I was looking around for RideWithGPS, Strava, Wandrer etc type stuff and I don’t think we have anything since More Power is about training.
Anyway I just wanted to say that I fucking adore Wandrer. I’ve only been on it for a couple weeks and I’ve seen more random stuff than ever before. I now plan all my rides to maximize new roads and I’ve pretty much stopped doing my routine 20-mile after work ride in favor of going in different directions each day.
It’s terrible for training though because it makes it difficult to design a route where you can focus. But I don’t care, I just want lots of fun miles
Wandrer only gives you credit for new miles and then has leaderboards etc for people who have the most new miles by county, state, country, region by all time, year to date, and month to date. It also shows the percentage of the roads in the region you’ve selected that have been covered.
I have to admit I like an app that I have a chance at being #1. I will never crack even the top few thousand for all time since I signed up too late but by month or even year in Ulster County or NYS I have a chance.
The only thing I don’t like about it is there should be some system for marking some roads unsafe. Like I’m never going to deliberately ride Route 208, which is a 55 mph no shoulder road.
Gamification of the exp cuz points and leaderboard. Also get to see other rider’s heatmaps which is wow. Used to be more social as well but 2020 made everyone go into hiding but maybe that comes back soon.
Yeah, that’s a problem with any of these challenges. I’ve been working on my Veloviewer “max square” on-and-off over the past few years (up to 22x22! In theory, I can get to 29x29 before I hit insurmountable water boundaries). Spring 2020 was a good time to get squares that only contained state highways. The nice thing about the explorer square (basically OSM map tile) metric rather than every road segment is it’s not quite as tedious as exploring every dead-end in suburbia.
Ooooh that looks fun. I’ve been wanting something for motivational reasons that’s not KOM, but also not every-dead-end-road. Max square looks like it might do the trick, and with the terrain I have near me could mean several different activity types.
It looks like there’ll be a new Stages Dash soon. From the spy shots, it looks like it’ll use a quarter-turn mount and the buttons might be easier to use.
After years of Luddite protestation I recently started tracking my riding with Strava, but I have an older phone and sometimes my battery doesn’t make it through the day. What are some best practices or things I can buy to track my rides and still keep my phone alive? My brother gave me a Garmin watch (no GPS) with a broken strap but that’s all I have as far as devices.
Thx. @forr_loko my $50 watch - With a full charge new it could record 9-11 hours. I know I’ve run it most of a downhill day before. Wouldn’t count on it for more than 6-7 hours but it gets the job done and easily syncs to strava. Plus it does heart rate as a bonus.
I just checked and the Garmin watch I have does actually have GPS. It’s a different model but pretty similar. I’m going to see what I can get out of this.
