Training for a long cycling tour later in the summer, Rebecca and I were doing some long sponsored rides on the weekends.  This one, shown above, is the 100-mile Tour de Braz.  The GPS track is a bit truncated in the image because at mile 65, there on the left side, I crashed and broke my arm.  The SAG took our bikes back to the start, I went to the ER, and Rebecca met me at the hospital.  Because the GPS was still logging on the bike, we have another fairly interesting ground  track that extends to the hospital and our return home.  It was a long day for the recorder.  No finish for me.  Given surgical repair yesterday and long recovery, no long cycle tour later in the summer for me either.  

 

Rebecca and I decided for training to ride some hills this weekend.   The only hill nearby is the Kemah Bridge, so we rode over there and climbed up the bridge ten times.  Using my new Garmin Edge 350 device, I recorded the GPS, elevation, cadence, and heart rate data for the session.  The plot here from the Garmin Training Center software reveals, if taken at face value, that the bridge rose nearly 18 feet while we were riding.  And the elevation of our house dropped 16 feet while we were out.  The bridge is advertised by the state department of transportation to be 140 feet tall, but while we were there it reached only 77 feet.  

 

Obviously, the barometric pressure sensor in these devices is not a dependable proxy for altitude.  I wonder why they don’t use the GPS version of altitude.  The Garmin device tracks much better than my Lessen logger, and does not appear to slew off track.  Given the patch antenna on the former is much smaller than what I’ve been using on the previous logger, I’ll have to say I’m impressed with the Edge’s accuracy.  

 

The GTC software is not especially hot.  The most useful activity it supports is planning workouts and uploading the plan and alerts to the device.  For analysis of the session it is fairly weak.   I mentioned earlier using Ascent, which is much more Mac-friendly and useful for analysis.  The data is the same of course.   Below is what 10 laps of dogbone turnarounds looks like.  

 

 

 

 

Diligently tracking workouts and pondering my home-made data logger and digital compass improvements, I recently started comparing the latest Garmin Edge 305 device with what I could build on my own.  

 

 

My translator chain clearly has a time stamp issue, on my side of the sequence, given that the GPS time is lost in the first place and never makes the flat file.  If I had that and passed it along from each data point, Ascent would compute all of the rates for the plots as well as color gradients on the track.  My Specialized PeaBrain heart rate monitor displays but does not record, and it does not have a cadence sensor, so rather than build all of this stuff I’ll probably break for the 305.  Either way it seems like Ascent will be a nice tool.  

 

We decided not to ride this weekend’s Space Race 20/40/60/80/100 mile adventure owing to the rain and lightning.  Instead, later in the day I created my own new 40-mile route through the scenic enclaves of Bacliff and San Leon.   Along the way and just past San Leon is April Fools Point, apropos for the weekend.

 

Rebecca and I today rode the advertised 67 mile route of the Continental Classic, through the rolling hills and Spring weather of Montgomery, Texas.  I took the GPS logger along and produced the GE map.  There are two clear data hits on the track, and it’s curious how much the record wanders off the road in this episode.  I’ll have to experiment with the patch antenna placement (currently in a Bento Box), or wear the better antenna on my visor.