3 posts tagged “gps”

I rode 14.89 miles with Justin and his BIL, David, this afternoon, and am feeling great. See the ride's stats from my Garmin Forerunner 305+heartrate strap at http://tinyurl.com/2xaywq; you can compare my heartrate to Justin's (his stats, here). He's in far better cardiovascular shape than I am right now.

We even swung by Bulverde Airpark where a former co-worker (former executive) has his home-built aircraft (RV9) hangared. She (all aircraft, like ships, are female) is a beauty--I was trying to be polite, so I didn't snap a Blackberry photo... only to have Justin confide to me that any owner of an aircraft would be thrilled to have someone take photos of his baby. Point taken.)

With the installation of my indoor bike trainer not happening until Tuesday (it arrived late Monday), and all the yard work on Thursday, I only got two bike trainer sessions in this week and today's outdoor ride, but that's nothing to sneeze at given all the weeks prior.

My cadence sensor didn't behave so I don't have cadence data for today's ride, which doesn't matter to me outdoors but is a PITA for the bike trainer sessions (because MotionBased sucks for GPS-trackless activities.). I hope to get the cadence sensor issue resolved ASAP. Tomorrow's a recovery day from the bike, though. I feel great but don't want to burn myself out.

So I was jazzed to upload my "Indoor Bike Trainer (Day #1)" Garmin Forerunner 305 data, which obviously for an indoor stationary bike ride just amounts to TIME and HEART RATE (via the 305's heartrate monitor), at least until my CADENCE sensor arrives (thereby delivering SPEED and DISTANCE data.)

In plain English, here's what I did today on the indoor bike trainer:
10 min, sustained
(5 minute break to eat and hydrate--had NO energy)
15 min, sustained

LONG break, hoped Sara would be ready for me to do 20 minutes, sustained
10 min, sustained
(-DONE- Sara had meltdown)

Total: 35 min.

Heart Rate:
   Average 152 bpm
   Peak 167 bpm

I uploaded my 305's data to MotionBased.com once, twice, three times. Hard-headed gal that I am, I was in denial as to why nothing from my ride was showing up in my Detail or Inbox views. Then I saw all three of today's datasets were flagged as "Insufficient data." That blows, but I figured maybe it's flagged because there's no speed or GPS track, and maybe once my cadence sensor arrives, that will make MotionBased.com happy.

Then I clicked on a help icon next to one of the data flags -- "MotionBased currently requires GPS Track data to create an activity. Support for non-GPS activities is a high priority and will be added in the near future." (This message has been on their website since at least November 2006, by the way -- See?)

grrrrrrrrrrr!

Justin texted me the suggestion to see if Garmin's Training Center desktop app would accept the data, and it does... sort of. Due to something wonky in either the way I configured the unit or used it, Garmin Training Center is missing 25 minutes of the ride! It pulls in just two sessions, and one of those sessions is -0- duration. Meanwhile, MotionBased.com correctly shows 3 sessions totalling 35 minutes, but it won't display that except to say it won't work because there's no track. I know Garmin acquired the website so hopefully their initial rollout will address this inadequacy? (At least they're hiring!)

So much for motivation through publication (my actual bike rides get uploaded to MotionBased.com, and thereby populate the "Building a Fitter Geek" RSS sidebar on the right side of GeekHabitat.com. With these two issues, it looks like there's simply no way to get my indoor bike trainer rides logged, as well.

Sigh.

The data is useful to me, regardless, but the geek in me wanted to be able to chart my progress online, as I'd grown accustomed to doing in my fitter, more active days.

This is what I need to work myself up to (data is from Justin's ride this past Sunday) -- almost 2 hours of sustained riding, with his heartrate in Zone 4 or above for over 60% of that time. Of course, he's been riding for almost 2 years now (as of March), including the Valero MS 150 (150 miles in 2 days, San Antonio to Beeville for Day #1, Beeville to Corpus Christi for Day #2) and, more recently, Conquer the Coast (Corpus Christi.) More @ Bike-Geek.blogspot.com