The Bike Geek

Technical Specifications:

Training data: Speed, distance, lap by distance or location, elevation, average and max speed, calories burned

Receiver: SiRFStarIII high sensitivity receiver

Size: 1.75″W x 3.7″H x .9″D (44 x 94 x 23 mm)

Display: 1.17″W x 1.44″H (29.65 x 36.69 mm), 128 x 160 pixels, 4-level grayscale LCD with backlighting

Weight: 88 g

Waterproof: Waterproof to IEC 60529 IPX7 standards. All components are submersible in 1 m of water for 30 minutes

Battery: 800 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery; 12 hours typical use

PC Interface: USB

My Review:

Working in the Information Technology field I guess it natural that I like electronic gadgets. But when it came to cycling computers I have never really been a fan the extra wires that can get caught on something. The psychological factor also made me not want to know how much further I had to pedal before the ride was over. I’ve always felt mountain biking was something I did for fun and didn’t care for tracking my mileage…

Then one day I went riding with a friend who took me out to a new trail. The only problem, he rides 100+ miles a week, so pretty much the entire ride I was just trying to keep up. He had a Garmin Edge 305 GPS bike computer. I asked him about it and found out that there are no wires to install and it tracks speed, altitude, and most importantly you can hook it up to the computer and visually track the ride on Google Earth. This really got me interested being the geek I am. I thought wow, if I had a GPS I would be able to map the ride out on some mapping software and then ride the trail alone again without getting lost.

I then started my research on the Garmin Edge GPS enabled bike computers. I found out they had 2 models the Edge 305 and the Edge 205. The Edge 305’s main computer unit has a couple extra functions such as, a built-in altimeter, the option to add a heart rate monitor, and cadence counter. The Edge 205 is missing those features but it is about $100 less. I took a lot of things into consideration such as, I already have a heart rate monitor that I never use, I have never cared about my cadence, I just pedal whatever cadence I felt comfortable at that moment in time. The one thing that made me consider spending an extra $100 on the Edge 305 was the built-in altimeter which I thought would be cool to know my exact altitude. But, like any consumer altimeter I wasn’t sure it was going to be accurate enough to make a difference on a bike. So I ended buying the Garmin Edge 205 and have had no regrets.

It comes with 2 mounting brackets, one vertical mount that zip ties to the stem and a horizontal mount that zip ties to the handlebars like a traditional bike computer. I put the vertical mount on the mountain bile and the horizontal mount on my road bike. Setup is simple, all you need to enter is your gender, birth date, and weight. This information is used to calculate the number of calories you burn during the ride.

Here is a picture of the Edge on my mountain bike using the stem mount.

Here is a picture of the Edge mounted on my road bike using the handlebar mount.

During the ride you can see your current speed, time, distance, calories, and your heading, I really only care about distance and time so I can estimate what time I will get back to the car. I personally don’t look at this information much during the ride but it is a wealth of data that you can download to your computer and this is where the GPS features revolutionize bike computers. The Garmin Edge devices come with software that you can install on your computer called the Garmin Training Center. All you need to do is use the supplied USB to MiniUSB cable to automatically upload your ride history. It is great if all you want to do is keep a training log of your rides. I found the software like all free software… you get what you paid for. It has been uninstalled on my computer and don’t think I will ever try to use it again.

Garmin also runs a website http://motionbased.com/ which you can upload your ride history. All you need to do is hook up the Edge device to your USB port and enter in your Name of the ride and the type of ride, such as Road or MTB. I really like this site, you can also search other Garmin users and view their rides. The bad thing about motionbased.com is that it is subscription based. There is a “Lite” subscription which is free, but this only allows you to view the details of your last 10 rides. The “Standard” subscription is $11.95 a month or $95.40 if you sign up for an entire year.

For more details of a particular ride you just click on the ride name. Below is a screen shot of a ride I rode a couple weeks ago. You can see there is a lot of information that is captured including a Google map of your ride and elevation changes. I really like this mapping feature as you can see a satellite view of your ride and you can virtually explore new trails and see where they go.

On this particular ride the GPS “saved my life.” Well, not really, my life wasn’t in danger, but during the ride back to the cars, I was dropped by my group. (This group consisted of a Triathlete, a Baja 1000 Motocross Winner, and a few other 100+ mile a week cyclists) I took a left turn when I should have gone straight. About 10-15 minutes of riding downhill with no one else in sight, I hit the mode button on the Garmin and noticed I was going further and further away from the Starting point. I decided to turn around and head back up hill towards the direction of the Start marker on the GPS and was able to hook back up with the group. I just told them I just wanted to get a couple more miles in before heading out. I’m pretty sure they didn’t believe that was the case.

Being the cheapskate that I am I didn’t want to pay for the motionbased.com subscription so I found http://www.allsportgps.com/ This site basically allows you to do the same thing as the Garmin site, but all for free if you already have a Garmin GPS device. They also provide a really cool service in that you don’t really need a Garmin GPS. Not sure how accurate it works but they allow the use of GPS enabled cell phones to track your rides for a subscription of $5.99 a month. Which is great if you already have the phone. I don’t have a phone that has this feature so I can’t say much about it.

However, I’ve been using the allsportsgps.com site to log my rides and so far I like it the best. So far there is no limit on the numbers of rides you can save and recall. Check out the picture of my last month of rides. This is pretty much the same as the Garmin website.

Below is a screen shot of the details of a particular ride. I just like the look better than the Garmin site as the map is bigger and the chart for elevation and speed just looks better.

Another great feature of having GPS data of the trails I ride is when someone wants to go riding with me they always want to know if it’s hard or easy. Now that I have the GPS logs I can just pull up the website and show them a past ride. They can see how long it took me, my average speed, and even the elevation changes so they know exactly what to expect. Another feature I haven’t really gotten into on the Garmin Edge is you can ride/race with yourself. It has a history of your past rides so you can put it into training mode so you can race against yourself with data stored from a past ride.

So far I’ve owned the Edge 205 for about 3 months, and love it and highly recommend it to anyone that wants to track their training/riding miles. Way back when, I used to keep a spreadsheet with the date and miles I road. Now, with the Edge I can keep it online along with the exact trail map of my ride to share with anyone. Most importantly with very little inputting of data, just plug it and in to the computer and log into a website and it does all the hard work for you. Another cool feature that I liked was that I can use my USB cell phone charger to charge the unit. I think it’s a really handy device for logging your rides and making your own trail maps. If you’re a Gadget Geek like myself, you’ll want one!