New Smartphone App to Track your Bike Park Sessions

17 Jun 2015

It seems everything these days requires a 'quantifiable-self' angle. Metrics and stats about where you've been, what you've done, what you ate and so on! Obviously outdoor sports are a prime example of this, and there are a few options available if you want to track your every move when you ride your bike. But, most of these - certainly the better / more common ones, are actually products that were designed to target a different user group - runners for example. On that account, industrious mountain bikers recognized the benefits and wanted something to do a job for them, so adopted these products and started using them on the trails. These 'tools' have often provoked divided-opinions amongst mountain bikers   just look at the fuss caused by Strava and the love it or hate it debate... 'don't get stressed about stats man, just ride for the flow and the lifestyle!' Fair point, but the fact remains there IS a demand, and plenty of riders enjoy keeping track of what they do   monitoring progression, or engaging in a bit of friendly competition. So now, there's BikeParkPRO. A real viable alternative to Strava - GPS tracking and statistics designed and built specifically for the bike park community.

BikeParkPRO launches in the Apple iStore next week - so only available for iPhone users at the beginning, although an Android version is following on rapidly. And it costs nothing - the app is FREE! The app itself does the work initially - show up at the bike park and open the app and it will autimatically detect which of the participating bike parks you happen to be at! So you hit record, put your phone back in your pocket, and get riding - a set-and-forget concept. At the end of the session stop the recording and you'll be prompted to upload your data (you'll need wifi or data connection for this bit), or save it for later if you're missing that connection. After upload you'll then receive your #BPRO Shred Sheed - a cool snap-shot summary of the key stats from your riding session, which you can ping out on social media to brag to the world about which bike park you've just been shredding. And all this is free too - no cost for a standard user account.

Things then get more interesting when you head to the BikeParkPRO website to check out your data on there... For initial release, you need to register and log in (to both the app and website) using your Facebook profile, which is fine because let's face it we all have one! OK maybe not all of us then, which is why normal email signup functionality is also not far behind. Once you're logged in online, you'll see your recorded session in all it's glory, with the stats you'd expect to see like vertical and distance, total laps (far more meaningful to the bike park community!), and of course a map view of everywhere you've been. But the really cool feature, and only available to those that sign up for the PRO account at $5 per month, is the trail matching - your 'Lap Story'. This gives you a breakdown of each trail you rode on a lap by lap basis, with differentiaition between particial trails and those you rode from start to end withough jumping off to another trail. So pretty much a super clear picture of where you went on each lap.

And then of course there are the Leadeboards. Regardless of whether you have a standard free account, or are signed up to the PRO one, every time you complete any trail in full, your data gets fed in to the fastest times Leaderboard for that trail. These Leaderboards actually coincide with the proper start and end of each trail, and there's one leaderboard per trail - not multiple 'segments' created by multiple different people with a variety of different names! There are then additional Leaderboards for PRO users - Total Vertical, Total Distance, and Total Number of Laps, each of these specific to the bike park in question.

There are a handful of key bike park locations set up for initial launch, but more will be added in quick succession and of course the intent is to get every location set up ASAP! It's worth noting though that you can start using the App at any bike park you like from right now, and when that location does come online your data will have been stored and then retrospectively analysed so you get all the metrics and results anyway. And of course you can stake a place on the Leaderboards right from the start!  There's huge potential here for an interactive community that's tailored specifically to the bike park world, so you can expect a lot more features and developments over the coming months. And the guys are super keen to hear from riders about what they might want from a bike park specific platform like this, so if you have ideas then just drop them a line. In the meantime, download the app and getting logging those laps at a bike park near you!

Come find us on Facebook and Twitter. Also, website will go live when we are ready to launch, but sign up now and be first to find out when that happens!! www.BikeParkPRO.com

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