Are you an amateur road cyclist? Well Cycling Weekly has a great new app for you! The magazine has teamed up with sports software company Training Diaries to develop an app that will have the world’s first general performance rating system.
The new Decathlon-sponsored ratings service called RiTMO works much like a golf handicap but for road cyclists, with everyone on the same scale, ranging from zero to 28, zero being the best score.
To get a RiTMO rating, cyclists first sign up for free membership of www.cyclingweekly.cc (Cycling Weekly Cycling Club, the home of RiTMO) then upload rides to the website. Rides are scored using a secret formula which takes into account distance, terrain and speed. Once a user has three or more rides in the system, they are awarded an overall RiTMO rating based on their best recent performances. When a user adds more rides, their RiTMO rating updates automatically.
Publishing director Keith Foster says: "Until now, there has been no single way for cyclists to gauge how good they are compared to everyone else and whether they are getting better or worse. That's where RiTMO comes in and that's why we're so excited about its potential."
Ed Marriage, a consultant working with Cycling Weekly to launch the app, adds: "RiTMO gives everyone something to focus on, no matter what level they are at. It's just like a golf handicap for cyclists and has been made much easier by the increasing popularity of sports GPS devices and smartphone apps that record bike rides. What's more, a RiTMO rating of nine means the same in Dartford or Dallas so you can compare yourself to anyone, anywhere in the world".
Subscribe and save on an Autocar magazine subscription today.
Posted by Amy Power.
