I’m getting nowhere…

I want an app for the iphone that I can record segments and then race myself with a visual (or audio) indication of how I’m doing against my best time.

Is there anything?

I was describing Strava to my chum the other day, and how seeing the pace on the watch is a good motivator. He likened it to the ghost car on Mario Kart. This would actually be the ghost car!

Yeah, a shost rider of the next guy up the strava ranking would be even better.

I just use Endomondo for that.

When you follow a route it will give you Ahead/Behind time based on the best time for a route (which will always be yours if the route is private).

The audio coach can then shout this info out every 1km (or definable period).

It’s not perfect though – I think it calculates your Ahead/Behind based on your current average speed (e.g. “you’re going at 20km/h so you’ll finish the route in 5 minutes time which is X ahead”) rather than a more sensible approach of looking at your split times (e.g. “after 45 mins you are now 18km into the route, on your best time it took you 43 mins to reach 18km so you are 2 mins behind”)

My Garmin Edge 705 does that. You get a visual indication of how far you are behind/in front of the “rider” you are competing against. It’s quite effective as a motivator. The only problem is that it’s by distance and not time, so it fluctuates wildly on hilly routes.

Excellent, thanks. I’ll have a look at Endomondo.

I’m in the market for a dedicated gps, so I’ll checkout the garmin too.

If you start using Endomondo then be sure to join the STW challenges:

Off Road: http://www.endomondo.com/challenges/11677438
Commuter: http://www.endomondo.com/challenges/11677480
Road: http://www.endomondo.com/challenges/11677495

Cyclemeter has all the ghost riding features you’re ever likely to need. You can customise your announcements and displayed data, and how they’re measured. You can see your position on the route compared to best and worst progress markers, and you can import routes and competitors to pace against, probably including Strava.