For the last year and a half, I've been using a mobile app called RunKeeper to track my mountain bike rides and other outdoor activities. For me, tracking my efforts is not only interesting from a data collection point of view (seeing how many kilometers I did last year, etc.), but it is also a personal motivation tool. RunKeeper is great but my smartphone is not easily accessible during the ride, and therefore cannot be used to provide real-time feedback while I'm riding. A GPS watch, on the other hand, would. My good old Nixon The Superhero SS watch was getting old and it was time to replace it with something more practical. So my birthday present came early this year. My lovely wife Sara would probably argue here that my birthday presents come early every year... and sometimes more than once... ;)

The Suunto Ambit is a GPS watch with heart rate monitoring. It can track speed, location, altitude, heart rate, etc. And for a GPS watch, it actually looks good. The software stored in the watch is also upgradeable, which will increase its life expectancy.

I've used it on a couple of mountain bike rides already and having that real-time feedback on your wrist definitely helps manage your effort and improve your overall understanding of how your body reacts to different fitness situations.