Cycling Apps for Droids...

[The Gnome]

My wife gave me a Droid for xmas and as I have never ever wanted a cell phone thingy I am attempting to justify it via my cycling training. Was wondering about some of the apps out there and if folks here have used any of them and which is best. I noticed there are various gps apps to track your ride, some free and some for sale. Anybody been using these things and might know which is the best one to get going on? Thanks!

 

[cav4life]

i suggest cardio trainer

I use cardio trainer, its is a free app. w/a gucci paid version. i have however, only used the free application as it seems to be plenty for me (im not that serious about my riding, im trying to be as good as i can be/get in great shape, but i cant justify spending $10 on an app that basically only gives you interval training advice, when their are free interval training applications on the android market, its not like i am a professional racer).
i have yet to find an android application that is solely for cycling, and i think one is long overdue. but cardio trainer works well for me because i also run, and cross country ski, and you can even manually input workouts (which i do when i go to the gym). when you use your droids gps w/cardio trainer on a ride: the application maps where you went on google maps, uploads all of your info to google health, and it even graphs your speed over time, in addition to giving you many pieces of information such as calories burned, distance, avg, high, and low speeds, and the app will go so far as too sort out the information monthly for you. another fun feature of cardio trainer are leaderboards, which is always fun to see how you stack up against random germans and japanese people.
I have also used runtastic, another free application which is pretty similar to cardio trainer, just more basic.
hope you enjoy your HTC (im assuming phone!

 

[The Gnome]

gee...I am not sure I want to go up against the germans...the japs I think I might do fine with, unless they are under 50 or so...so i don't think this cardio app is for me...anyone else?

 

[biokemguy]

My Tracks

I use my tracks from google. Its free. It gives distance, speed, elevation, average speed...etc. It also records a map of your ride that can be shared on google maps. It makes a nice plot of your speed overlayed with the elevation profile.

I like it pretty well, but since I'm mostly interested in the elevation and gradient data I wish it were a bit more accurate. It reports max and min slope and if I go up and down the same hill it will report different numbers. Plus the numbers themselves aren't believable.

My favorite local climb (Chantry for those in SoCal) is reported to have a max slope of 34.5% when in reality its probably closer to 8% at the steepest and that is a generous estimate. On a different day, same climb, the max gradient was reported to be 11.2% These issues are really due to the GPS accuracy and not the app, so if you don't want heart rate or cadence data it's a good app to just keep track of your rides.