I have succumbed to yet another cycling bug.

My monthly credit card statements make me wince as the cost of this cycling habit mounts. A mudguard here, some new brakes there, a service: it all adds up. But this latest fad was free, thankfully.

I used to measure my performance using a Cateye speedo, the type with a magnet attached to a spoke.

Not every ride of course, just off-road blasts out of town. It showed distance, average speed, top speed and so on. It worked fine, though sometimes the cable pulled out on rough trails. Other times the magnet came loose, and more times still I forgot to bring it.

Gradually I stopped using it, though it had set me back a good £50. If this sorry tale rings a bell, then you need Strava.

Strava is a free app for smartphones that does everything the Cateye did. It also does everything that the plethora of other free apps do: height, averages, bests, year-to-date, all-time top speed, and so on – with one important difference.

Strava uploads your routes and performance to a public website where anyone else can see what you did and when.

Wherever you are – say on holiday or even here in Oxford – you can log on to Strava and see what local routes others have ridden.

With Strava you can save ‘segments’, either a whole route or short sections of that route.

Anyone else looking for routes in that area can see what you did and, if they fancy it, follow your route.

But the really cool thing about Strava is you can start racing against your mates – or against other people who use Strava but who you have never met.

For example, some Cyclox pals and I rode out to a pub in Bladon to sink a few cold ones with Cllr Ian Hudspeth . Ian really ‘gets’ cycling and replaced Keith Mitchell recently as county council leader.

On the way back, I was in the mood for some racy riding so I turned on Strava. I was quite excited to check out my ride stats – and could not have felt more deflated when I did.

Hundreds of others had already ridden the same segments as me.

Fine, except they make me look like a toddler on a scooter. South Parade to St Giles’ – I did it in 5:33. Not bad, but I am actually 84th out of 95 on that segment, the fastest time being 3:21.

OK, what about the top of St Giles to Magdalen Street East? Me: 0:48. The fastest time: 0:17. That’s three times faster than me! I am 194th/236 on that one.

So the Olympics have worked already. They have inspired a generation – not the generation they intended to inspire, I am not talking about wobbly-bellied schoolchildren here, but an even wobblier-bellied middle-aged desk-based beast.

Kevin Moreland, Simon Beaumont and I, all use Strava now on our jaunts around Oxfordshire and all I can say is: pick on riding mates you own age/size.

But I am determined to get at least one segment faster than those young sods even if it means tying my phone to the dog’s collar down a steep hill.