Riderstate: I'm World No. 1!

On Wednesday Nov 5th I finally got to No. 1. on the Conquered leaderboard of Riderstate. After months of struggling up the leaderboard and thinking this would be the time, I finally overhauled my main rival Carpi of Candas. I think some people knew what I had achieved because there was fireworks going off all along my route. Turning a 9km commute into a 31km busk along Ashton New Road finally got me over 4500 lands to the top spot.

If you haven't heard of it, Riderstate is a territory based GPS cycling app. Speed here is not an issue, range and route are all important. The world is divided into 100m squares called 'lands'; ride through a land three times or more in 60 days and you conquer the land. After joining the app in April, thanks to a post on Road.cc from Deadhead I have been playing almost constantly on every ride this summer. I don't play in the morning on the way to work as I take the most efficient route every time, and conquered it on day 3, but come home time or at the weekend I can take any route I want.

It might seem like a gimmick riding against strangers and not even for speed, but by years end I should have covered 7000km, up a thousand on last year. Until I started using the app in the spring my riding was really flagging through the winter months and I would have been unprepared for the sportive events I set for myself. I also started using Strava after upgrading my phone. In combination they are a great spur. Riderstate requires me to go down different (and longer) routes to get home from work each night, by doing this I discover Strava segments I would never have ridden otherwise. When I come back to conquer the lands on the second and third rides I get another couple of bites at the Strava cherry having seen the start and finish of the segment. In a couple of months I have racked up over 500 segments and am starting to plan some kind of 'segment enrichment' challenge for myself for 2015.

Sorry if this seems like shameless own-trumpet-blowing but I have a good reason to promote the app. So far I have been competing in splendid isolation. I have one rival living somewhere around Worsley, we only cross paths in Sale and Dunham Massey. Now that I have been No.1. I wouldn't mind a little more local competition, its open season. Undoubtedly having no one else around has helped me keep all of my acquisitions, whilst there are some people furiously dog fighting for the boulevards of Madrid and Barcelona who have no chance of getting to the top. The app is currently mostly based in Spain, though it is rapidly spreading out around the world. The UK seems to be No.2. in usage and I think I am the first non-Spanish player to go top. I am quite confident that I have never been No.1. at anything ever before, and maybe by the time you read this I won't be ever again.

I hope some more people here try it. If you like Strava then why not also see your own little Riderstate kingdom grow?
https://www.riderstate.com/