cyclist2000

I track my distance, time, food intake, carbohydrates, and medications. I use "Track It" and "Cyclemeter". My most important thing is to know how many carbs that I eat and how much insulin to take.

jefnvk

I use Strava or an app with Strava upload capability for everything.

Generally all I care about is time and distance, but its nice to have track and elevation on tour data.

cyccommute 

I track mileage, time, average speed and bicycle in a Week-at-a-glance calendar each year from my wired computer. At the end of the year, I enter all the data into a spreadsheet and, mostly, look at commuting/weekday rides. I've been keeping track since 1988. I have 29 filled out calendars in a file drawer at home. Each year gets a spreadsheet of its own but the data from the previous years is carried forward in the spreadsheet.

About 5 years ago, I went through all my spreadsheet data and looked at each bike I own or have owned and looked at the yearly mileage. This all goes into the spreadsheet that contains all the data on the bikes I currently own along with all the data on components and what I paid for those components as well as estimated replacement costs. In addition, I keep a record of serial numbers in that same spreadsheet. Any relevant receipts for larger component parts (frames, fork and wheels mostly) go into the file drawer with the calendars.

I get to see at a glance which bikes I've used the most and which I've used the least. The least used bike (out of 38 total bikes) is a Montague folder that I owned for 16 years and road 420 miles. It was a awful bike! It also the bike I used the least and owned the longest.

I've had occasion to use the spreadsheet on component data a couple of times when bikes have been stolen. Having the main receipts and the spreadsheet helped me get full value of the bikes from my home owner's insurance.

indyfabz

Only when touring. I use a simple bike computer.

Kedosto

OMG! I never would have guessed I was surrounded by so many OCD forum members. All the effort to keep track of miles?! Seriously? Spreadsheets, logs, Strava... sheesh. What comes of the info? Does it serve an actual purpose? Don't get me wrong, I keep track of my miles too, but only -- ONLY -- for maintenance purposes. And when I say "keep track," I mean VERY loosely. I make note of my yearly mileage around Dec 31, and note mileages for chains, tires, and brake pads. I just want to know when something is due, or how long a part lasted, etc.

Example; Two years ago I started using a dynamo hub and scribbled down my odo reading (wrote it on the box) at the start. Over the weekend I noticed what feels like a bit of bearing slop (wear) so I dug out the box and did the math (~12,200 miles). Not bad for a $55 dyno hub. That's the extent of my mileage tracking.

Wow. Compliments to the dedicated.

-Kedosto

caloso

Seems to me that it takes more effort to note mileages for individual components than it does to plug a Garmin into a usb port and click upload.

Jarrettsin

But you still tracked!

I think the answers have been great, I expected a wide range. The data can be useful as stated above, it's also interesting and can be motivational. I know from other hobbies/interests if you go to overboard it gets to be work and I want to keep it fun. I will be using a spreadsheet to track some basics from my devices this year and will take it from there!

OldsCOOL

I like to track elevation gain, feet in climbing. Also, toss in watching miles and time. I like TT style riding, short courses up to 40miles.

Steve B.

Well it's an automated process for the past decade or so. I used Endomondo for a while, but the Garmin Connect/RWGPS system is slick and has greater uses. Thus even if I never looked at it, it's only a one-button push to save.

I do have a plethora of riding options locally, thus do look at the past ride logs to look for something I haven't done recently. I'm also the un-official "ride leader" of my group of 5-6 riding buddies. RWGPS is pretty good at displaying past rides and I use it frequently to map out new rides in areas where I'm not familiar with the roads (remote rides), so use the Garmin navigation function all the time. And today I used the map function as my ride went down a road that was closed for construction and I need to see where the detour took me.

And it keeps track of mileage per bike, gear data, etc.... Useful info. I wouldn't easily get off a written log and I don't have to do much typing to record this info.

cyccommute 

Speaking only for myself, I use my data on a regular basis. I break it down into estimates on mileage saved on vehicles, gas saved on those same vehicles, carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere and money I've saved. As you can see from my above post, I've also used my data for insurance purposes.

Since 1988, I have saved

Gas: 5100 gallons
Gas money (at $1.75 per gallon): $9000
Carbon dioxide: 98 tons
Vehicle mileage: 72000 mile

My riding has also saved me many miles put on a vehicle which has deferred my purchase of a few vehicles as well. Since 1988, I've only owned 4 vehicles. One of them I've had since 2002 and I'm not planning on replacing it anytime soon. Assuming at least 2 vehicle purchases compared to most people, that alone has saved me from around $50,000. I haven't had a car payment since about 2002 as well.

CliffordK

I just use Strava running off of a spare cell phone.

Since I don't differentiate a lot between bicycles and cargo vs going light, my speeds and times are all over, and that is just fine.

I had a couple of KOMs, but I think I'm down to just two left now. Perhaps I'll try to snag a couple back, and pick up a couple of new ones this year.

For century rides, I can more less remember each one, but they're pretty easy to pick out using the graphical logs.

atwl77

I don't do any of this "tracking" thing. All I do is hit the Start/Stop button and the Garmin/Strava does all the tracking for me.

sw20

Free version of Strava does all I need!

qcpmsame 

Man, its CDO, at least get the order correctly alphabetical

Bill

pdlamb

I started noting daily mileage on a calendar, eventually moving over to weekly desk calendars so I could add a short description of each ride.


Then one year, "working" the week between Christmas and New Year's, I decided to put it into a spreadsheet. For a while I played with various graphs (accumulated annual miles, weekly miles, monthly miles and rides, etc.); they're generally useless, but sort of fun to watch.


Recently I started recording my rides on Strava (to skew the results of some fair weather bike commuters who take some amazingly circuitous routes to avoid city streets I consider eminently suitable for cycling), and Garmin Connect (to hook into weight loss apps). About the only thing I use those for is to see if I'm keeping my pulse down to a reasonable level, but there's lots of data (not to be confused with information) in those databases.


I also track mileage for major maintenance actions (mostly chain and tire swaps).


Why not all the other stuff? I'd rather ride than record. Take average speed for example: I'd have to note whether it was a recovery ride, intervals, or endurance ride; climbs, group or solo ride (and sometimes the splits), wind, temperature and clothing in the winter. I don't get enough useful information out of a record to make it worth while to write it all down.

mercator

When I first joined BF, I started tracking all my rides in a spreadsheet, for the same reason the OP indicated - those statements of yearly mileage made me wonder where I sat in the general hierarchy of cycling dedication. I think I hit 9000 km that year. Later on I got a garmin and used strava/garmin connect which was interesting as well.

But time moves on and I've sort of lost interest in it, possibly because I don't ride as many miles as I used to. Now I only have records of the rides I do with the garmin turned on, which excludes all of my commuting, errands, etc.

Flip Flop Rider

daily miles, monthly miles, yearly miles. also route, pace, temp/weather

no heart rate

garmin connect is the website. bought a $100 garmin edge 200 gps. it's been going strong for a few years

Reynolds 

I track my kms - every km counts - on an Excel spreadsheet, a different font color for each bike and do a yearly total. Maybe time is more useful, but I started that way years ago.

canklecat

For me, it's a way to track my overall relative health. But I don't have a weight issue (if anything I tend to undereat). So I track my performance over time to gauge my fitness.

I was coming from a seriously low level of fitness in 2015 when I resumed cycling. I was disabled for several years after my car was t-boned at highway speed. Walked with a cane for about 10 years. Couldn't lift anything heavier than about 5-10 lbs, or carry it far. On top of that I have asthma that's gotten worse with age, and Hashimoto's, an auto-immune disorder that primarily affects the thyroid but has a grab bag of weird symptoms during flare ups.

So tracking my bike rides and walks gives me a more objective gauge of my relative fitness than my subjective impressions of how I feel. Helps when I need to report stuff to the doctor. Auto-immune disorders are a pain in the neck to evaluate subjectively. Sometimes I feel great for days. Other times, miserable for weeks. Or so it seems. But tracking my exercise eliminates some subjectivity. How bad could I have been feeling on such and such week if I managed to ride 100 miles and set some new PRs? Or, conversely, how good could I have felt when for one or two weeks I could barely walk a mile or two slowly?

I used to try to keep written diaries but wasn't consistent. Activities apps make it easier.

When I resumed bicycling in 2015 I could barely ride 400 yards without wheezing and gasping for breath and usually had to stop a few times just to ride 1-3 miles around the neighborhood. Took me a month of riding almost every day to reach 3 consecutive miles without stopping.

Over time that increased to 5 miles, then 10, 20... now I can usually ride 30 miles without stopping before neck pain from the old injuries forces me to get off and stretch and massage my neck and shoulders for a few minutes.

I didn't worry much about speed the first couple of years. It came naturally. But I plateaued at around 12 mph for months.

I got a road bike last summer and worked harder on interval training. Helped a lot. My average speed improved to 16 mph over distance. For me, that's fast.

But for the past couple of months I've been feeling run down again and my thyroid glands are swollen like golf balls. My average speed has decreased to 14 mph, and I feel like I'm putting in the same effort. So Strava, etc., give me some objective data to accompany how I'm feeling subjectively.

And it beats heck out of a written diary filled with entries like "Boo-hoo, I feel awful today." All I need to do is check my averages on segments I ride hundreds of times a year to evaluate how my body is responding.

79pmooney

I created an Excel spreadsheet years ago. For every year I have a tab. Each row is the next day of the year. Each column is (from left margin to right) Day, Date, Miles, Bike (by its two letter initials), Elevation, description of route, comments (often how hard I went or how I felt), comments on the bike (gears, tires, etc).

To the right of that I have a column under "Miles" for each bike (triggered by the bike's initials, column 4), then a "1" gets entered under number of rides, then that ride's elevation. The month's summaries for all the bikes come back to the right hand columns. Same for year at the bottom.

Below all that, I have lifetime summaries for all my bikes. I also track fix gear and freewheel/cassette miles. On separate tabs, I have lists of my common routes and roads and elevations. It doesn't take long to enter my common rides. For new and longer rides, a Thomas Guide and string work well. Yeah, not high tech. I miss a lot of elevation. (I always get a laugh out of the reports that we did 500 feet of climbing on rides with no hills at all! For me, those get recorded as 0.) My miles are not accurate after the decimal place. But this record is safe from lost or zero'd out bike computers and does not require any electronics on the bike at all. (I ride to get away from all that.)

And it gets fun. The miles pile up. My lifetime's are impressive. They are impressive even if they are off by a few thousand miles. It gives me incentive at times. Two years ago, I upped my mileage a little and planned my rides for months to get my fixed gear and geared bikes' (figurative) odometers to roll over the same day. That day I did 30 miles on one bike and 20 on the other. Last year I was focused on my house and missed recording a lot of my rides. Made some conservative guesses but still, it was a low mileage year. (The Cycle Oregon I was signed up for being canceled didn't help.) This year I plan to get back on it. Funny, I was making up the next year's calendar on the Excel sheet just now and saw your thread!

Ben

locolobo13 

cheap bike computer. Miles & time go into a spreadsheet, separated by bike. At the end of the year I summarize the numbers and start a new spreadsheet.

I also like the free Strava. Great way to record a map of a ride. You can also do an activity search to find where others have ridden.

Jim from Boston

On my Excell spreadsheet I track:

• Miles: Goals for the day, with weekly and YTD totals (predictable for commutes and intended long training rides), and actual miles ridden. The spreadsheet then calculates my compliance to the goals (in %). I use red font for my carbon fiber road bike, and black font for the beater aluminum road bike, with studded tires on all winter. Annually I try for but have not attained 5000 miles.
  
  
• Average speed: Not so much to consciously increase, but to use as a measurement of fitness; ridden over pretty standard routes.
  
  
• Average cadence: Again as a measure of progress. I use Cadence and Relative Perceived Exertion (RPE) as my training tools.
  
  
• Route (commuting and training): I have four usual commuting routes with code names, and I record variations I do to increase miles. This helps me plan routes when I follow a 10 Week Century Training Schedule with daily mileage quotas published years ago in Bicycling Magazine.
  
  
• Wind speed and direction: Either as recorded on a weather station, or on a personal 1 to 6 scale (headwind / tailwind) based on flying flags; to explain variations in average speed.
  
  
• Temperature at starting point: (ambient, not windchill), and levels of dress, on a personal 1 (hot) to 6 (cold) scale. Useful to establish a record, especially to decide what to wear at the change of seasons.
  
  
• Arrival time at work: To better schedule my commute. I once had a field entitled “5 AM checkpoint” to note where I was at that time. In recent years it’s been, “6 AM checkpoint.”
  
  
• Resting Heart Rate: As a measure of cardio fitness, taken in the AM soon after rising, while calmly sitting. When I’m in good shape it’s about 48 or less.
  
  
• Excuses (not to ride): Too frequent…say no more.
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by SammyJ signature

  I have NEVER regretted going on a ride;
  I have often regretted not going when I could have!

kcblair

I use Garmin Connect and Strava, along with Sporttracks (ST). ST. is great for all my courses, and helps creating new ones with the mileage points. Also mileages on all the bikes and when chain maintenance is due. Garmin Connect is only useful for my wife, so she can find me if an emergency arises. I'm mostly interested in mileage, altitude , and Heart Rate data. Strava for friends use.KB.