Strava Cycling Review: A Must Have App For Cycling Lovers
I’ve always been an avid cyclist and I strongly believe cycling is one of the best ways to stay fit and build your stamina. While I’ve used a number of cycling apps on my iPhone, I’ve been searching for that elusive app which offers a complete riding experience coupled with accurate measurements and full social [...]
I’ve always been an avid cyclist and I strongly believe cycling is one of the best ways to stay fit and build your stamina. While I’ve used a number of cycling apps on my iPhone, I’ve been searching for that elusive app which offers a complete riding experience coupled with accurate measurements and full social integration. I had heard of Strava as a company which forced users to have a dedicated GPS device or use separate apps to track their rides and then upload the data. The company recently released it’s Strava Cycling iPhone app and there was no way I could resist reviewing it.
Once installed, the app prompts you to sign up for an account.
As is the norm with most social media enabled apps these days, Strava Cycling lets users sign in using their Facebook credentials using Facebook Connect.
Once you are signed in, you can start recording your time by hitting the Play button in the New Ride tab as shown below.
Once you complete the ride, the results would appear in the Feed tab. The ride details contains a number of useful parameters such as ride time, distance covered, elevation gain, average and maximum speed as shown below.
The Strava Cycling app is pretty flexible in terms of customization. You can configure the desired units and email alerts using the Settings tab as shown below.
The “Profile” tab contains all your riding stats from the last month of riding. The app does a wonderful job of keeping track of the number of total rides, miles ridden and feet climbed. Your profile also shows the following additional stats – average rides per week, average distance biked per week, average time spent biking. I love the way Strava Cycling breaks down the cycling stats based on month, year and overall records.
All in all, I liked Strava for two reasons – simplicity and accuracy. The app is extremely simple to use with zero learning curve – just what cyclists and riders need. Secondly, I matched the Strava app stats with a GPS recorder and I was amazed by the accuracy of the app. However, I would like to see future versions of Strava offer better social media integration with the ability to share cycling information between fellow cyclists over Facebook and Twitter.
Despite those limitations, I would still regard Strava Cycling as one of the best cycling apps that I’ve used till date.
This article, Strava Cycling Review: A Must Have App For Cycling Lovers, was originally published at simonblog.com.