SportsDo is the cyclist's top accessory

For me, cycling and mountain biking is about freedom and fitness. SportsDo makes a great addition to my kit – and since it runs on my mobile phone, I always have it with me.

It tells me everything I need to know about my performance in real time, saving all my activity information for later and even transmitting it live to the web.

Realtime dashboard

I clamp my phone to the handlebars and choose the big dashboard-style readouts so I can check my progress at a glance. It's easy to switch to the summary stats view too. Some of my cycle club friends prefer to use SportsDo's voice announcements and pack their phone away, and that's cool too.

Training

When you're training for an event or working on a personal fitness programme, accurate feedback is really key. SportsDo uses the GPS satellite system to grab real-time data on speed, distance, gradient and calories burned. It also creates handy graphs and charts from all the information it collects, making it easy to assess my performance.

Always tracking

Tracking your exact route can also make a big difference. SportsDo maps my route accurately and even lets me link through to Google Earth to retrace my path. If I'm on a fun ride somewhere new I might squeeze off a few photos. SportsDo automatically adds the pix to my activity log and ties them to a map, so I can see exactly where they were taken. I don't have to do a thing – it's all there.

Charity

I recently did a ride for charity with a bunch of mates. We used SportsDo Live to transmit regular automatic progress reports to the web so that our supporters – and sponsors – could see how we were doing. I also used SportsDo's Text Buddies features to fire regular text messages to stewards along the route, since they didn't all have web access. It meant that everyone could be involved in the event whether or not they were riding.

And when I pack my bike away to head for some winter sun SportsDo goes skiing with me – but that's another story...