"The Barsley Brief"

Posts tagged garmin

Three day weekend!

May03
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Charles Barsley

What a great day! After an overcast week today the weather was great! I went out with four other riders. It was a great and really helpful experience. We started out in Southbourgh, and went out to Hever, Bough Beech Reservoir and Penshurst place. I am not sure of the exact route as I was just following!
Distance 26.76 miles
Max Speed 36 mph
Time 1 hr 54 mins 2 secs.
Avg speed 14 mph

A key thing I discovered by cycling in a group is that when I am by myself I push too hard on the flats and descents. Which wore me out on the hill climbs. However today it felt more relaxed but still ended up with a 14mph average speed. I say more relaxed but I was thoroughly worn out by the end!

I have now bought a Garmin GPS Navigator. After changing my mind every 5 minutes I finally went for the entry level Edge 205. This was much more affordable than the latest models and although it doesn’t have the complete functionality it still does an awful lot, this will also help me understand if I would use it all should I want to upgrade in the future. Looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.

I have my fingers and toes crossed for good weather as I hope to get out on the bike every day this 3 day weekend, will keep you up to date!

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, please leave comments on what you enjoy reading, or want to hear more or less about. I am really enjoying writing this as a record for me, but anything you can contribute will only make it better. Don’t forget that you can sponsor my London to Paris bike ride by clicking here

Till tomorrow!

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Saturday 26th April, Summer Sunshine

Apr26
2008 1 Comment Written by Charles Barsley

An early start today, left home at 8:30am, it was good weather no wind and the sun was up! I started the route on my normal circle up to Pembury, past Kent College and down to Capel, but this time turned left toward Golden Green, East Peckham and Paddock Wood.

Spent about an hour in Paddock wood, in Everden Cycles and Barsley’s Coffee shop. I need to get some Summer kit as it is starting to get much warmer when out on the bike. Also I am seriously considering getting a Garmin Edge GPS for my bike. I just don’t know which to go for! I have narrowed it down to either the Edge 305 or the 705.

The 305 does not have street maps programmed into it so it is primarilaay a training device which measures a lot of data. (The advantage over a traditional cycle computer is that you can plug them into your PC and see maps of where you went, graphs of speed vs altitude vs heart rate rather than just an average speed) If you cycle a route regularly you can even use one of your previous cycles as a pace. To navigate you can pre program GPS coordinates with the relevant marker eg turn left. As there is no map you see a compass arrow directing you to the next waypoint.

The 705 does all of the above and have full street maps in colour so that you can say tell me how to get to…. and it would give instructions. It is also £150 more expensive.

I am leaning towards the 305 as I don’t think I am buying to navigate my route at the time but to see my stats as I cycle and more importantly download them after and analyse them.

After a coffee I headed back, again in a roundabout way through to Rams hill, Castle Hill and Matfield.

Here is the map of today’s route, again made with Memory map. This time I used the route function which was a lot quicker as I could free draw it but therefore I made more mistakes!

The Route

I am still only just scratching the surface of Memory map but another cool thing I found was the elevation graph.

elevation

The stats (Incomplete, I accidentally stopped recording for about 2 miles)

Distance 20 miles,

Max 33 mph

Time 2 hrs 5 mins

Av 9.5 mph

I think this is very wrong. Was playing around with the cycle computer and I think I turned off auto stop, so the stop watch kept counting all the time. But had a good morning on the bike. I hope the weather lasts but I know it probably won’t

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We’re Cycling in the Rain

Apr06
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Charles Barsley

Saturday 5th April,

It has been such a frustrating weekend!  Drove down to Worthing for business in the morning with the sun beaming down thinking of getting out for a long cycle in the afternoon.  Then on the drive home it looked like the sky was clouding over.
I got out on the bike about 2pm and then cycled down to Paddock Wood to sort some bits out.  Went into Evernden Cycles.  They have the new Garmin Edge instock.  It looks really good, but I really can’t spend that much money on a cycle computer ….. yet.

While I was in the store it started raining.  It wasn’t too hard rain so I left and tried actually get a bit of a ride in.  The rain actually didn’t bother me as it was quite warm.  But it did make the road really slippery.  As I was rounding a corner my front wheel went over a manhole cover and slipped sideways about 4 inches.  Won’t be doing that again!  In the end did a similar loop to the one I did mid week.  But wasn’t really pushing.

Distance 9.82

Max Speed 34.5

Time 41.15 (with an hour gap in the middle when I stopped in paddock wood)

Average Speed 14.2mph

I want to try and set my self the goal (which I won’t always achieve) of doing 60 miles a week, 20-30 in the week and then a longer weekend cycle.

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