Forerunner 305 GPS

I finally got out for a ride last Saturday and it was a great day for a ride (maybe just a little windy on the way back), but that seems to happen to me every time I ride out to Dousman, but at least it stayed sunny.

On this trip I had a chance to try out my latest gadget, the Garmin Forerunner 305 wrist unit that I talked about in a previous post. The version I bought included the following; the wrist unit, heart rate strap, wrist strap extender, AC adapter, USB cable, cradle plus software (CD) and manuals. I used the wrist strap extender right away, otherwise it wasn't going to fit around my wrist over the sleeves of my base layer and jacket. The wrist unit is a little on the bulky side, but it's really not bad at all . I may consider switching to this verses my Polar Bike Computer.

Once I setup the "305" with my info; age, weight and custom heart rate zones (from my VO2 test), I was ready to go. When you first power it on it briefly flashes a screen with the logo and firmware version and then starts searching for satellites. Once that's complete you can press the start/stop button to start logging your activity and press it again to stop logging.

The real fun comes after the ride, you can then upload the data from the 305 to your computer to either a local application (called Training Center) which came with it or to the MotionBased website. You get free access to a limited version of MotionBased when you register your Garmin device on the Garmin website, just use the same login on MotionBased that you use at MyGarmin. Here's a sample of the kind data that can be viewed on the MotionBased site.


This particular site is a player, so that you can view the route you took and playback the ride with all the data points along the way; speed, HR, Elevation, pace and distance.

The next trip for the 305 may be this weekend, if the weather co-operates.

Safe riding all

Spoke too soon

Little did I know that we'd get dumped on, on Friday March 21st. Here in Waukesha we had between 12 - 14" of new snowfall during that day. It put a real damper on Wheel and Sprockets Bike Expo that day (I know, because I was out there for a couple of hours).

Things are looking a lot better this weekend, so I'm hoping to get out on either Saturday or Sunday, to try out the Garmin GPS unit.

Safe riding all.

Garmin Forerunner field test

As soon as I can I want to tryout this Garmin Forerunner 305. Yes, the snow is almost gone, FINALLY


It has the capability to store; heart rate, GPS data and altitude as well as being able to upload the data to either a local application or a website. I'm planning some vacation days within the next two weeks and hopefully the weather will cooperate, so I'll get something posted within that time.

This weekend was the last RyJax class, unless the weather stays crappy, in which case we'll play it by ear. But the first club rides start on April 1st. So another season of riding will kick off soon.

Instructables, bikes and the ungodly heat

I've had some recent postings on the Instructables site, you can search for the username 'fireballxl5'. Two of the postings are for bicycle related projects; a Steadicam mount for a miniDV camera and a universal mounting bracket for a; GPS, bike light or any other small handlebar mounted devices. I've started to use the camera mount to shoot some video of our club rides. This short mix was from a club ride early in July.



Tuesday ride (Aug. 1st): in a word...MUGGY... The heat index was still around 100 F, when we started at 6:00PM. The only saving grace was that it started to get cloudy, so at least we didn't have the sun beating down on us. We did cut the ride short, 27 miles versus 36-40 miles.