Cycling: Map My Ride

[photo (by WDFloyd): my Gary Fisher 29er hardtail, parked along Shoal Creek]

From the age of 8 until about the age of 16, I biked a lot. Then I got a car. Mysteriously, the biking stopped. Then, in November, I decided I should work out more. I bought a Gary Fisher (or more accurately, Gary Fisher collection from Trek) hardtail mountain bike from the good folks at the Bicycle Sport Shop on South Lamar. Featuring 29" tires and Fisher's Genesis 2 ("G2") aluminum frame, this bike seemed to handle well and be capable of rolling over all sorts of obstacles. Biking resumed.

My Fisher mountain bike is a lot of fun to ride both on and off road. However, I recently found myself riding on paved surfaces quite a lot. A road bike seemed liked a good idea. Thus, I bought a Trek from the good folks at Mellow Johnny's. And I love it.

I rode it around downtown a few times and around Barton Hills. Then, on Monday night, after going to a reception adjacent to the TASA Midwinter Conference, I took the Trek for a night ride. It ended up being very long. And that is when I became curious about distance, which led to the discovery of Map My Ride.

Map My Ride classic allows you to set points on a Google street map with simple mouse clicks. You just drop and drop your route onto the screen, and instantly you know how far your ride was. While a cycle computer can tell you how far you've gone, this application does more by letting you map out prospective rides to find one which fits into the distance and area of town you want. The program will even figure out elevation. You can then save these routes for future reference.

Anyway, while the "classic" version is cool, and the new (Beta) version looks like it has a lot more tools for recording your progress with workouts, rides, training programs, and things of that nature. If you like to share, there are forums. Moreover, there is a mobile interface as well, so you can work with Map My Ride while you're out in the wild.

Check out either version if you're curious about distances of prospective routes, keeping logs of your rides, or you just tend to be obsessive about such things.