Why I Built WatchMy.bike: Cyclist First, Developer Second
•5 min read
I could tell you my normalized power for any ride last season. I could not tell you how many kilometres were on my chain, or when I last serviced a wheelset. That imbalance is strange when you say it out loud. The training side of cycling is measured to the watt, and the machinery that makes it possible runs on vibes and vague memory.
I'm Marien, a cyclist in Utrecht. Riding since 2008, road, gravel and MTB, somewhere past 50,000 km of it. I've also spent 25 years building web applications, which is the "developer second" part of this story. WatchMy.bike exists because that imbalance finally annoyed me enough to fix it for myself.
It Started as a Ride Site, Not a Product
The first version of any of this was marvos.bike, my personal site. It pulled my rides from Strava automatically and matched them with photos and video from the day. A digital ride diary, built for an audience of one. There was no plan behind it beyond wanting my riding in one place, looking the way I wanted it to look.
The audience of one turned out not to be entirely true: marvos.bike was recognized in the 2017 Strava Developer Awards, which remains one of my favorite things a side project has done. But even then it wasn't a product. It was a cyclist with a dev environment and a rainy evening.
The Slow Slide Into Components
Then the scope crept, the way personal projects do. I added my bikes to the site. Then it felt incomplete without the parts on those bikes, so I added components. Once components existed next to synced rides, the obvious next step was letting the kilometres flow from one to the other: every ride adds distance to the bike, and the bike passes it down to whatever is bolted to it.
Somewhere in that sequence, without ever deciding to, I had the thing I'd been missing: a real record. Chain at 1,900 km. Pads replaced in March. The wheelset that quietly crossed 8,000 km while I wasn't looking. Not estimates. Numbers, with dates behind them.
It also ended a ritual I suspect other riders will recognize: digging through my mailbox to figure out when I bought something. Searching order confirmations, guessing which of three bikes a part actually went on, and never being sure. With three bikes, things get mixed up. The record replaced the archaeology.
The Click
There was no eureka moment, and I'm suspicious of founder stories that have one. The honest version is smaller. I'd check my own parts page before a big weekend, order a chain before it died instead of after, and at some point I noticed I was maintaining bikes differently because the record existed. Then a riding friend asked what I was looking at, and the question behind the question was: can I have that too?
That was the click. Not "this will be a company." Just: this is useful in a way that isn't specific to me, and nothing out there did quite this. The tools that existed focused on tracking alone. None of them treated the bikes as something to celebrate and share, and for most riders I know, the bike is at least half the point.
What It Became
So I rebuilt it properly, as WatchMy.bike. Factually, it does four things:
- Tracks components, not just bikes. Every part carries its own distance, synced from your Strava rides.
- Reminds you about maintenance based on distance, time, or riding hours, before the expensive part wears the more expensive part.
- Records swaps and services, so the history survives longer than your memory.
- Gives every rider a public bike profile with a personal URL, on every plan. The free plan covers 3 bikes with unlimited components.
Why Solo, and Why That's the Point
WatchMy.bike is built and run by one person. I understand if that reads as a risk, but I'd argue it's the reason the product feels the way it does. Every feature exists because a cyclist wanted it, not because a roadmap meeting produced it. Decisions take minutes. When something breaks, the person fixing it is the person who built it, and also the person whose own bikes live in the same database.
It also keeps me honest. I ride what I ship. My real bikes, real services and real mistakes are in there, which is a stronger quality bar than any test suite.
See It, Don't Take My Word for It
The best demo is the reason the whole thing exists: my own garage is public at watchmy.bike/p/marvos. That's my actual Scalpel with its actual component distances, the record I couldn't have five years ago.
If your chain's mileage is currently a guess, you can start yours for free. Three bikes, unlimited components, and a number where the vague memory used to be.
Questions, or just want to talk bikes? Reach out at marien@WatchMy.Bike.
