GPS Enabled Training

Strava Segment Map

Thanks to a Body Concept teammate, I was able to upgrade my bike computer to a “new to me” Garmin Edge 305.  This is my first experience using GPS in training rides and I am loving it!  I put off upgrading for years because I thought that the data I got from my basic bike computer and stopwatch was good enough.  While you can do a lot with those two, the GPS is a big leap forward, especially when it is paired with a website like Strava.com.  (More on Strava in a minute.)

What has been nice about the GPS is the fact that all of your data is mapped out.  You can see what your peak speeds are for different areas of the ride; not just what your max speed is for your entire ride like a basic computer provides.  Now that I have been race training I find that on most rides, my average speed is meaningless.  Before I started racing, every ride I did as fast as I could and I compared my average to what I had done before on that course to see if I was improving.  With race training, I have been doing a lot more interval work.  When I am riding hard, I am REALLY riding hard and going fast.  But there are also a lot of recovery times in between where I am REALLY riding slow.  That makes averages pretty useless.  I have learned that I need to know how I am performing over the segments of my ride when I am riding hard and that is where pairing the GPS with Strava (or equivalent) is really handy.

When I upload my data to Strava it automatically detects segments of my ride based on segments previously defined by other riders or segments that you have defined yourself.  A great example is one of my hill repeat rides.  After uploading the ride, Strava (based on what other riders already entered in) found all of my climbs and listed them as comparisons to how I did on each climb historically and with other riders who uploaded their data as well.  No more fiddling with a stopwatch while I ride, Strava does that work for me.  Another great thing about Strava is that I am not just competing with myself, I can compete with other riders who has faster times listed which is awesome motivation.

Here is one of my rides that I do for hill and sprint intervals:

http://app.strava.com/rides/1013785

Here is an example of a segment on one of the hills:

http://app.strava.com/rides/1013785#15236280

Strava Leaderboard - 5th Overall - I think I am second if I chose my age and weight class...

I also tried MapMyRide…  It has a fancy interface but my initial impression is that I don’t like it as much as Strava.  I found Strava easy to use and compare data but I couldn’t figure out how to use it on mapmyride.  I should probably revisit that in a bit as it could easily be a user error