Ze Garmin

So, I have jumped on the bandwagon and this morning found myself attaching a Garmin Edge 500 to my stem.

But it can do as much as I expected...and so much more. So much stuff, can this little silver computer do, that it's totally beyond me and my techno-luddite ways.


But anyway, I went for a ride today (instead of studying for my final exam, of course...) and found myself having done 110km and being away from home for 4hrs. But the Garmin tells me all sorts of crazy stuff, like this:



Blue is speed and Green is elevation, so you can see that it was a very undulating ride with no massive bergs but lots of little ones. You can see where I did some strength efforts out at Mt Mee (40–65km), and where I was waiting at lights near home (at the beginning and end, where my speed is zero). You can even see the part of the descent at Mt Mee where it has a false flat you go from 45-50km to 35km/hr, and this is depicted in the four blue speed peaks with the dip in them.

So the graph above has the red line at the left, which you can 'play' and it shows the route mapped out in tandem with the graph above (the route is displayed below).


Anyway, I think it's quite cool, and will be beneficial for training TTM lap splits, elevation on hills etc. I am excited about getting some data off my juniors that I coach with it, too. I think it will be very useful indeed.

A thumbs up so far!