since i got the bike i had become quite keen on tracking those ‘rides’ out in terms of calculating what kind of fitness it was doing for me. i know that every time i get back from the station even those five miles little bike rides felt like i was doing myself some good – even if i had a back covered in sweat from my heavy laptop bag (oh my kingdom for an ipad and mini wireless keyboard)

it started out for me with the runkeeper application on my iphone 3g which worked ok but i found myself with problems with the gps locking on and getting really random results with how many miles i had done and seeing straight line jumps on the map when the gps signal had dropped out. that said, it could have quite easily been problems with the gps on my phone as after 18 months the phone was starting to show real wear from all the times that i had dropped it.

after purchasing the bike i had decided on creating a separate twitter account for it at @carrerafit so that people would not get constantly spammed in the twitter main timeline (some would argue the amount i post anyway it would not make much difference) for my rides out and completed miles. i’ve been quite keen to keep a record of the miles i was doing.

then, news dropped that the iphone4 was to be released so i quickly put up my iphone 3g in for recycling with o2 and got my £173 back for the phone – not a bad deal i thought for a run down 18 month old 16gb iphone that could go to a better home elsewhere after recon. i had good service out of that phone.

two weeks after selling the phone and realising that i would not have the funds to purchase an iphone4 straight away i was left with a massive media making smartphone hole in my life that i needed to do something about – after 18 months of having this device attached to me day after day the sudden cold turkey of mobile device loss left me craving for a replacement. Not having the funds to purchase another i asked a few friends if i could trial loan an android based phone and i have been using the htc hero for my gowalla, photos and gps tracking action.

At first thou i did have a few problems with the android based phone because runkeeper that is available on the android phone requires v2.+ to run. the htc hero was sadly running v1.5 of the android os and because the phone was on trial i did not feel i had the right to flash the rom with the latest 2.1/2.2 android firmware that i found on the interwebz. i had to find another solution to my gps tracking problems and came across a great application called endomondo (thanks @iamkat) which did work with v1.5 and was really simple and found the gps satellites everytime on the htc hero android phone. i’ve been using this ever since until last week when i came across dailymile (doh, i hate finding new shiny shiny sites sometimes)

dailymile (again thanks @iamkat) is a lovely looking web2 style community based workout website that tracks your runs, cycling and a bunch of other activities in a really elegant and stylish way. the one problem for me right now is that you need either a nike+ or garmin device to get the most out of it – that’s annoying me a little and i really hope they work on bringing in data from runkeeper and endomondo because i’m quite keen on staying with the endomondo solution at present.

that said @iamkat did highlight me to a great garmin gps watch device that looks ideal for not having to worry about keeping the phone charged up and ready to go and having it on my wrist could be great to track all those other little walks you do during your day – they all add up and i’m quite the power walker.

of course i do not have the £230 to purchase a gps watch and even if i did i have more pressing financial things to worry about to afford such a device. i’m quite happy with having my mobile phone collect the data at present as i’m always aware of charging it and the little holder space on my bike is more than good enough to carry it in. although, i have been thinking that instead of having an android backup device that i might entertain the iphone 3gs 32gb as the new backup phone to the iphone4 when i’ve saved enough pennies because you can get a custom case by dahon for that. the speed bump over my 3g would be better and i’m really missing audioboo on the iphone – it just does not compare to the android version!

quicklinks

http://dailymile.com (src: @iamkat)
- uber sexy bubbly layout and great tracking/community

http://endomondo.com
- really simple iphone/android gps tracking app/site

http://runkeeper.com
- original program, still like it but tracking was clunky

http://bit.ly/9UgnRP
- the garmin forerunner 405cx (£229) gps watch