each winner will receive a free Ride With GPS t-shirt and 22oz Specialized Purist water bottle!

Here is the breakdown of data and lottery winners for each challenge:

15 Hour Challenge

142 Participants
78 Participants rode 15hrs or more!
3,338 Total Hours
35,770 Total Miles
1,657,634 Total Elevation Gain (Feet)
Lottery Winners: Alionhols, Chilicheech, Carolyn, Rod and Tina, and Steve143

30 Hour Challenge

202 Participants
71 Participants rode 30hrs or more!
7,019 Total Hours
79,508 Total Miles
3,464,036 Total Elevation Gain (Feet)
Lottery Winners: Gageparker, Michael, Ed, Tony M, and Andrei

60 Hour Challenge

56 Participants
20 Participants rode 60hrs or more!
3,785 Total Hours
40,045 Total Miles
1,936,388 Total Elevation Gain (Feet)
Lottery Winners: Dwbitt, Melissam, Mark, Jim, and Joe

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this challenge. Keep your eyes open for more challenges this fall!

If you have any questions about Hot Summer Nights Recap email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Store

2012-09-11T00:00:00-07:00

Go to the Ride with GPS store

Over the last few years we've received countless requests for Ride With GPS branded merchandise. While we have wanted to provide this for awhile it has taken us some time to get to a point where we could. With our efforts of expanding this year we have been able, finally, to start offering some Ride With GPS products.

You can see all of the products we are offering on the Products page. But, we wanted to take a few minutes and give a bit more background information on each product.

Jersey | $80.00 (at the time of this post, on sale for $75)

All of our cycling apparel is currently being manufactured by Castelli. We choose to go with Castelli in particular because we have personal experience with their products and feel like that experience allows us to ensure that our Ride With GPS products are of the highest quality and will last for a long long time. Additionally, we like the fact that Castelli is based out of the Pacific Northwest and that their products are manufactured in the USA. We would like to offer some cycling appareal at a cheaper rate, but ultimately felt like we didn't want to sacrifice quality for cost. Also, Castelli's printing is top notch!

Our cycling apparel has been designed by Ryan Wilcoxson. Ryan is a good friend of ours from Southern Oregon and is an avid cyclist and a strong cat 2 bike racer! Ryan's full time gig is as a video and graphic designer for Definition LLC which is a small firm based out of San Francisco and his recent work includes a new community beer review site, Beer Citizen. If you enjoy a good cold beer then you should checkout the site! Ryan has also designed kits for Service Course Velo and Sappo Hill Cycling Team, shown below.

We are working with Ryan to get bibs and other cycling apparel items designed and available as soon as possible.

T Shirts | $15.00

Our t shirts are made by American Apparel and printed by Inkbrigade. We chose these two vendors because Inkbrigade is a local Portland, Oregon company and American Apparel shirts are made in the USA. Both options seemed like a good fit! (get it?)

The design of the t-shirts was a collaborative effort by the three of us. We're really happy with how these came out now that they are printed!

Water Bottles | $10.00 & $13.00 (at the time of this post, on sale for $8 & $11)

For water bottles we set out looking for a bottle that offered two things: 1) no taste and 2) durable drinking spout. From our testing and experience the best option proved itself to be the Specialized Purist. These new bottles made by Specialized are the best bottles we have ever used! They are a non-leaching, clean tasting, and flexible bottle with an awesome drinking spout. Plus, Specialized does a great job with the printing. We didn't feel that there was a higher quality bottle we could find, and by putting in a large order we're able to offer them at a great price.

We are offering the bottles in two sizes:

The design for the bottles, like the shirts, was a collaborative effort by the three of us and again, we got lucky on the designing front as they turned out great!

OSM Maps for Garmin GPS Units | $25.00

On our help pages for the Garmin Edge 705 and the Garmin Edge 800 we have been recommending the use of OSM Maps (OpenStreetMap) as a substitute for the Garmin City Navigator maps that come bundled with those units if you pay a bit extra. Many people don't purchase the bundled version of their GPS unit, and end up without any basemaps. This is too bad because then they can't look at a map, their unit is unable to do any turn-by-turn routing, and they're left with a GPS unit that really isn't living up to its potential. The OSM maps are great in most areas, and you can get them on your unit for free.

The problem is that it can be a bit of a technical challenge to download the right maps, get the right kind of SD card, and load the maps onto the SD card in the right way. We are still happy to help people do this themselves, but are now offering to do the work for you: we'll preload a card with the maps you need, and all you have to do is insert it into your Garmin GPS unit.

If you have any questions about Site Feature: Store email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Jump to Home

2012-08-14T00:00:00-07:00

A route creation feature that we have received a lot of requests for is the ability to create a route out to a certain point, and then back to automatically route back to your starting location. So what we did is we added a "Jump to home" feature to the route creation tool. This will allow you to generate a route, and at any point click this link and your route will be routed back to your home in the most direct way possible.

You will want to pay close attention when using this tool to make sure that it doens't route you on a freeway or particularly dangerous route that the tool can't know about.

If you have any questions about Site Feature: Jump to Home email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Why Do You Ride?

2012-08-08T00:00:00-07:00

Everyone has an anecdote about why they love to ride. It is these moments that shape us into the type of rider we are. Part of what we find fascinating about bike riding is the story behind the rider, and we want to know yours!

Send us your story by emailing them to us at info@ridewithgps.com. We will be featuring the best here on the blog.

If you have any questions about Why Do You Ride? email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Full Screen

2012-08-06T00:00:00-07:00

Last month we released the cool new feature: Full Screen mode! Full screen allows for you to use 100% of your screen for route viewing or editing.

You can easily use Full Screen by clicking this icon on the top right of the page:

You can use full screen on the following pages:

route planner
route/trip views
segments view
events view
activity center.

Currently Full Screen mode isn't supported on:

Internet Explorer
Safari

If you want to use Full Screen but you are using one of the above browsers we recommend you upgrade to Google Chrome: download Chrome here!

Here are a couple screen shots of how you go about using Full Screen.

When Full Screen is active click the allow button shown here:

If you have any questions about Site Update: Full Screen email us at info@ridewithgps.com

TdF Challenge Results (corrections)

2012-07-30T00:00:00-07:00

Before you dive into these great results, come sign up for our next challenge! See details and join Hot Summer Nights

After posting the challenge results, it came to our attention (thanks @fourwhitefeet via Twitter) that we included a couple days of additional rides in the results. We will still be distributing prizes to everyone as recognized in the last results post, but we wanted to post the corrections to set the record straight, and anyone mentioned in this post that was not previously mentioned will also receive their prizes!

Completed the Full TdF Challenge, riding 2172.9 miles in 23 days!

bikenh: 2,175 miles (3,500 km).
Erco Argante: 2,210 miles (3,556 km).
We initially recognized Two others, Jeffrey Timm and wrightcycle, but with the corrected results they barely didn't make it with 2,040.5 and 1,820.1 miles respectively. Still very impressive! Nice work guys!

Fastest average speed

Full TdF: Erco Argante, averaging 15.7 mph (25.3 kph) over 2,210 miles (3,556 km). Nice work, it was Jeffrey Timm before corrections.
1/2 TdF: Chris Dittmore, averaging 18.9 mph (30.4 kph) over 1,436 miles (2,3112 km). Chris kept his spot and improved his speed from 18.36 to 18.9 with corrections!
1/4 TdF: northEndBent, averaging a blazingly-fast 22.9 mph (36.7 kph). Nice increase in speed, originally 22.07 mph!
1/4 TdF runner up: The Digital Jedi makes the list for fastest average speed in the 1/4 TdF for a standard bike. Let's face it, we can't compete head to head with these recumbent riders! The Digital Jedi came impressively close though with an average speed of 21.2 mph (34.1 kph). No change here!

Highest average VAM

Full TdF: Erco Argante with an average VAM of 506.48 over 2,210 miles (3,556 km). No change!
1/2 TdF: cmc with an average VAM of 683.8 over 1,504 miles (2,420 km). It was perryjudd before, but with corrections he barely missed the 1/2 challenge miles.
1/4 TdF: rui manuel with an average VAM of 1052.7! Same person with corrections, slightly different VAM.

Most climbing per mile/km

Full TdF: Erco Argante climbed a jaw-dropping 159,225 ft (48,531 m) in a similarly impressive 2,210 miles (3,556 km). This is 72 feet of climbing for every mile (or 13.6 meters for every km). What can we say though, he rode the actual TdF! Check out this brutal mountain stage logged by Erco. No change here!
1/2 TdF: cmc climbed nearly as much as Erco in 700 fewer miles, ascending 158,084 ft (48184 m) in "only" 1,504 miles (2,422 km). This comes out to an impressive 105 feet of climbing for every mile (or 19.9 meters for every km). Most of his rides are private, but take a look at the elevation profile for his last ride of the challenge. Can't be too surprised about winning this category with rides like that! No change here either!
1/4 TdF: Stephen Ax ascended 93,815 ft (28,595 m) in 1,024.6 miles (1,649 km). That's a lot of climbing, coming out to 91.6 feet per mile (or 17.3 meters per km). This is a new result after the corrections, congratulations!

Join our next challenge!

Our next challenge is starting soon, so come join it! Hot Summer Nights is all about getting time in the saddle and enjoying those long hot August days. The challenge will last 3 weeks, (from Aug 4 through Aug 26) and you can choose from 15, 30, or 60 hour challenges. The 30 hour challenge works out to being slightly less demanding than the 1/4 TdF. We're hoping to motivate the more casual riders or those with a busy August schedule to at least get out there with the 15 hour challenge, and for those of you that are ready to step up and complete something roughly on par with the 1/2 TdF challenge, join the 60 hour!

Join the Hot Summer Nights challenge here.

If you have any questions about TdF Challenge Results (corrections) email us at info@ridewithgps.com

TdF Challenge Results

2012-07-27T00:00:00-07:00

Before you dive into these great results, come sign up for our next challenge! See details and join Hot Summer Nights

The TdF Challenge ended on Sunday, and we are thrilled with how it went! Thank you for being a part of this; it was a lot of fun for us to watch everyone push themselves and put in long days in the saddle. Together we rode 223,049 miles (358,964 km)!

We've spent the last few days digging through all of your ride data to come up with a list of riders we'd like to publicly recognize and award prizes to.

Everyone mentioned below will soon be the proud owner of a Ride with GPS water bottle, t-shirt, or premium account (or some combination!).

Completed the Full TdF Challenge, riding 2172.9 miles in 23 days!

bikenh: 2,175 miles (3,500 km). For the first week or two bikenh was the only rider uploading data frequently enough to consistently be ahead of the game for the full TdF. We watched closely and were absolutely blown away at how much riding he did (especially during all the hot weather).
Erco Argante: 2,210 miles (3,556 km). He got his miles in by riding in the Tour de Concorde, where he actually rode the full Tour de France! The riders raised over 100,000 euro to fight cancer. Congratulations Erco!
Jeffrey Timm: 2,253 miles (3,627 km). This is the most distance anyone completed, barely inching past Erco! Nice work!
wrightcycle: 2,189 miles (3,523 km). Back on the podium! Last time we saw wrightcycle was when he won our most-miles competition back in April by riding 681 miles (1096 km) in one week.

Fastest average speed

Full TdF: Jeffrey Timm, averaging 16.9 mph (27 kph) over 2,253 miles (3,627 km).
1/2 TdF: Chris Dittmore, averaging 18.36 mph (30 kph) over 1,758 miles (2,830 km). Chris did the TdF while riding across America - good luck on the rest of your trip!
1/4 TdF: northEndBent, averaging a blazingly-fast 22.07 mph (36 kph) over 562 miles (905 km)! How do you get that fast? On a recumbent! We have quite the community of recumbent riders using Ride with GPS, and clearly some of them are very fast.
1/4 TdF runner up: The Digital Jedi makes the list for fastest average speed in the 1/4 TdF for a standard bike. Let's face it, we can't compete head to head with these recumbent riders! The Digital Jedi came impressively close though with an average speed of 21.2 mph (34.1 kph).

Highest average VAM

Full TdF: Erco Argante with an average VAM of 506.48 over 2,210 miles (3,556 km).
1/2 TdF: perryjudd with an average VAM of 788.2 over 1,179 miles (1897 km). Looks like perryjudd did his riding in France and Italy, getting this impressive VAM figure by doing incredible rides like this one.
1/4 TdF: rui manuel with an average VAM of 1055.8!

Most climbing per mile/km

Full TdF: Erco Argante climbed a jaw-dropping 159,225 ft (48,531 m) in a similarly impressive 2,210 miles (3,556 km). This is 72 feet of climbing for every mile (or 13.6 meters for every km). What can we say though, he rode the actual TdF! Check out this brutal mountain stage logged by Erco.
1/2 TdF: cmc climbed nearly as much as Erco in 700 fewer miles, ascending 158,084 ft (48184 m) in "only" 1,504 miles (2,422 km). This comes out to an impressive 105 feet of climbing for every mile (or 19.9 meters for every km). Most of his rides are private, but take a look at the elevation profile for his last ride of the challenge. Can't be too surprised about winning this category with rides like that!
1/4 TdF: Kraken did a lot of climbing in July, ascending 46,317 ft (14,117 m) in 557 miles (896 km). Pretty impressive as it is more climbing per mile than the actual TdF, coming out to 83 feet per mile (or 15.7 meters per km).

The lottery!

Everyone that logged enough miles to qualify for the 1/4 TdF challenge (a minimum of 543.2 miles or 874.3 km) was entered into a list, and we generated random numbers to pull out 8 winners for the lottery! If you're on this list, this means you've won something!

PeterBKay, riding 938 miles (1,510 km).
dru, riding 563.6 miles (907 km).
Joe Cipale, riding 658 miles (1,059 km).
AZBob, riding 554.3 miles (892 km).
Michael K., riding 582.5 miles (937 km).
Henoch Getz, riding 650.3 miles (1,047 km).
Aleah Van Woert, riding 562.4 miles (905 km).
Dan Olexio, riding 675.5 miles (1,087 km).

What's next?

The TdF Challenge was fun, motivating, and inspiring for us. If you have any stories about your experience with the challenge that you would like to share, please email us at info@ridewithgps.com; we'd love to hear what your experience was like.

Join the Hot Summer Nights challenge here.

If you have any questions about TdF Challenge Results email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Hot Summer Nights: A Challenge Based on Ride Time!

2012-07-22T00:00:00-07:00

We are smack dab in the middle of summer and we want to celebrate! We've decided to base our next Ride With GPS challenge off of hours logged on the bike.

Sign Up Here for Hot Summer Nights!

Like the TdF Challenge we will be offering three levels of difficulty, so that people can challenge themselves appropriately. The first level will be geared towards people who spend less time on the bike, and the other two will challenge more serious cyclists.

Event Details:

Who: You!
What: Ride 15, 30, or 60 hours in 3 weeks.
When: August 4th through August 26th
Where: Everywhere, just bring your GPS unit or mobile phone!
Why: To take advantage of the long hot days!

Sign Up Here for Hot Summer Nights!

Everyone who completes their challenge will be entered into a lottery for prizes. We'll also give prizes to the top-place finishers in the 60 hour challenge, and hand out prizes along the way for noteworthy rides! As has been the case with the previous competitions this should be a lot of fun and we hope you'll all participate!

If you have any questions about Hot Summer Nights: A Challenge Based on Ride Time! email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Google Plus Hangout Series

2012-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

Something we have wanted to implement for a while is a more direct connection with our members. We've wanted to establish a way to share tips and tricks about Ride With GPS, share and discuss upcoming features, and get more direct feedback.

This last week we gave this a shot by hosting a Google Plus Hangout. With this service, we are able to broadcast our screens and voices to an unlimited number of people who can watch live via Youtube. Also, up to 10 people can join the Hangout directly using their webcam/microphone. We think that the test run was a huge success, and we have decided to schedule out our first series of Hangouts as a result. Here are the proposed topics and times:

August Hangout Series:

8/1/12 5:30pm Pacific Time: Route Creation Tips and Tricks
8/8/12 5:30pm Pacific Time: Garmin 800 Tips and Tricks
8/15/12 5:30pm Pacific Time: Route Creation Tips and Tricks
8/22/12 5:30pm Pacific Time: Groups, Events, and Segments

Sign Up Here for the Hangout of your choice.

Zack and Travis will be the hosts for the first series. The way the hangouts will work is that the first 8 members to join the hangout when it starts will be able to interact with us through their webcam and mic. The rest of the people who join will be able to watch the Hangout live on Youtube and interact through the Hangout's chat feature. If you don't use Google Plus that's okay because you can watch live through Youtube!

We are really excited about this series and want to expand in the future, so please let us know if you have a topic you'd like for us to cover or a time frame that would work better for you. We're looking forward to hanging out with you, so don't wait to signup!

If you have any questions about Google Plus Hangout Series email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Fiets

2012-07-15T00:00:00-07:00

A short while back we added some new metrics that we're displaying on segments, routes and trips. One of those metrics was "Fiets", which has been asked about a number of times. Here is a quick explanation covering what exactly this metric is, so you can better understand what it means and how it lets you gauge the difficulty of a climb.

The short explanation of Fiets is that it is a dificulty rating for a climb. However, the short explanation doesn't really give this rating system enough credit.

The long explanation is that Fiets differs from the category rating scale because it take more factors into the equation. Here's the actual equation:

fietsIndex = h^2 / (d*10) + (t > 1000 ? (t-1000)/1000.0 :0)

Where:

h = max elevation - min elevation
d = distance
t = max elevation

Since this equation takes average grade into account you will sometimes find that a long shallow climb that is still a Cat HC or Cat 1 may not rate highly on Fiets. Conversely, a climb that is shorter and steeper might have a higher Fiets rating but may be only a Cat 4 or Cat 5. Another element that Fiets accounts for is altitude. If the max elevation of the climb is over 1000 meters, the Fiets index will be higher to account for the added difficulty of climbing in thinner air.

The best thing you can do with Fiets is to familiarize yourself with it and what your favorite climbs are rated. Then you will have a great tool to evaluate the difficulty of unfamiliar climbs.

To see the Fiets index when looking at a route, zoom in on the climb (by dragging your mouse over that section on the elevation profile) and you will see it show up under the metrics tab.

If you have any questions about Site Feature: Fiets email us at info@ridewithgps.com

2012 Tour de France Ride With GPS Competition

2012-06-22T00:00:00-07:00

Celebrate the 99th Tour de France with Ride With GPS!

This year the Tour de France celebrates its 99th running and will take place from Saturday, June 30th to July 22nd and will cover 3,497 kilometers (2,173 miles). Find out if you have what it takes to ride like the grand-tour competitors. Find out who is the strongest (or has the most time on their hands) amongst your friends!

Dates - June 30th to July 22nd

Full TdF: 3,497 Kilometers / 2,173 Miles
Half TdF: 1748.5 Kilometers / 1086.5 Miles
Quarter TdF: 874.25 Kilometers / 543.25 Miles

Prizes will be awarded for the following results in each competition:

First person to achieve the goal distance
Fastest average speed achieving the goal distance
Person with the highest average VAM achieving the goal distance
Person with most distance ridden in the 23 days
Person who climbs the most elevation in the 23 days

If you have any questions about 2012 Tour de France Ride With GPS Competition email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Events!

2012-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

Over the last year, we have received dozens of requests for features specific to event organization. With that in mind, we are releasing our first iteration of events. This first implementation is basic, however we will be introducing many more features which will make our event system a powerful tool for anyone who wants to plan a ride or series of rides. Events are not just for official organizers - we will have solid support for a basic multi-day ride all the way up to a full multi-stage race.

There are a few different ways to create your own event. One, if you are the admin of a group you will see the link "Create an event" on your group's profile page:

Once you select that link you'll receive this dialog box:

Fill in your info like so:

And you get this page where you can begin creating/adding routes by clicking the "Add a route" link:

If you already have a route you want to use it will show up in a dropdown once you click the "Add a route" link.

Once you have added a few routes your event page will start to look like this:

After you have added your routes, you'll probably want to put in some information about the event. Just click "edit" in the overview tab to adjust the basic details about the event. For additional content, you can add custom tabs. Click the "+" tab and you will get a new tab that looks like this by default:

Clicking edit brings up the simple WYSIWYG editor that lets you do some basic formatting. Just replace the sample content, edit the tab label, and click Save.

You'll also be able to search for Events through the search drop down menu and if you dont' have a group page you can create an event by selecting "Create event" on the event search page.

We are very excited about this release of Events and are looking forward to our next iteration on this set of features. Please check out an event page in action here let us know what you think!

If you have any questions about Site Update: Events! email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Submit Your Ride Photos for The Photo of the Week

2012-06-19T00:00:00-07:00

Love taking photos on your bike rides? Then ride, ride, ride, and shoot, shoot, shoot away! When you're done riding and shooting submit your photos for the "Photo of the Week". If we select your shot it will be highlighted on the blog, and all of Ride With GPS's social media channels. Submission is easy, you can do so by sending us an email here!

If you have any questions about "Submit Your Ride Photos for The Photo of the Week" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: New Help System

2012-06-15T00:00:00-07:00

One of the most praised aspects of our site is how responsive we are to user questions, suggestions and help requests. Additionally, our site has been growing at a very rapid pace. The consequence of this growth has been a gradual slowing of our support responses, and increasingly, less time to actually get stuff done. Once we took a step back and looked at our existing help system, the problem became apparent - our self-help tools were terrible. With this in mind we set out to build a comprehensive help page.

We have been keeping track of support emails and phone calls for the last few months, which enabled us to start the help page with content from those questions and answers. Over the coming weeks we will be fleshing out the help content with the goal of comprehensive coverage of site functionality.

In order to make it easy for you to find the answers you are looking for, we updated the "Feedback" process. Now, when clicking "help/feedback" you'll see this:

The big improvement over our existing form is the in-line search.

This new system should allow you to easily answer your own questions. If your question is not covered by one of our help topics, you can always submit the question using the above mentioned form. We strive to answer your questions within 2-3 days.

If you have any questions about "Site Update: New Help System" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Creating a Segment from a Lap

2012-06-06T00:00:00-07:00

If you have any questions about "Site Feature: Creating a Segment from a Lap" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Add Exisiting Route to Group Page

2012-06-05T00:00:00-07:00

If you have any questions about "Site Feature: Add Exisiting Route to Group Page" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Updates: Photoviewer Improvements

2012-05-24T00:00:00-07:00

One of our features that has been needing some improvement for awhile has been our trip photoviewer. There were a few small features that it was just missing and we want it to do a better job of being a story telling piece of your ride.

The first thing we needed a better way to add captions to photos. When you're viewing your photos in the popup, just click on the caption to edit it in place. Also, we wanted to provide thumbnails on the overview page so that someone checking out your ride would immediately see that there were photos.

The other feature that had been missing previously was the ability for the user to go scroll between photos in the expanded view. Now you can click on the thumbnail and navigate through all the photos in the popup by clicking on the photo, or using the arrows above the photo to navigate forward/backward.

We have more improvements planned for photos, but we're happy to get this first update out.

If you have any questions about "Site Updates: Photoviewer Improvements" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Metrics Improvements

2012-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

Over the last month we have re-architected a very fundamental component of our site we call the "metrics calculator". This component is responsible for all summary metrics on any route, ride, or segment. It is responsible for crunching the numbers when you zoom in, view your best efforts, or look at the max speed or grade of a ride. We are really excited about these changes, because it gives us some immediate improvements, and paves the way for some features we'll be working on right away.

A quick overview of the improvements that are on Ride with GPS right now, available on all of your existing data:

Hover your mouse over any min/max number under metrics to see it highlighted on the map and graph - see where the max grade is, see where your max speed was, etc.
Max speed is no longer buggy
Grade is much better. Even the max grade is a fairly reliable number now!
New metrics: VAM (how fast you climb), ascent time, descent time, UCI climb category, and more!
Color-coded metrics to match the graph - easier to visually scan the metrics table now.
Segment times are now displayed as when you started the actual segment (before it just showed when you left on the ride, so multiple efforts on the same segment would show the same time).

What you can expect in the next week thanks to this work:

The segments tab on your profile will list segment distance/elevation/climb category/etc.
All route/trip metrics (distance, elevation, speed, etc) will be consistent everywhere on the site.
More best effort intervals for our premium users with power meters.

One of the primary motivations behind these changes, is that it allows us to do efficient comparisons across all your rides. We are well on our way to wrapping up some great improvements to the activity center for our premium users that take advantage of this, stay tuned and let us know if you have any feedback!

If you have any questions about "Metrics Improvements" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Metrics Calculation

2012-05-15T00:00:00-07:00

Anytime you look at any route/ride data, our metrics calculations are used for just about everything and we have been rethinking and redesigning how we handle and display metrics data.

We went through this code top to bottom and made significant changes. Doing so allowed us to fix a number of bugs, the most visible one being max speed numbers being way too high on some trips, improve site performance, and added support for interpolation everywhere (splits will be exactly the right distance/time, segment racing splits are more accurate).

This project also allowed us the opportunity to add some new metrics for ride data e.g. computed VAM, ascent time, and descent time are all now visible on the metrics tab when viewing a ride. We also added climb categorization and FIETS-index and we will start using them in more places throughout the site.

We are very excited about this change and for the very cool improvements that we'll be releasing soon that it makes possible!

If you have any questions about "Site Update: Metrics Calculation" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

2012 April Climbing Challenge Winners!

2012-05-12T00:00:00-07:00

A BIG thank you to everyone that participated! Our second competition is officially in the books, and we think it was very successful and a lot of fun. We are super impressed with the elevation that everyone climbed. You can see the full Leaderboard here.

Top three riders with the most accumulated elevation gain:

1. Vagelis Papaioannou	4 rides	20696 feet	Receives: 1yr Premium Membership!
2. Παύλος's Παναγιωτόπουλος	7 rides	20305 feet	Receives: 6mo Premium Membership!
3. Tim Willson	5 rides	19764 feet	Receives: 1mo Premium Membership!

The honorable mentions for most elevation gain in the least distance during the competition are:

1. Niall Wallace	5th Overall	17150ft in 98.6 miles!
1. Kraken	20th Overall	9472ft in 83.8 miles!
1. Richard S	22nd Overall	9228ft in 83 miles!

The top 3 participants and honorable mentions will also receive one of our new water bottles! We want to again thank everyone for participating, and hope that you all enjoyed playing along.

We are working on details for our next competitions, so be on the lookout for the announcement of it.

If you have any questions about our April Climbing Competition email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Feature: Using POI as Waypoint

2012-05-01T00:00:00-07:00

If you have any questions about "Site Feature: Using POI as Waypoint" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: New Homepage

2012-04-27T00:00:00-07:00

We have felt for a long time that our homepage was not up to snuff, and recently we were able to finally spend some time redesigning it. This fits in with a lot of the other new additions we've made visually to the site, and we think it was the last element that needed to be updated. The new homepage has been out for a few weeks now, but we wanted to document it and give you a closer look!

Above the fold we wanted to capture the motto of our site: "Plan - Ride - Analyze – Compete”. We did so by utilizing four slide images:

Below the fold we wanted to give a little bit more info about what Ride With GPS offers and how users engage with the site.

Overall we are much happier with the site's front page and the overall look and feel the site now has.

If you have any questions about "Site Update: New Homepage" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

2012 April Distance Challenge Winners!

2012-04-24T00:00:00-07:00

Nice work to everyone that participated! Our first competition is officially in the books! We think it was very successful and a lot of fun. We are super impressed with the mileage that everyone put in. You can see the full Leaderboard here!

Top three riders with the most accumulated distance:

1. wrightcycle	8 rides	681.1 miles	Receives: 1yr Premium Membership!
2. Stan	7 rides	486 miles	Receives: 6mo Premium Membership!
3. Earl Janssen	5 rides	331.6 miles	Receives: 1mo Premium Membership!

The honorable mentions for Longest Rides during the competition are:

1. Earl Janssen	233.7 miles (private ride)	Receives: 1yr Premium Membership!
2. chesapeakesailor	229.4 miles	Receives: 6mo Premium Membership!
3. MEGoodman	200.9 miles	Receives: 1mo Premium Membership!

Everyone was putting lots of miles in over the last few days of the competition, but incredibly enough the top 4 riders did not move up or down in rank.

We are starting our next competition next Saturday! It's going to be a week long and is going to see who can do the most climbing in a week! Learn more and sign up here.

If you have any questions about our April Distance Challenge email us at info@ridewithgps.com

2012 April Climbing Competition!

2012-04-24T00:00:00-07:00

We are getting set for our second competition of April. This one is going to be a climbing competition, and we want to see who can put the most elevation in their legs in one week! Sign up here, and get out there and go up hill!

If you have any questions about our "2012 April Climbing Competition!" email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Time On Bike Calculation

2012-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

When we initially created the "Total Time on Bike" metric for users profile we calculated it on the total time logged on the device. We made the assumption that people would ride with maybe a brief stop or two and that this could be considered time spent on the bike. It resulted in numbers like:

Recently we have discovered that our assumptions wasn't a safe assumption. A good case to exemplify this is a commuter who rides to work in the morning, works all day, and then rides home. Calculating his/her "Time on Bike" the way we were was resulting in 10+ hrs of time on bike for the day.

We made the decision to switch our calculation to moving time for rides. This changes the above "Total Time on Bike" calculation to:

We think that the new way of calculating this metric is a lot more accurate to actual time spent pedaling your bike. Check out your "Total Time on Bike"!

If you have any questions about our Time on Bike Calculation email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Site Update: Elevation Data Calculation

2012-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

Many of you have noticed our elevation calculations have been off in your area. Additionally, some of you have also noticed that the elevation gain/loss numbers have changed in the last couple of weeks, for better or worse depending on the route or activity. Zack and Cullen are working hard on a permanent fix, but I was able to interupt them long enough to get you an update on what's going on and when you can expect things to settle down.

The short of it:

Elevation coming from different sources like barometric pressure based altimeters, GPS data, elevation datasets in the US vs rest of the world, all have different amounts of errors. Since we have to filter/smooth elevation data to avoid huge overestimates of gain/loss, we need a smart filter. Filtering functions are never "one size fits all", so we have to tune them based on the amount of error in the data. Since we have a bunch of data sources, we have to vary our tuning based on which data source we are calculating an elevation gain/loss from. Currently, we have a "one size fits all" filtering function, which is good in some places and bad in others. We are spending a bunch of time turning this into a function and tuning it based on data source, so, we have to record the data source and go from there.

The Expanded Version:

Every GPS unit is different when it comes to elevation. Some record elevation using GPS satellites, which is actually very error prone. GPS works great in the flat plane of the earth, but is inaccurate when it comes to elevations, as in, +/- 30 feet or more! This is due to angles relative to GPS satellites and some other fun technical stuff you can read about by googling. Other GPS units use a built-in barometric pressure based altimeter and are considerably more accurate. They are accurate down to 1 meter or so and have much less spikiness associated with the data. Additionally, elevations from barometric pressure based altimeters are more accurate than the elevation datasets we have.

Elevations produced while drawing a route using our route planner come from big files called DEMs. We have different DEM sets depending on the region. The US has the most accurate, at 1 elevation point every 10 meters. Outside the US we use ASTER and SRTM dems. SRTM data came from a shuttle mission which collected a ton of data. ASTER is data from a pair of satellites and is more recent, but less accurate than SRTM data. ASTER/SRTM only has 1 point every 30 meters, so, outside of the US we have poor elevation data.

For an idea of the type of filtering we are doing, we are using a simple lowpass filter, one very much like the one outlined on this page.

Since we have 1.5 million maps to go and recalculate, elevation data will still not be correct even after we release the new filtering functions. It will take a couple of days to recalculate all the back maps. This is a big data migration and will take the rest of the week. We will make a post when this is ready.

If you have any questions about our Elevation Data Calculation email us at info@ridewithgps.com

April 2012 Distance Challenge Update

2012-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

We have made it through five days of our distance challenge and we have to admit that this first competition has been extremely fun! Not only is it awesome for us to get to see eveyone out riding, but we are also learning a lot about how to make these competition really cool and fun for everyone.

We have created a snapshot of the changes to the leaderboard from yesterday. There was lots of movement as some big miles were put it!

Get your last rides in by the end of the day Friday to shake up the leaderboard even more!

Check out the Full Leaderboard! Now get out there and tear it up!

If you have any questions about our April 2012 Distance Challenge email us at info@ridewithgps.com

About Ride With GPS Video

2012-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

Recently we had the pleasure of spending the day with Michael Calcagno from Calcagno Media. Luckily, the weather cooperated with us for our video shoot, and we were able to spend the day in the Columbia River Gorge. We took great scenery footage for our video and Michael was awesome to work with.

What we wanted going into this project was a video that did a good job of explaining the bigger picture and full Ride With GPS story. Michael quickly understood the scope of our project and we feel like he produced a video that perfectly fit our need.

Don't just take our word for it though, watch the video now!

Michael has been a long time friend of Ride With GPS and has a proven portfolio. Working with him was a fabulous experience, and we would definitely recommend Calcagno Media for any project no matter how large or small!

Calcagno Media is located in the Portland, OR area - if you're around here and need a video created for your business (product demos, business profile, etc) or personal life (wedding documentary, special events, etc) check out their services page to see more about what they offer. Really excellent work at a great price.

If you have any questions about our new video please email us at info@ridewithgps.com

Plus One

2012-04-15T00:00:00-07:00

Ride With GPS is now on Google+!

With an increasing effort to broaden our horizons and expand Ride With GPS we have now encorporated Google+ as our newest social media platform. We are going to strive to offer unique content on this platform as well as giveaways and member offerings.

We hope that you add Ride With GPS to your cirles!

/g:plus

Not a premium user? Upgrade your account now!

April Distance Challenge

2012-04-13T00:00:00-07:00

Something that we have been wanting to do for quite some time now is to hold Ride With GPS challenges for our members. We finally have the bandwidth to do so and we are pretty excited about it!

We weren't exactly sure what type to host first, but we settled on an obvious "let's see who can ride the most miles in one week" concept. And now we are on the eve of it's launch.

April Distance Challenge Details Sign Up!

When Saturday, April 14 - Friday, April 20

Details Starting this Saturday, get on your bike and use your GPS unit or phone to record as many miles as you can for the following week. We'll tally the results over the week to keep you motivated, and give out premium accounts to winners and honorable mentions!

We hope you participate and invite all your friends to participate too!

What's next? This is the first of many competitions. We want to give out cool prizes and help motivate everyone to push themselves and have fun. Let us know if you have any feedback!

Not a premium user? Upgrade your account now!

Trav's First Post

2012-04-10T00:00:00-07:00

I want to first say how excited I am to be part of the Ride With GPS team! There is a lot of work to be done, and it's an exciting time to get to be part of Ride With GPS.

My goal is to maintain the same level of quality of work that Cullen and Zack have been able to provide up to now, and in order to do so we are currently outlining how we want to move forward. While we iron out the details, you can expect updates regarding:

site features
site updates
product highlights

But you can also expect some more light-hearted and cycling-related posts, too.

You can follow me on Twitter at @travcaldwell

Not a premium user? Upgrade your account now!

Meet Our Newest/First Employee

2012-04-06T00:00:00-07:00

Ride With GPS has been growing rapidly this year, to the point we were able to hire our first employee! So, without further pleasantries we'd like you to meet Travis.

Travis has been an endurance athlete in one way or another for 10 years, and has been a competitive amature cyclist for the last 4. He lives in Boulder, CO and will be doing online and social media marketing, blog management as well as many other tasks. We are very excited about this big step for Ride With GPS. We need all the help we can get and Travis is a perfect fit.

You can get to know Travis by following him on Twitter at @travcaldwell

If you have any other questions about Travis, send us an email: info@ridewithgps.com

Not a premium user? Upgrade your account now!

Activity Center View Log by Time

2012-04-05T00:00:00-07:00

No matter what type of cyclist you are, a competitive racer or recreational rider, you probably gauge your training using time spent on bike rather than distance. In order to accomodate the need to view activity based on time, we added the ability to view the Activity Center graphs by time. You now have three x-axis to choose from: Distance, Elevation Gain, and Time.

We really think that this adds a nice level of training analysis to the Activity Center.

Not a premium user? Upgrade your account now to unlock this feature!

If you have any other questions about this new Activity Center feature, send us an email: info@ridewithgps.com

New Logo

2012-04-04T00:00:00-07:00

Along with updating our color scheme we also felt like it was time for our logo to grow up and reflect our core cycling market. Since we do not claim to be graphic designers and we think the concept of crowd sourcing is cool, we opted to try out 99designs. Setting up the initial competition with some clear objectives was the easy part. Picking from the 110 total designs proved to be much more difficult.

At first it was easy to pick the good from the bad. But, as the competition went into the late rounds it became really hard to pick between the designs. However, we pushed through the tough times and picked the winner!

We are really happy about and excited for our new logo. We feel like it's really helping make the site feel more professional. We hope you like it too!

The desinger who produced the winning logo was Corne. If you'd like to see more of Corne's work you can see the full 99desings profile here. Corne was really easy to work with and was always able to make changes quickly and correctly and we really enjoyed to colaborative process.

If you have any other questions about our new logo, send us an email: info@ridewithgps.com

Color Scheme

2012-04-04T00:00:00-07:00

With Spring here, we decided it was a great time to freshen up our site. After adding the new logo, we removed some of the darker, oppressive feeling colors from our pages.

Old Color Scheme (Profile Page):

Old Color Scheme (Footer):

New Color Scheme (Profile Page): One of the first things you'll notice we removed a the dark heavy green and black colors and replaced them with softer more inviting colors.

New Color Scheme (Footer): We also changed the footer concept and link colors.

We will soon be releasing a new front page featuring a warmer color scheme. One of our goals this year is to make the site more inviting for anyone who lands on it. Look forward to more improvements in the near future!

If you have any other questions about our color scheme change, send us an email: info@ridewithgps.com

Groups

2012-04-03T00:00:00-07:00

You can now connect with people on Ride With GPS through our new Groups features. Groups will allow you to easily meet, coordinate, share, and compare rides, routes, and events with other group members. You can easily search for groups in your area. It is easy to create your own Ride With GPS Group!

To get started find the group you're looking for by selecting "Group" from the "Search" drop down menu, or click here to go to groups.

Next select the group you're wanting to join from the results:

Once you're on the Groups page you can join and check out what the group is up to:

Now that you are a member of the group it will display on your profile right below your photo:

Additionally, Group admins and members have the ability to: - Associate Routes - Easily Share Group - Coordinate Routes From One Spot - Upload Group Photos

If you have any other questions about using groups, send us an email: info@ridewithgps.com

Compare efforts on segments

2012-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

You can now analyze your performance on a segment, compare it to other riders, and stage a virtual race! Check out this video walk through:

If you have any other questions about using segments, check out our help page here: Segments Help Page

New feature: Segments

2012-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

We have just released the ability to define segments, which gives you an easy and fun way of analyzing multiple rides at once and see where you stand in your area on your favorite roads. Anyone can create segments and participate today. Our premium users can use segments privately, and create segments directly from laps recorded on a GPS unit.

Here is a video demonstrating how to create a segment:

And here is a video walking through all the details of the segment page:

If you have any other questions about using segments, check out our help page here: Segments Help Page

New video: Tanita BC-1000 Body Composition Monitor

2011-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

We now support syncing with weight/body composition data, and displaying it in the Activity Center. You can get this data with a Tanita BC-1000 Body Composition Monitor, which is a scale that will do a wireless sync with a handful of Garmin GPS units, as well as an Ant+ USB stick plugged into your computer.

New video: Maintenance Logs

2011-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

You can plan and track all of your maintenance within Ride with GPS. Check out this quick demonstration of these features.

New video: Laps and Splits

2011-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

We're excited to release initial support for laps and splits, and this video walks you through everything you can currently do with this feature as a premium user.

New video: Garmin Write

2011-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

Getting routes on your Garmin GPS unit has been made even easier for premium users. Just click "Garmin Write" and wait a moment. Watch this video to see how it works.

New video: Deleting control points

2011-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

We've had many questions about how to delete control points, and doing so is fast and easy, but a bit unintuitive the first time. We'll work on making it more intuitive, but in the meantime here is a video showing you how to remove control points while planning or editing a route.

New video: Copy and edit a route

2011-07-19T00:00:00-07:00

Another video on route editing, this quick demo shows copying someone else's route and performing edits on the cuesheet, POIs, and track.

New video: Using control points

2011-07-08T00:00:00-07:00

We have had a lot of questions about editing routes. Here is a demo of how to use control points to adjust your route while planning or editing.

New video: Adding custom cue sheet entry

2011-07-07T00:00:00-07:00

We've been busy fixing bugs and getting our 2.0 release stable and working well. Here is a quick demo of adding custom cue sheet entries:

Ride with GPS version 2.0 released

2011-07-02T00:00:00-07:00

We are excited to announce a significant milestone for us, the 2.0 release of ridewithgps.com.

Here is a brief overview of the changes:

The route planner and viewer has been rewritten from the ground up, and no longer uses Flash.
All uploaded file processing has been rewritten, resulting in more comprehensive support for the many variations of GPX and other file types.
New base layer options in the maps, including OSM maps and several topo maps (available in the top right of the map).
Entire site internationalized. This means we will be able to translate the site into other languages, and localize dates.
We touched everything and are in a much better position moving forward.
During this process we also expanded our server infrastructure. We have redundancy everywhere, room for lots of growth, and moving forward plan to be rock-solid stable and faster than ever.
The format and storage backend for all route and GPS data has completely changed to be faster and better suited for significant growth.

The release process was fairly complex, and a bit bumpy. We stayed up all night Thursday night trying to get non-latin characters displaying correctly, and fixed a number of bugs Friday and today. Our new route planner is a bit slow in IE 7 and 8, and to those users we highly recommend the Google Chrome Frame, an easy-to-install addon that uses the fantastic Chrome engine inside of IE. This means you don't have to switch away from IE to a different browser, and you get the primary benefits of using Google Chrome. This will speed up all of your web browsing if you are an IE user - especially viewing and planning routes on our site. That being said, performance is one of our foremost concerns. We want our site to be as fast as possible, so we will continue improving performance in the new planner.

To all the users who have contacted us over the past few days, with frustrations, congratulations, and bug reports: thank you! Your feedback has been invaluable.

If you have any feedback for us - feature ideas, bugs, or just want to chat - don't hesitate to get in touch. You can reach us at info@ridewithgps.com or by clicking the Feedback link on ridewithgps.com.

Instructions for Edge 305, 500, 705 and 800 now posted

2011-04-07T00:00:00-07:00

I finally got around to writing up some detailed information about how to use a Garmin Edge series GPS bike computer for navigating a route plotted using our bike route planner – I compiled help articles for each of the popular Edge series bike computers. You can now understand which file format is the best for turn by turn navigation on your particular GPS unit.

Instructions for
- Edge 305
- Edge 500
- Edge 605
- Edge 705
- Edge 800

The Edge 305/500 articles are works in progress. I will continue to improve the information in the articles with more detailed instructions, including pictures, in the coming weeks.

Additionally, if you don’t have City Navigator maps for your 605/705/800, I have provided instructions for downloading the excellent Open Street Map files for use as the base map on these devices. Enjoy!

Initial Premium Account Launch

2011-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

Finally, after months of delay we have “soft launched” our premium accounts. They are not fully functional yet, but we decided to take a leap and release them into the wild. They have replaced our old donation system. Don’t expect miracles if you sign up for a premium account (yet). There are some extra features like PDF cuesheet printing and better map printing, as well as access to our new Activity Center (a new way to manage your activities) however things remain a bit sparse. Within the next month we will release several new features such as an enhanced export for training purposes as well as direct write to Garmin Devices.

Additionally, anyone signing up for a premium account receives new features automatically. Phone support is also provided. If you are on the fence, feel free to wait a few weeks and see what we release!

Signup for a premium account!

Garmin Communicator and IE9

2011-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

With the recent release of IE9, I soon found out that users attempting to use Garmin Sync with IE9 were having trouble. We have implemented a fix, and everything seems to be working well now. Sorry for the hassle, but thanks for letting us know!

Full speed ahead: Motorcycle-USA, JS Route planner, beta updates

2011-02-22T00:00:00-08:00

Motorcycle-USA integration launched!

We worked with Motorcycle USA a while back to develop an integration so their users could search for and check out routes within their site. They recently launched it, check it out if you're interested: Motorcycle Ride Guide

New route planner and viewer

Currently we are working on a Javascript-based route planner and viewer. This means that there will no longer be anything in the way of our tools working on iPhones and iPads. The most significant impact will be that route editing will work great! This is the most important consideration in launching this work, because currently route editing is limited to fairly simple modifications. We want our route planning and viewing tools to be rock solid, bug free, and easy for us to extend and maintain. That is the goal with this work, and we are currently ahead of schedule and very happy with where this is going. Expect a new route planner and viewer before April.

Don't worry -- you will not have to learn something new. We believe that much of what we have done we have done right: elevation live updating and right there for you to see and interact with, easy and fast click-to-draw routes, and an interface that gets uses your browser window space as effectively as possible. The main impact you will see from this work once it is released are some performance improvements and added features, such as adding photos to your cuesheet entries and points of interest.

Beta continues with addition of Activity Center

Our beta is continuing and currently includes the printing of custom maps and cue sheets, and that recent addition of the Activity Center. We are going to be improving these features and working out the bugs as quickly as we can in order to get them out on our site for everyone to use.

Final thoughts

We have been working incredibly hard and will continue to do so... now at an accelerated pace. Please let us know if you have any concerns or questions. I wrote this quick post up because someone just reminded me that our blog has not been updated in a while -- any feedback is appreciated and does have an impact!

Garmin Connect moves to Bing maps

2010-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

Garmin Connect just recently moved to Bing based maps, and spurred a huge outcry from their userbase. The topic on Garmin’s forum has racked up a total of twelve pages today alone with many negative comments, including many people talking about how they will be moving on to other sites. Zack and I just want to say welcome to any Garmin Connect users looking for an innovative, customer centric free website dedicated to being the best way to log bike rides

Please, feel free to signup and give some suggestions for us. We love talking with our users and are happy to have you on our service!

Interesting calorie tracking site

2010-03-01T00:00:00-08:00

This isn’t directly Ride With GPS related, however I thought this calorie tracking website was a cool idea:

http://janeme.com

We have been thinking about how to best let users track their caloric intake and expenditure and the Jane Me folks have presented a neat model. It will be cool to see how their service evolves and I wish them well!

New issue page!

2010-02-26T00:00:00-08:00

We are happy to finally rollout a page where users can submit issues, suggestions and feature requests. The issues are public and can be voted and commented on. Voting will allow us to better prioritize requests. Additionally, it will provide a way for users to discuss issues or features, further helping craft the site into something people can feel involved in and proud of. The old feedback submission form is still functional, however we advise people to use the new issues page so that managing bug reports and feature requests is more efficient for our team.

Thanks for helping make our site great!

Fixed save functionality on route planner

2010-02-26T00:00:00-08:00

Some users were experiencing issues saving routes. It turns out the issue was with some versions of the Firefox web browser under Windows. Took me a while to hunt down, but it is fixed. We are sorry for the inconvenience this caused some users.

From 1.0 to 1.0.5, and What's Next

2009-11-22T00:00:00-08:00

Since our 1.0 release, Ride with GPS has been moving forward rapidly. We have received hundreds of suggestions and have been working hard to address bugs, improve usability, and build out important features. We opened up an application to join our beta program last month, and were pleased to receive several hundred submissions. This program will begin on December 1st, and we will be rolling features out to small groups of users in order to refine our upcoming training features quickly.

We have begun having scheduled releases in order to better handle suggestions, and more accurately let you know when things will be available. This is helping us stay organized and deliver features at predictable times. If you want to see our progress, you can always check out the changelog by clicking on the version at the top of the page. Right now it is 1.0.5, and clicking that will take you to a page that has a detailed list of everything that changes between each version. In this most recent release, most notably we have finally come out with time zone support (edit your settings to change your time zone), and the ability to upload as many TCX/GPX/KML files as you want at once! Just select them all, and see progress bars as they upload. Very easy and pleasant to use.

If you have a Garmin GPS unit though, there is no longer any need to get your data off with 3rd party software! Recently, we have released the Garmin Sync feature which allows you to directly sync your most recent rides from your Garmin GPS unit with our site. We are using this as an opportunity to kick off a series of video tutorials that will walk you through using our site to accomplish various things. If you have any suggestions for videos to make, let us know!

Subscribe to our Youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/ridewithgps (or just check out our first video below)

Reliability Issues Fixed

2009-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

Some of you may have noticed some reliability issues over the last two days. This was due to a package we use in background processing of certain items (your uploaded trips, creating the map images you see around the site) having a couple issues with how we were using it. I am happy to say that after spending 20 or so hours fixing some stuff, things should be much more stable!

If you see any reliability issues, please let us know as usual. A little delay in processing your uploaded file, or before a map image is created is normal, but if you see anything pushing past a few minutes give us an email. Also, re-uploading your TCX/GPX/KML files in this situation will just make duplicates :) You will know we are working on processing your file by the message on your profile page.

Version 1.0: Complete redesign, new features, new team member

2009-09-26T00:00:00-07:00

We just released a set of bug fixes and minor feature enhancements on top of our new redesign built with our new partner, Cameron Gaut! We have also opened up a form to apply to join our private beta, where you will be able to check out our premium features before they are released, and hopefully help us by providing feedback. By iterating through a couple releases with our beta group before going public with these training and ride analysis features, we will come out of this with our best set of features yet.

Here are the details:

Ride with GPS Newsletter, Volume 1!
Apply to take part in our premium features beta test
Changelog: Get here by clicking the version number at the top of Ride with GPS. It shows all the changes as we release them so you know what’s new.

Lastly, for the social media users out there, you should follow us on twitter here.

Improvements almost here!

2009-08-15T00:00:00-07:00

As some of you are aware, we have been hard at work on a large number of improvements to the site. We have brought a good friend of ours on board, Cameron Gaut, and he has crafted up a great new look and feel to the site. We’re in the process of wrapping up these changes now, and we are almost there.

Expect the new version of this site to come online in the next couple of days. Once it is live, please send us your feedback through the Ideas? link at the top of the page. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the improvements.

Better international support, nice Facebook links, etc.

2009-07-02T00:00:00-07:00

Quick and dirty summary of what we have going on: new user signup form is friendly for users outside the US. Existing users can edit their profile and set a specific latitude and longitude, using a map, to automatically zoom to when drawing a new route. Routes outside of US were hard to see because Google used red roads, and our route was drawn in red. Quick and dirty solution: routes/trips outside of US get a blue line for the route rather than red. US routes/trips still get the red. A better solution is in the works which will allow custom (and multiple) line colours when drawing a route. Also, internationally drawn routes would get US zipcode assigned to them. This has been fixed, and now a route should get a correct ‘city, state/province’ assigned to it. Lastly, pasting a link to a route or trip on your Facebook page is now cleaner. We tell Facebook to use a thumbnail of the route as a preview image. Check it out below:

We have a new redesign coming out in the next couple weeks that looks gorgeous. Cameron has done an amazing job in putting it together, and we are all very excited to see it go live. Additionally, I am spending a large amount of time expanding the route planner to encompass better cue sheet support, custom waypoints, geotagged photos and a few other things. Hoping to get this out the door with the redesign, but it is going to be tight! Stay tuned and we will keep everyone up to date.

More Accurate Elevations AND Static Map Images

2009-06-27T00:00:00-07:00

Over the last two weeks, I have been hard at work doing two things: making elevations more accurate, as well as providing static map images that can be embedded into forums. After some hard work, I am pleased to say that both goals have been accomplished! There were multiple reasons for inaccurate gain/loss figures for both uploaded and mapped rides. A more detailed description of the problem and solution can be found at http://cullenking.com and I will let you read that separately, since it involves a decent amount of math :)

Static map images are now available for any route or trip on the site. There are currently two default sizes: a 100×100 pixel thumbnail, as well as a 480×480 pixel image. They are stored as GIF’s, and can be accessed by navigating to any route/trip view page and copy/pasting the link that is provided to the right of the map. The map tiles are provided by the openstreetmap project, which is basically the wikipedia of the mapping world. We are sketching out plans for custom map image sizes, but will likely reserve that feature for premium accounts.

Here is an example of a nice trip in Lake Oswego:

A more detailed post will follow when I have a spare moment. Just wanted to get the word out for now!

New importer, route planner and route viewer

2009-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

It’s been a little while since we have posted an update, however this doesn’t mean we haven’t been at work! Within the last month we have pushed out some minor UI changes, bug fixes etc, as well as some not-so-minor. The two interesting changes that are now found on the site are an improved route planner and viewer, as well as a MUCH improved route importer.

The new route viewer and planner functions much the same as the old, however, the code behind has been written in a much simpler, cleaner and modular way. This is allowing us to work on several cool new features which should be released here shortly. With this more efficient and well thought out codebase, the route viewer and planner is about to get really cool.

Additionally, you can now import rides from Bikely. So, if you have a large amount of rides on either Map My Ride or Bikely, they can be imported with ease. Furthermore, the importer UI has been improved. You can now select which routes to import, as well as name and classify them inline. It is no longer necessary to edit each route after importing, in order to customize the route.

Keep enjoying the site!

New Layout!

2009-04-11T00:00:00-07:00

A month or so back, a friend and user of the site, Garron Hale, gave me some good ideas on redesigning the user page. The result is how the user page has looked for a while now. After that, he offered to mock up a new layout to see if we liked it. He put together a design that we are happy with, and I set to cut it up and implement it.

This design will give us more flexibility as we continue to develop the site, and we’re excited to release it. You can find him on RWGPS, but be sure to check out Garron’s site here: http://www.croptool.com.

Shoot us some feedback if you have any thoughts!

Heart rate zones

2009-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

We have introduced a couple new metrics recently, speed and heart rate zones. Max and average speed is shown when viewing trips, and you can toggle a speed histogram on the map with a checkbox at the top. I just now finished up the basics of heart rate zones.

Setting up heart rate zones is a really easy process, and once you do it you’ll see your heart rate zone durations in your Activity Log, and when viewing your trips. You can set them up by clicking on “Set up heart rate zones” next to the Heart rate checkbox in your Activity Log.

You can also toggle what information you’re looking at in the Activity Log now, by checking and unchecking the options.

If you have an opinion about the Activity Log, our use of heart rate data, or what more should be done, please leave a comment here or get in touch with us.

Gzipping components, including JSON

2009-03-21T00:00:00-07:00

In the vast majority of situations, you’ll want to do the little bit of extra processing to gzip components before sending them to the client. For anything text-based, the bandwidth saved is huge. We have been gzipping our CSS, Javascript, and HTML, but I noticed recently that we are not gzipping JSON. For just a 30 mile trip like this one I took on Monday, the JSON that gets passed to the client is about 120K. My client showed the JSON content type as application/json, but when I added that to my deflate.conf, it still was not gzipping JSON. After adding in text/json as well, it appears to be working as planned. Now my 120K worth of JSON is only 20K transferred, much better!

We’re using Apache 2 on Debian, and getting gzip enabled is as simple as symlinking /etc/apache2/mods-available/deflate* to /etc/apache2/mods-enabled. After doing that, modify the deflate.conf file to look like this:



<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

	AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/css text/plain text/xml application/x-javascript text/json application/json

	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0⁶⁷⁸ no-gzip

	BrowserMatch \bMSIE <img src=“no-gzip” alt="" />gzip-only-text/html

</IfModule>

Embed maps on your own site

2009-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

Just cooked up another cool feature as requested by a couple users, embeddable routes and trips! You can now embed any route or trip into your blog, website or other medium which allows an iframe to display. Rule of thumb: if you can embed a youtube video in the site, you can embed one of our maps.

Navigate to any route or trip page, and you will now see a small text box underneath the elevation information, labeled Embed URL. Just highlight the text inside, and copy to your site. You can change the width of the embed by editing the ‘width’ attribute of the iframe tag you just copied. By default it is set at 100%, but feel free to change it around. Things start looking crunched and ugly below about 550px though.

See for yourself:

Hope you are enjoying the updates!

Import From Map My Ride

2009-03-18T00:00:00-07:00

Given that one of the goals for Ride With GPS is to become the most used route and workout planner available, we fully expect to see many people migrating from other services to RWGPS. As a result, we figured it might be convenient for our users to automatically import the routes stored under their Map My Ride (MMR) account, without going through the hassle of exporting each route from MMR then uploading them one by one to our site. With that in mind, I took a little time to cook up this simple importer. The UI will be cleaned up here soon, and we will add support for other sites as they are requested by our users.

In order to use the importer, from your profile page select the “Import From…” link located above the main body of the page. This will bring you to some simple instructions, with a field for your MMR username and password. We do not store this information; it is only used for this one request. Any additional requests will require you to re-input your password.

After clicking “Start!”, the request will be generated and you will be redirected to your profile page. If everything goes well, the routes will be imported to your profile. Upon hitting refresh you should see feed items indicating success. If we run into any issues, a feed item will be generated notifying you of the issue. If any problems persist, we can always be contacted at ridewithgps@gmail.com.

Thanks for using our site!

Bad elevations data? We can help!

2009-03-18T00:00:00-07:00

One of the nice things about the design of Ride With GPS from a technical standpoint, is Zack and I have layed a very solid foundation for the site. As a result, adding additional features has become relatively simple. Today we were notified by a user that his elevation data seemed off on his uploaded route. After a brief look at his TCX file (TCX is Garmin’s proprietary log format), it appeared to be his GPS unit rather than how we handle the data. So, after a few minutes of coding, any route or trip can now have its elevation data reloaded from our (accurate to 1 meter) local elevation dataset! This new feature is simple to use.

First off, you might want to read some informative discussion regarding how bike GPS units record their elevation data, and possible reasons discrepancies between our calculations and your bike computers display might exist.

blog.mtbguru.com

To refetch elevations for any route or trip, all you need to do is access the edit page of the route or trip. From the previewer on your profile page, you can edit a route or trip by clicking the (edit) link next to the relevant entry in the previewer. From the route or trip view page, the Edit Route link is located on the right side of the map, below the route information. You must be logged in to see these links.

On the edit page, you would just check the box at the bottom of the form indicating the elevation data is bad. Hit the update button to submit the form, and your elevation data will be updated. Your profile should show a notification of success when the process is finished (in about a second). If there is any sort of issue, an error notification will show instead. Alert us of any errors and we will be happy to resolve them as always.

Thanks again for the feature requests/bug reports. These are extremely helpful in our ongoing work to make this site the best out there. Keep them coming!

New feature: Remember this

2009-03-15T00:00:00-07:00

Ever ran across something on the site that you wanted to go back to later? Now, when you are viewing users, routes, trips, gear, or photos, look for a link that says “Remember this”. It will save that item to your account, and shoot you right back to what you were looking at so your browsing is not interrupted.

I sometimes run across routes that I want to ride, or a cool bike I want to show one of my buddies later, or a user that is adding a bunch of interesting routes. Now I can just click Remember this, and I end up with a new tab on my profile page that looks like this:

We also added a “Support this site” link that is visible in this screenshot. This site is going to be our livelihood, but we are not quick to compromise our users’ interests. If you support what we’re doing and think this service is worth money, we greatly appreciate any support. If you don’t feel like paying, no big deal, there will always be room for free accounts. If you have any ideas on how we can improve, that is greatly appreciated as well. We value your input and will work to meet your needs.

Beginning of workout features

2009-03-14T00:00:00-07:00

One sought after feature is the ability to track training/workouts and see weekly and monthly summaries, as well as be able to set and track fitness goals.

Tonight I laid the groundwork for these features. Trips now default to a calendar view that show weekly and monthly summaries of distance, elevation gain, and duration. Soon this will be extended to allow recording any workout, such as weight lifting, rock climbing, swimming, etc. At the moment, here is how the calendar view looks:

I will be fleshing the workouts features out in the coming days, and would love to hear what you’d like to see out of it, or what you’d like to do with it. If you have any ideas, comment on this post or shoot me off an email and I will incorporate that into my work.

Works in IE6 and IE7 again

2009-03-13T00:00:00-07:00

The maps were broken in IE6 and IE7 for the last few days, so if you couldn’t see any maps that problem has been fixed.

Major updates pushed, more underway

2009-03-08T00:00:00-08:00

We just pushed out some pretty major updates, with many more underway. We are developing at a furious pace now and you will see this site improve dramatically as the weeks go by. Here is a rundown of some of the important changes that have taken place recently:

Routes and trips have been reorganized. Trips essentially are routes now, and the process of adding, editing, and viewing routes and trips has been redone.
Photos are easier to upload with our new uploading tool, and it is easier and faster to browse through photos.
The front page has been completely redone with more information.
Nearly all content is now accessible to non-logged in users.
We have now completely switched to Flash-based maps. This means your browsing experience is considerably faster now.
The Browse Routes page has more advanced searching, so you can search by route length and elevation gain and loss.
Many pages have been redesigned subtly or in a major way.
Everything now works in IE 6 and IE 7!

Additionally, a lot more work has been done that we are still testing. Here are a few things to look forward to in the next week:

New and improved route and trip viewer. More information, more analytical power.
A powerful notification system that delivers relevant site information to your page.
The ability to mark routes, trips, gear, and users as favorites so you can see them whenever you want from your page.

We are pushing hard to turn this site into the best social route sharing site on the internet. If you like what we are doing, now is the time to get involved! Email us at ridewithgps@gmail.com if you:

Have a vested interest in using the site, and have feature ideas that would make the site more useful to you.
Are interested in discussing a partnership or advertising relationship.
Would like to discuss promotional opportunities.
Have anything you want to talk to us about regarding Ride with GPS.

Finally, thanks for checking out our blog. As we continue development we will be keeping this blog updated regularly. In addition to anything else, we hope to begin posting in more detail about the software and technology behind Ride with GPS, so stay tuned!

Cleaned up some data

2009-02-16T00:00:00-08:00

Zack and I have been spending some time bug fixing, in preparation for a new release. Some of these bugs were in the mapping code, which caused a few routes to have bad elevations. Zack cooked up a cool task that went through and found all faulty elevation points, updating with the correct elevations. This fixed 26 routes! There are many more bugs we have been squishing, and we will provide a more detailed announcement when we are nearing an actual “release”.

Quick update

2008-10-22T00:00:00-07:00

We have been silently updating features on the site over the past few months, making it faster, and setting it up to support some really cool features we are working on, but also breaking some things in the process. We just fixed a couple of these:

Uploading photos for gear works again

Uploading GPS data works again

As usual, if you see any bugs, please use the Ideas? form in the top right. Thanks!

More features!

2008-01-28T00:00:00-08:00

Some additions to our work done yesterday, which will greatly improve gear and trip searchability. You can now decide what type of gear you are entering. You have two choices: methods of transportation, and accessories. Transportation types allow us to define what your planned route is good for, as well as to say what you took on a trip. Now you can search routes for ones that are compatible with your preferred activity. You can also input accessories such as GPS units, safety gear, running/hiking shoes etc, that can be taken on a trip in addition to your method of transportation.

We introduced a temporary bug: In our work towards efficiency yesterday, we accidentally broke your ability to add photos. We are working on fixing this issue, and will have it back shortly!

Snow in Eugene and RWGPS updates

2008-01-27T00:00:00-08:00

Looks like we finally received some cool weather here in Eugene, which made for a nice day of coding. Here are some of the updates:

You can specify what routes are for (riding a motorcycle, mountain biking, hiking, running, cycling, etc). Edit your routes and check off what they are for! This will help people find them.
No more horizontal scrollbar for most users that were experiencing this.
Improved efficiency (which translates to faster browsing) throughout the site.
Added a search by zip code with distance threshold on browse routes page.

More publicity!

2008-01-25T00:00:00-08:00

KOIN channel 6 news picked up the story from KVAL and ran the story at 6 and 11pm last night. Thanks Lisa!

8:00 PM: Fixed quotations in live conversations, now those messages don’t get lost. Many minor aesthetic improvements throughout the site. Added paged results for your inbox, as well as when viewing conversation messages. Fixed incorrect reporting of number of friends for a user.

KVAL CBS 13 Eugene releases story

2008-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

KVAL covered us this morning with a segment that aired live at 6AM this morning. View the link below for story and video.

KVAL – Full Article with Video
KATU Portland also is hosting the story

Development continues!

2008-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

7:07 PM: Added link back to a photo’s parent (gear, profile, group etc) when viewing a photo
6:30 PM: Added the Browse Routes page!
5:37 PM: Drawing routes is cleaner and less bug-prone now. Drawing very large (>300 miles) routes is still buggy, and it is being worked on.
3:55 PM: Was there a problem fetching elevation data for your route? Edit the route, and you’ll see a checkbox to re-fetch the elevation data and fix this.
2:30 PM: User searching is in place now, just click browse users and start typing in the name of who you’re looking for.
Various minor bugs have been quashed

Oregon Daily Emerald releases article and video

2008-01-15T00:00:00-08:00

A big thank you to the Oregon Daily Emerald for their excellent article on our project. We enthusiastically encourage any new users that were tipped off about us through the paper to give the Emerald your positive feedback on their story. The full text of the article can be found at the following link:

The Daily Emerald – Video

The Daily Emerald – Full Article