After nearly 2 weeks with the Garmin 705 (w/ FSA SRM crank and Cycling Peaks), I have some initial impressions.
The good:
- Nice, large display.
- Device loads as a drive when USB attached (on both my Mac and my PC).
- GPS tracking makes it easy to keep track of where I have been (image below are my road rides to date all together:
- Keeps track of speed*, cadence, power, altitude, heart rate, and position for import into software.
- Actually does a better job at heart rate monitoring than any of my Polars (S210, S720, CS600). All of my Polar’s had a bad habit (10-15% of the time) of going full-scale (200-220 bpm+) for most of the ride.
The bad:
- Speed readings are pretty sketchy. The 705 includes a speed/cadence sensor-transmitter, but apparently reconciles it with the GPS coordinates. Some rides there are only a couple spikes/drop-outs, but some longer rides (70+ miles) there was at least 20 spikes up to 60-70 mph… (the below was in the woods going through the park at Shelby Forest – “three little pigs”. later on the ride going down the wide-open N. Watkins back to Memphis downtown also had some weird spikes/drops.) What I would like is for the Garmin 705 to let the magnet count wheel revolutions (maybe have a mode or only when present, etc) and *just* use the GPS for dropping “crumbs” for later review.
- Big display means it is big & heavy.
- Garmin software doesn’t display power numbers….good thing I have WKO+ Cycling Peaks.
The SRM has been flawless. I pretty much do a calibration about 20 minutes into a ride to make sure that the numbers are real. It has been interesting to see how much power varies under various conditions. I think that keeping track of and training to power will help me step it up next year.
I have also been happy with Cycling Peaks software. As I fill in data (with ride data), the 28 day charts are starting to make sense. I am glad I am doing all of this during the lower volume months, so I can figure this stuff out before I need to start making training plans. This winter, I will continue to self-coach (most likely) and use power info to help me make some better decisions about training intensity as the season starts to heat up.
Here are few I pulled off the Cyclocrunk roll.
after-party…
Last night was Cyclocrunk #3.
Got a better start, but still had to fight through some traffic.
Between that and not feeling 100% prime, I ended up in no-man’s land between the 5-6 leaders and another group of 5 or so behind.
At least I think… it was hard to keep track of since I started to lap people already on the 2nd lap. After a while, I know I passed some groups 3 or even 4 or more times. I probably would say I was 8th or 9th. But I really hoped I would be able to stay with the leaders for a least part of the race. Andrea took some photos in the dark (she was sidelined this week). The battery of the camera ran out pretty early, so there were only a couple from the first part of the race….
The accumulated entry fees were put into a pot for the after party at Young Avenue Deli. Good times.
I pocketed my Garmin to see how it would look. I ended up doing 14 laps.
I think somebody might actually care. 14 laps was 9.84 miles (0.7 mile/lap). My average speed was only 11.9 mph (49:30 total time).
Here are a couple of pre-race shots when I was trying some different things in the sand pit. The sand was so deep there was not point to ride any of it.
So far, so good. My first on the road use of the Garmin 705 – FSA SRM wireless crank was Saturday morning at the Tour de Heart 32 mile RR over in Marion, Arkansas. The race played out pretty much the same way with David Lacek thundering off the front in full-TT tuck (as this was a non-USAC race, anything goes…as long as you had a helmet!). When he jumped off, the group of 30 or so was splintered apart chasing. We ended up with about 8-9 of us working in a rotating line for the remaining 13 miles or so. We did not catch him. I ended up 6th overall and 3rd in 30-39.
As for the SRM, I had some initial trouble since I did not put the cadence reference magnet initially. I figured it would work since the Garmin 705 had one. The cadence turned out to be needed (SRM measures torque and cadence. Their product is power). The Garmin includes a speed/cadence sensor along with a HRM strap. On the Tour de Heart, there wasn’t many issues with the speed reading. On my long Sunday ride (Cordova to Outdoors and back-75 miles), there were numerous speed spikes in the data file. I did some reading about that and there was talk about this problem on the internet. I upgraded the firmware to 2.4 (I didn’t check what it was before.., sorry). I will check it out tomorrow night, since tonight is Race #3 of Cyclocrunk.
On Monday night, Andrea and rode out to Shelby Farms to do a partial Tour de Wolf lap and some skills drilling. I pocketed the Garmin to see if would track me through the woods….
It did:
To test out the resolution… I tried to write my name in the field using the GPS track. I sort of worked… my writing is pretty bad…
I ended up buying a new display model SRM from Excel Sports.
Here is the unbox.
I have a project tonight.. should be ready to measure some power in a race situation on day 1. Tomorrow is the Tour de Heart. It is a short, non-USAC road race over the river in Marion, Arkansas.
The website for cyclocrunk featured two shots of me clearing some barriers…
Since it is the sort of in between season, Andrea and I have been working on the house. We got into a house a few weeks back…. after a weekend away last weekend at the AT100, we got to work this past weekend.
Before:
After:
while we were moving in, at one point we had all the bikes in one place…
That photo is either obscene or beautiful….
Tonight was also the 2nd night of Cyclocrunk. We didn’t make the first one. Tonight was a good night in the dark with 45 at the start. I botched the LeMans style start and ran past my bike in the dark…so it meant lots of passing in the first lap. The race is sort of informal: so I really don’t know where I was, probably somewhere in the top 5 I would guess. Over the 40-45 minutes, there was lots passing going on so they didn’t even keep score… Though I don’t know if that really had anything to do with it!
