Bike Training with the Garmin Edge 705 GPS
Recently I bought the Garmin Edge 705 to track my training. I wanted a GPS unit that I could use running, cycling and also in my car. The 705 is slightly larger than a cellphone and is extremely light (less than a cellphone). It mounts to the handlebars of your bike or you can purchase a car kit to mount it there as well.
My model came with a heart monitor and speed/cadence sensor, which can also track speed at the wheel (as opposed to by GPS). Along with these accessories, the Edge 705 provides a treasure trove of fascinating data. You can then upload that data to Garmin’s own website that keeps all of this information for you. Check out a bike run I recently completed:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/341721
Garmin also purchased MotionBase, which has more features and better and richer reports. Check out another bike run I made viewed through MotionBase.
There are a few other websites that you can upload your GPS data. If you have your own favorite, let me know since both of the ones I’ve mentioned are a bit lacking for my taste.
To keep everyone updated, I found this WordPress Plugin that will allow me to show my own GPS data right here. If you’re interested, it takes many GPS file formats and turns them into a Google Map with some basic elevation information. It’ll also be a place to keep all my bike routes in case anyone wants to recreate them.
Nice post. It really makes me want a GPS for the bike, but the cost is prohibitive at this point. I’m not sure that I’m reading the post correctly, but the cadence sensor/feature is used to measure your pedal speed in RPMs. A magnet on the wheel and a sensor on the fork (or rear dropout) will measure speed at the wheel.
Looking forward to a ride soon.
Ryan
Ryan, thanks for bringing that up. I guess I wasn’t clear about the cadence sensor. It’s a speed/cadence sensor that counts the revolutions of a magnet on the back wheel and also the revolutions of the crank with another magnet on the other side. You can check out the product here:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=1266
Thanks again!
Sweet. Sounds like a nice plugin, especially if you were to say ride from Homer, AK to Tierra del Fuego. You could just update a blog with your daily progress, well as long as you could find an internet connection…
Makes me really want one of those. Would be really useful for tracking and mapping all the trails at Brush.
Jeff, if you’re talking about the longest route on Google Maps, that’s the next bike trip, haha. But yea, that’s the idea behind the plugin: update progress during a long trip. I have a trip coming up, but not sure if I want to drag the laptop on that particular trip.