Garmin Edge 810 - Testing a New Tool

Another winter/off-season is over and summer is poking its head around the corner.

Before I head into full-on ironman training again, though, there's a few more "fun" events coming up.  In fact they'll be occupying the next three Sundays:  Tomorrow it's the Spring Cycle, next Sunday the Rebel Run Sydney (half marathon with St Pete) and the Sunday after that the big one, The Sydney to the Gong Ride.

A summary of my next three Sundays...

With the purchase of Black Beauty I have had the opportunity to turn the Avanti back into a real road bike - so the clip on aero bars have come off and I have taken her in to see Mark at Jet Cycles for an adjustment to my bike fit, ready for pure road riding rather than hybrid road/tri riding.  And that's left me able to do the Spring Cycle and Gong ride, both huge events on the Sydney riding calendar.

Today was time for another ride, though, and with a slightly different purpose.

Coach Dave had set me a 3 hour easy/steady ride and that was a perfect opportunity to test out the latest toy tool in my training arsenal, the Garmin Edge 810.  The great thing about the 810, and the reason for getting it, is its ability to navigate.  With my plan to ride back from Wollongong in a couple of weeks I was keen to ensure that once I hit the 180km mark, getting lost would be the one thing I wouldn't have to waste precious energy on.

So in preparation for today's ride I mapped a circuit in GarminConnect which would take me across the harbour bridge and out to Olympic Park.  Once there I'd sample a few of the bike trails then head across the Parramatta river and follow the Ermington shared cycle path before carrying on through Lane Cove and back home via St Leonards and North Sydney.

The route was a mixture of roads and bike paths, and would provide a good mix to test out the unit and get used to its operation.  It's also a route I would never have dreamed of trying to do on my own in the past.  It was really exciting, then, to be trying something new and seeing some different scenery.

This is what I would try to follow...

So, bright and early this morning I set out, ready for an adventure or two.  And the morning didn't disappoint!  By the time I returned home I had learnt a lot about the 810 and had a much better understanding of what it does really well and its limitations.  Most importantly, it'll be great for my ride home from Wollongong.  Here's a bit of a summary, though, of what I found with it.

It does great turn by turn instructions when you are following roads.  As with the car GPS units, Garmin on the bike does great navigation.  It doesn't talk to you but it puts up on the screen the next turn instruction.  Once you are a certain distance away it beeps at you and brings up the distance and estimated time away from the turn and counts this down.  You get a couple of beep warnings of this as you approach the turn and then a different beep at the turn.

If you go off course it does another type of beep (I sure learnt that one fast as I heard it plenty of times!) and if you stay off course you'll get the option of recalculating the route or finding your own way back - and you'll get a beep when you're back on course.  At one point, when I ended up on Parramatta Road, I realised that giving it the option of recalculating is probably not the best option to take as it wasn't keeping me away from one of the busiest roads in Sydney.  It might have been one of the other settings I had, but in any case I stopped allowing it to recalculate and that fixed the problem.

While the turn by turn instructions are fab, they stop working when you are on bike paths.  So there was a bit of confusion (for me) while I was on bike paths going across bridges and all the way around Olympic Park as I could see the track I needed to follow on the screen but suddenly stopped getting instructions.  What would happen then is if I didn't look at the screen at the right time I could (and did) miss turns and end up wasting a bit of time trying to get back on track.  And of course I didn't realise immediately that it was simply not recognising the bike track - I spent most of the time thinking I was lost.  It wasn't until later that I figured out that it only wanted to give me turn by turn instructions on actual roads.  It was a bit like playing one of those mystery location games as a kid:  you're getting cold, colder, warm, warmer, got it!

The final lesson, and the most crucial one is ...it pays to charge your unit regularly.  Doh.  OK, this was completely my fault and no reflection on the 810 - I've had it for a fortnight now, used it extensively in that fortnight and not charged it since its first charge when it was unpacked.

Oops.

Once I got to Olympic Park I stopped to admire the scenery and have a quick bite to eat.  Next thing the unit beeps at me.  I look down and can't believe my eyes:

"Low Battery Warning"

Shoot.  OK, that's not exactly what I said...I was thinking much worse!  Here I was at the furthest point on my loop and I had 11% battery life left in the lifeline that was going to get me home.  Hmm, do I turn around and ride home the way I came?  Do I jump on the ferry and bail, or do I get going and wing it as long as I can?

Turning around seemed a pretty lame option and getting on the ferry even lamer, so I stopped mucking around and got going.  I figured I may as well get as far as I could and if all else fails I had the iPhone in my back pocket that I could bring up maps on.  It meant, though, that I wasn't going to be able to stop and take photos along what would be one of the more pleasant parts of the journey - the shared cycle path between Parramatta and Meadowbank.  Never fear, though, there is a YouTube clip of it and so here it is for you to get a taste of.  Parramatta's Ermington shared cycle path:

11% battery power, however, wasn't too shabby as by the time it finally died I was on the cycle path alongside the M2 stopped at traffic lights taking a look at the first signs pointing towards North Sydney, just 9km from home.

Lane Cove - Chatswood - North Sydney
I'm not lost!!!

All in all, then, it was a great morning's ride and brilliant to try out some different locations.

And while the 810 struggles a bit with providing instructions on bike paths, it's nothing I can't get used to and a huge improvement on having nothing at all.  I can see we're going to have some great adventures together...

That's if I can remember to keep it fully charged.

...Hmm, another job for St Pete I think!