Komoot is helping me get back into cycling after a long hiatus

Starting to ride a bike in my late thirties has been humbling.

I’m responsible for my own medical expenses, which really makes me consider things differently than when I was a kid riding around the neighborhood park in a twelve-speed Huffy. I also discovered that you can spend infinite money on bike stuff if you have the resources, which I don’t.

Most of all, I learned that knowing how to get from point A to point B in a car or bus means nothing. no means you know the best way to get there by bike. For this specific part of cycling logistics, I found a tremendous – and thankfully free – solution: Komoot.

Komoot helps adventurers plan and follow routes – by bike or on foot. There are apps for iOS, Android, and smartwatch, plus a web portal where you can find popular routes or plot your own. You get a lot of useful information about a route, like where and how steep the hills are, what the surfaces are like, and how strenuous it is. Once you set off, you can log your activity and get turn-by-turn navigation. Practical!

Komoot uses information from OpenStreetMap, but when planning a route, it will take into account the paths preferred by the users themselves. And I’ll tell you what, every time I took a different path than Komoot suggests, I regretted it. That’s how I found myself struggling along Second Avenue in downtown Seattle, thinking, “Yeah, this isn’t as flat as I thought,” or biking through West Seattle in a bus lane, inhaling exhaust fumes. Komoot is also aware of a dirt path that connects two roads in my neighborhood and that keeps me on side streets; Instead, Google Maps directs me to a busier street.

The app is free and you get to download a region of the map to use for planning and navigation without paying anything. My county in Washington state is huge, so I have a lot of space to explore before I have to pay Komoot anything to venture further afield.

If you haven’t done it long, cycling in the city is intimidating – or at least that’s been my experience. But I also discovered a lot of support: the local bike shop I walked into with a flat tire, serene neighborhood greenways I didn’t even know existed, paths that took me from one side of Elliott Bay to the other. These things were there all along. all over, but you see your city differently when you’re on a bike. A useful app is just one more thing that’s made my return to cycling as well as riding… well, you know.