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Last summer, I was born again as a biker: not, though, the petrol-powered grunt of my last big motorbike, but the pedal-spinning exhilaration of road cycling.

It was my son who introduced me to the most remarkable technological advance in cycling, running, and other locomotive sports: Garmin's tiny Edge 305 GPS bike computer. My carbon-fibre-framed road bike has a wireless sensor that records the rate at which my pedals crank and rear wheel revolves, and I wear a band around my chest that transmits my heart rate to the Edge unit. While the display on this unit is useful, my attention is usually focused on the ride. However, when I plug the Edge into my Mac, the data it has captured in invaluable.

As Edge users have discovered, the free software provided by Garmin is pretty basic and of limited use. Buy Ascent, $35 shareware from montebellosoftware.com, and you can spend hours studying each ride from almost every aspect. Your route is displayed on a composite of satellite images and maps, all the measurements can be displayed on graphs of the gradient profile with distance. You can analyse individual climbs or sprints - every spin of the pedals and beat of your heart is recorded. Any time now, the new Edge 705 should be hitting the streets, with navigational assistance for your ride and data collection from specialist power measurement devices in your bike.

For a few hundred pounds, the cycling nerd now has access to the kind of information that at one time was only available

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in the artificiality of the laboratory. Road cycling is an unusual sport because its dependence on mechanical devices makes it amenable to physical analysis. One of the crucial factors in Lance Armstrong's unique run of seven victories in the Tour de France was the harnessing of physics to optimise cycling performance. His team of scientists analysed his bikes, clothing, and cycling position in wind tunnels to minimise the aerodynamic drag forces that he had to overcome. When professional cyclists train now, they use bikes specially instrumented to measure their power output at the pedals, and alter their style and tactics accordingly. While the stopwatch is still the ultimate measure of success, we have a thoroughly detailed understanding of all the physical factors that determine success.

Given some basic information about the weight of rider and bike, and estimates of the combined aerodynamic performance (that can be measured with the aid of an Edge unit), cyclists can gain as much insight into where their performance can be improved as any professional cycling team. In the world of high-end cycling, less is more, and making your bike lighter becomes increasingly expensive. Depending on whether you are trying to optimise climbing performance up Alpine hairpins, or all-out speeds on the flat, you may need to invest money to save weight, or to reduce your wind resistance.

With obesity and consumption of fossil fuels vying with one another as the likely cause of the end of Western civilisation, the Edge revolution is well timed. But like Ascent and the Mac to host it, the carbon cost is largely obscure. My Giant TCR road bike might not emit any carbon, and its composite frame may even trap carbon within its fibrous matrix, but I fear its fabrication made more of a mark on our fragile atmosphere.

Still, in these long dark evenings, when I am not spinning the pedals on my turbo-trainer, dreaming of ascending to Alpe d'Huez or the Col du Galibier, I can pore through each metre of my rides using Ascent. I had never envisaged that I would use my Mac for that.