It sometimes seems that if you’re not jumping on the iPhone wagon then you have no right to call yourself a cycling geek, or, in fact a human being. Just to reinforce that idea we have another couple of applications and whizzy things that allow you to gather and use more information that you could possibly really need in order to do something as simple as riding a bike.
First-up there’s an app, carbon fibre (obviously) handlebar mount and web application that are collectively being known as Bike Brain (although it would be cuter if it was called Brian). This allows you to gather all the possible information you might have from your HRM, Powertap, and whatever else you like to have attached to your bike to show how unfit you are and how little power you can put through the wheel and display it all on a website for your training needs. It’s only going to be available in the summer, so will avoid the inevitable problems with drenching your phone in the rain. Unless, of course, it rains this summer, and that’d never happen.
Call me a Luddite, but I’m really not that impressed by yet more ways of collecting this information and it seems to detract from the real point of riding. Still, perhaps I’m just not enough of a carbon fetishist, or that into monitoring my heart rate wherever I go? I just like riding my bike.
However, I was more excited by another iPhone application which, when it’s available, will allow you to see where you are on 200 year-old maps. “Walking Through Time” will let you do exactly that, or even take a ride along an old route. Even if you don’t go anywhere it’ll be great for pretending you remember “when all this was fields”. It might be worth remembering to switch to a modern map if you want to navigate for real, otherwise you may well find yourself hitting the wall, and not in an endurance athlete way.
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