Winter Motivation!

This summer has been written off to experience regarding time spent on the bike . However , now the winter is here and the chance to start afresh . I can now have a clean slate all over again and begin my training programme afresh .

That’s the beauty of this time of year , the chance to begin at the beginning and get in some good basetime on the bike . Wheather it be on or of road the sense of anticipation is palpabelle with bucket loads of enthusiasm coming into the shop everyday .

To help me along the way back to fitness and to add some more gadgets to the household I have a new winter bike on the road complete with the Garmin Edge 705 computer .

The bike :

A Dolan Prefisso winter frame . 7005 aluminium with Carbon forks . As a special favour David McQuaid organised for it to be custom sprayed to match ouir worldwidecycles.com gear . Normally it is only the carbon frames which are custom sprayed . I built it up with the new Shimano 105 black groupset which looks pretty cool and feels like Dura ace . The wheels are Mavic Cosmic elites , a bit too good for the winter but sure I’ll use them as training wheels on the good bike next year .

The Garmin :

The edge 705 is a really cool piece of equipment . Whilst it does give a colour GPS display the mapping is only so-so . It has all of the main roads but not many back roads pre-installed . There are shareware applications available to help this but that will be for future use . No , the main benefit that I see from the unit is having 7 easily readable display units there on the stem , along with the start point of referance being available if desired . Also there is a fantastic application for the 705 called Garmin connect . Here you can download each spin onto a website which plots your course on google maps along with showing all of your data in a very user friendly interface . There is also a goals function which allows the user to set specific goals for themselves and your progress is there on your ‘dashboars’ everytime you log on . Another usefull function of this is the ability to share data with a coach who could be at the other side of the world in a very easy to manage platform . See below for yesterdays spin ;

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/954075

So now , I have the bike , have the computer , now all I need is the time on the bike to complete the picture .

Barry

www.worldwidecycles.com