Hi Folks,

I have a GPS, bike routing question. I’m a former cat 3 dude, now a recreational cyclist. Life has gotten busier and I find myself riding alone more often. As a “directionally challenged” person, I tend to stick to the few safe routes that I know, but I would like to try more routes that I don’t know. I’m hoping that between cue sheets (maybe displayed on my phone), or gps on my phone, I might be able add up some new routes to my repertoire.

I’ve tried a few things like loading routes into Google maps and Strava which doesn’t show the street names but shows segment names with goofy names like “attack over the bridge” or “sweatshop hill” etc. rather than actual street names. I’ve also tried taking some of these routes and converting them to Google Map friendly KML files but still, no street names. I’m playing around now with the ridewithgps.com website and apps. Still trying to figure out what’s going to work.

All I really want to do is open a pre ordained route like this one (Vino Velo - Philadelphia, Penna) and either get turn by turn directions on my phone and/or have a cuesheet display nicely on my phone.

Does anyone have a tried and true method that accomplishes that? RidewithGPS looks promising but I would like feedback on your personal experience or suggestions on the best way to work with routing on my iPhone.

Thanks so much in advance!

Greg

I could tell you on a Garmin, but that's not useful to you.

Is there a reason you want to define your ride ahead of time, then go stick to it with turn-by-turn directions? If you're doing this for recreation, could you get away with going out and riding, seeing where your mood takes you, and then using your phone to find your way back to familiar ground? That's actually a much easier task to handle with free phone apps.

I have a new iphone 6 and tried all the apps you listed and a few more, but didn't really get any of them to work the way I want. I picked up an older garmin 705 and now I click on a route I like save a file then load it to my garmin where I get turn by turn directions. If I really want to get fancy I load that route into ride with gps and add custom cue sheets for water stops, restrooms, coffee breaks etc food stops etc on longer routes before uploading to the garmin. My phone is still with me, but it sits in the saddle bag in case I need to make a phone call.

I've been using Runtastic Road Bike Pro ($2.99 I think) and I think it's the cat's meow. I can go onto their website and pre define a route, open the app and hit refresh and it loads in. Get on the bike and fire up the route and make sure my blue dot stays on the blue line. Not sure about turn-by-turn but it gives a visual map with the route. It does drain some battery because the screen is on.

These are $13 and 3 oz, and will more than double the ride time on a typical phone.

cyclemeter

Cyclemeter. You just have to open the file on the iPhone and then "Open in.." Cyclemeter. Cyclemeter gives you the option to accept it as either a ride you've ridden (i.e. timed etc...) or you can accept it as a route. I've done this hundreds of time with RidewithGPS. Works great.

In Cyclemeter, you set the route you want to ride and it's there for you in map view.

Whenever we go somewhere on a biking vacation, we plan out our rides in advance with RidewithGPS. Then we download the routes into Cyclemeter and we're ready to ride.

J.