One nice feature the Endomondo app has is the ability to “beat yourself” on a ride, but annoyingly this is only available in the Pro app, which costs £2.50!

Now I’m a big fan of beating myself, but I’m not paying for the pleasure. 😉

However I think I found a way to get similar functionality for free.

On the Endo website, go to the “Workouts” tab and look at a previous workout, hit the “To Route” button, give it a name and set Visibility to “Private”.

Now go to the “Routes” tab, find your route by setting Type to Private. Select it then choose the “Download to Phone” option.

When you plan to ride that route, just change the workout type on your phone to “Follow a Route” and select it.

Now the little voice coach will call out how you are doing compared to the current route champion, which is you obviously since the route is private.

“Ah-hed by wun min-utt twen-tee sek-unds”

Nice.

Wow, a whole £2.50 saved!!

I know! I’m putting it towards a set of winter tyres. 😀

It’s nice that you’ve put a value on your time though.

Ah-hed by wun min-utt twen-tee sek-unds

Why is it, in an age of technological wizardry that allows my refridgerator to automagically order my shopping online and my car to park itself, that anything involving computerised speech still sounds like a 1970s Speak & Spell?

It’s nice that you’ve put a value on your time though.

Takes all of 30 seconds to do. Even I’m not so highly paid that this equates to £2.50!

Anyway it’d probably take about the same time to download and install the Pro app. 🙂

Why is it.. computerised speech still sounds like a 1970s Speak & Spell?

Computers construct speech by breaking text up into phonemes but sadly us meatbags are very inconsistent with how we pronounce the same group of letters in different contexts (heteronyms).

i.e.

lead, as in a lead weight or lead flashing versus lead as in a cable, something you control a dog with or what a leader does.

See also:
Bass (fish) and bass (voice)
Close (not far) and close (not open)
Moped (scooter) and moped (emo)
Row (move a boat) and row (an argument)
etc etc

How is a poor silicon brain supposed to cope with such lunacy?