Fitbit releases outdoor bike-tracking on Surge

This post was originally published on the Fitbit press site. It has been adapted from its original format.

Fitbit, the global leader in the Connected Health and Fitness category, today announced outdoor bike tracking for Fitbit Surge users. True to Fitbit Surge, bike-tracking leverages GPS and other advanced sensors on the device to allow riders to see distance, duration, average speed, heart rate, calories burned and the time; stats automatically sync wirelessly to the Fitbit app dashboard to review routes, speed and elevation in more detail.

According to the Outdoor Participation Report, the second favorite outdoor activities by frequency of participation are road biking, mountain biking and BMX. Fitbit Surge now tracks all of these multi-sport activities and captures your activity data in one place with easy to read historical charts and graphs.

“Our users are passionate about fitness and have consistently requested a way to track their outdoor cycling activity. We are delivering this feature on Fitbit Surge for active consumers looking to track and better understand performance during rides, in addition to their other workouts,” said Tim Roberts, VP of Interactive, Fitbit. “Our goal is to provide users with the tools it takes to track their exercise and reward them for doing the activities they love to do most – like biking and running.”

Getting the Most out of your Bike Rides

Fitbit Surge, a sleek Fitness Super Watch, offers the best of GPS, continuous wrist-based heart rate, all-day fitness tracking and smartwatch functionality in one device with up to 7 days of battery life, for people dedicated to reaching their peak performance. Multi-sport mode allows users to easily record running, cross training, cardio and now biking workouts – which automatically sync wirelessly to users’ accounts where they can easily view their exercise summaries.

• Multiple Sport Mode – Track and view workout summaries for favorite activities with up to seven exercises that can be added to a device for easy tracking, including Bike (new), Run, Hike, Weights, Yoga, Bootcamp and more
• Superior Heart Rate Tracking Technology – Continuous, automatic wrist-based heart rate tracking with Fitbit’s PurePulse optical heart rate technology to motivate users to maintain workout intensity, more accurately track calorie-burn, as well as hit fat burn, cardio and peak intensity with simplified heart rate zones and track resting heart rate over time. All this is done without wearing an uncomfortable chest strap
• Industry-leading battery life – Up to 7 days of battery life (168 hours for heart rate, 5 hours GPS) to track everything from the work week, a full marathon or a rigorous mountain bike trek on one charge; Fitbit is working to deliver even longer GPS battery life as well (coming soon)
• Real-time comprehensive bike stats – Swipe through distance, duration, average speed, heart rate, calories burned right on the wrist to stay on track
• Bike exercise summaries on the app – Map preview of route, distance, duration, average speed, heart rate, calories burned, active minutes and ride impact on daily stats on the Fitbit app or web dashboard
• Additional bike stat details on web dashboard – Thorough map and graphs with a by-the-second view into speed, heart rate, heart rate zones and calorie burn for each ride; elevation profile gives insight into intensity of ride
• Bike exercise historical progress – Cyclists can challenge themselves to improve their stats by monitoring frequency, distance, duration, time in heart rate zones and calories burned for past rides

Biking in Action on Fitbit Surge – Heart Across America

To help road-test and showcase the new bike-tracking feature, Sean Maloney, a stroke survivor and well-regarded high tech industry executive, will be wearing Fitbit Surge while riding 5,000 miles across America beginning March 22. From Palo Alto to New York City, Sean will join other executives from Acer, eBay, Google, HP and Intel to help to raise awareness about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and the potential benefits of ultrasound screenings in detecting blocked carotid arteries in the neck that could lead to stroke. He’s also raising money for the American Heart Association (AHA) in its efforts to prevent stroke and heart disease. To follow Sean’s journey visit http://www.heartacrossamerica.org. Users are also invited to challenge Sean to see how they stack up to his biking stats during the race by tweeting their key cycling stats using #ChallengeSeanwithFitbit.

Choose Your Fit and Never Miss a Step

At Fitbit, we believe one size does not fit all, so we continue to offer the widest range of all-day trackers and price points to fit consumers' varying needs and lifestyles. Our trackers help users be more active, eat smarter, sleep better and manage their weight to help them reach their health and fitness goals.

This week, Fitbit will also launch Multi-Tracker Support, which lets users seamlessly switch between Fitbit trackers throughout their day or week, so they can use the right tracker for any occasion. Users will now be able to pair up to six Fitbit trackers (one of each model) and MobileTrack (iOS only) to a single Fitbit account:

• Once multiple trackers are paired to an account, Fitbit will automatically detect when a user switches from one tracker to another, with no buttons to push on the device or the app
• For users who want to wear a more discreet Fitbit One to work, Fitbit Surge for a run, or Tory Burch for Fitbit for a night on the town, all of their steps will be seamlessly captured on their Fitbit dashboard
• Users with a compatible mobile device can also utilize MobileTrack as a tracker to fill in the gaps if they leave their tracker at home or forget to charge it