When I'm not playing the role of über-geek to my friends and business associates there's little I like to do more than bike.  Most people would say that I'm fairly serious about cycling – I've climbed some of the steepest mountains (called "Cols") on the routes of the Tour de France, ridden many "Century" (100-mile) rides, typically ride about 150 miles a week and have ridden from San Francisco to Los Angeles in six days with a group of guys that made it all seem like too much fun to be legal.

OK – I guess I am serious about it (something about seeing all those numbers in print that's downright frightening).  But if there's a way to combine my love of all things geek/gizmo/gadget with cycling I am truly in hog heaven.  So color me happy, folks, because I have found Nirvana in a tiny application loaded into a cell phone that tracks my bike rides via GPS and then uploads the results to a web site without me having to do anything other than press the "Stop" button on the phone. 

Now, let's get one thing straight before we go any further – being a certified data freak you should know that I already have a very sophisticated instrument (actually a mini-computer) mounted on my bike that tracks mileage, feet climbed, speed, heart rate, percentage grade of hills, etc.  But the hassle of getting that information into the computer borders lies somewhere between a nuisance and a pain the same place I hurt after a 100-mile ride.  I want hassle-free, brainless, press-button convenience… which is exactly what I got when I tested the AllSportGPS application from Trimble Outdoor. 

The good folks from Trimble sent me a test unit because, for now, their system only works on Sprint/Nextel phones (and only those that are GPS-enabled, obviously) and I'm an AT&T/Cingular subscriber.  When I received the Sanyo SCP-7050 it looked like a pretty plain vanilla phone to me, but the secret sauce was in the software (isn't that always the case?) that they had already loaded into the phone.  In the "My Content" folder was an application called "AllSportGPS" which required a minimum of time to set up and get going… even on a cell phone I think the whole thing took about three minutes.  So I got everything ready to roll (pun intended) and charged up the phone.

The next day I went out for one of the rides that people in other parts of the world would call "epic" but is, thankfully, the average weekend ride for my buddies and me.  Fifty-five miles of spectacular scenery, steep, steady climbing, lightly traveled roads and fabulous weather.  With me, in my saddlebag, was the Sprint phone with the AllSportGPS application.  Before leaving home I simply powered up the phone, navigated to the application, selected the activity (there are options for mountain biking, hiking and others as well as road biking) and pressed "OK."  In a few seconds the unit had connected with the satellite to get a starting position and indicated it was ready to go. 

I didn't do anything else to the unit the entire time I was out.

When I got home after the ride I removed the phone, clicked "Stop" and the software did the rest.  It uploaded all of the data over the air, automatically, to the AllSportGPS web site, having automatically calculated the time and distance of the ride, amount of rest time (we took an extra-long coffee stop that day), feet climbed, etc.  It displayed the entire route on a Google map right there on the web page along with the statistics and gave me the ability to edit the name of the route, add a description, tinker with some other information, share it with friends, save it to compare my time with other rides on the same route in the future and much more.  Push-button bliss.

You can see the route that I traveled along with the other data HERE.  But if you want to see the absolute coolest part, the part that will make you giggle and twist in your seat as if you were actually on the bike, you need to click the "View in Google Earth" option.  Seeing the entire route plotted over real terrain and having the ability to tilt, pan, zoom, rotate, etc., was hypnotically good fun. 

The application is downloadable and can be run on any Sprint GPS-enabled phone.  Trimble says that they are already in discussions with other carriers to make it work on their networks.  The AllSportGPS site allows you to upload data from other GPS devices or manually add data to track your activities, but for about $6/month and the convenience of having this as part of a device that you're already carrying instead of adding yet another electronic device to your bike is an incredible bargain.  If you bike, hike, run or engage in any other serious outdoor activity that covers any distance, it's worth its weight in ibuprofen. 

AllSportGPS is a killer application for anyone that's active and has an interest in improving their performance or just adding a whole new level of enjoyment to their activity. 

In short, AllSportGPS is one companion you will certainly want to have along for every ride.