New Goal: Peterborough Half-Ironman

I've been going back and forth about what my plans were this year, and after I decided to hold off on Boston for the time being and focus on Triathlons it was just a matter of finding the right race. I've been looking at shooting for the Half-Ironman distance (1.9K/90K/21.1K) for a while now, and I wanted to find an early season race to get some experience with the distance.

I was originally thinking of doing Welland, as it's relatively close and the first opportunity for this distance. Fortunately, a few friends who are just looking at getting into multi-sport events started talking about Peterborough and as they had a half-iron distance Triathlon it helped to make the choice nice any easy. It's further away and will need an overnight trip, but given the length of this race that's not necessarily a bad thing (especially with friends to relax with the night before). It has the benefit of a more scenic course and buys me a few more weeks to prepare, although it's got more hills and will likely have hotter weather. Either way, as of this morning, I'm now registered and have a hotel reserved for the stay.


As such, it is now just a matter of getting ready for the race itself. The objective for this event is just to finish at this point, as a five to six hour race is a lot more than I've ever done before. Individually, the distances of the three legs are largely trivial for the training that I've done, however combined it's a tall order. My running and swimming mileage are more than sufficient at this point, so the main thing will be to get my cycling up to snuff in the coming weeks. With the weather getting better I'll likely be taking the bike off of the trainer very soon, and that will do a lot to help.

The other aspect that I'm going to need to work on is figuring out a nutrition strategy. Looking back on my data from individual exercises, I'm probably going to burn somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4000-5000kcal over the course of the race. That translates into needing to take in more than 2000kcal of fuel during the race itself which is a lot more than I've ever had to think about before. I also have to figure out the logistics of bottle exchanges on the bike, as that's where the bulk of that consumption will likely have to occur so the two aide stations will be critical.

Finally, I'm going to have to come up with a formal training plan for the coming weeks so that I peak at the right time. My dithering up until now has made that difficult, as without a specific target date it's difficult to plan things out. I haven't really found one that I've been terribly crazy about, but if I don't have any luck I'll likely look at modifying the plans that Friel has in his book. My main problem with his plans in the past has been the time rather than distance based targets, however that should be easy enough to work around (time target*planned pace=distance target).


Either way, I'm going to be busy over the next little while trying to figure out how to handle all of this stuff. In addition to the planning, I also need to put the Speedfil I bought at the end of last year on the bike and bring it in for it's spring tune up so that I can get her outside and start logging proper miles again. As always, I welcome any suggestions that you guys have to offer as the next couple of months are going to be a big learning experience!

Catching Up...

I've gotten way behind on weekly reports, so I'm going to quickly put up the mileage over the last few weeks to catch back up. Overall things have gone relatively well, although I had a short interruption back in Week 13 when my back seized up on me. Fortunately, it didn't bother me much on the bike so I was able to keep that mileage up, but the running and swimming did end up suffering. Either way, I'm back into my normal routine now and hopefully I'll be able to get the bike outside again so that I can start getting the mileage back up.

Week 11 Totals:
Running: 43.7km (27.1mi)
Walking: 2.6km (1.6mi)
Cycling: 125.1km (77.7mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 180.2km (112.0mi)

Week 12 Totals:
Running: 38.6km (24.0mi)
Walking: 1.5km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 100.0km (62.1mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 148.9km (92.5mi)

Week 13 Totals (Back Injury):
Running: 9.7km (6.0mi)
Walking: 4.8km (3.0mi)
Cycling: 76.9km (47.8mi)
Swimming: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Total: 91.4km (56.8mi)

Week 14 Totals:
Running: 36.8km (22.9mi)
Walking: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 60.0km (37.3mi)
Swimming: 7.8km (4.8mi)
Total: 91.4km (56.8mi)

Week 15 Totals:
Running: 42.7km (26.6mi)
Walking: 1.8km (1.1mi)
Cycling: 130.1km (80.8mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Strength: 45mins
Total: 183.4km (114.0mi)

Week 16 Totals:
Running: 43.4km (27.0mi)
Walking: 2.4km (1.5mi)
Cycling: 70.7km (43.9mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 125.3km (77.9mi)

Week 17 Totals:
Running: 43.6km (27.1mi)
Walking: 2.1km (1.3mi)
Cycling: 70.3km (43.7mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 124.8km (77.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 674.6km (419.2mi)
Walking: 28.4km (17.6mi)
Cycling: 1783.7km (1108.3mi)
Swimming: 121.9km (75.7mi)
Total: 2608.6km (1620.9mi)

Weeks 9 & 10: Review

The last couple of weeks have been crazy and between other commitments and the weather forcing me to move things around my mileage has suffered because of it. The biggest chunk of that was the loss of my long rides as they are nearly impossible to move around due to the length of time required. I've fortunately managed to get my long runs in as scheduled, but I've also ended up missing at least one of the shorter runs during the week.

Either way, not a whole lot that can be done about it as sometimes life intervenes with one's plans and you just have to deal with it. As such, I'm going to be redoubling my efforts this week to nail down my workouts as planned and get back on track. Fortunately the weather is looking great so that should go a long way in making that easier to achieve.

Week 9 Totals:
Running: 34.8km (21.6mi)
Walking: 0.5km (0.3mi)
Cycling: 80.0km (49.7mi)
Swimming: 4.3km (2.7mi)
Total: 119.6km (74.3mi)

Week 10 Totals:
Running: 33.7km (20.9mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 75.0km (46.6mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 118.7km (73.8mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 416.1km (258.6mi)
Walking: 12.1km (7.5mi)
Cycling: 1150.6km (714.9mi)
Swimming: 78.9km (49.0mi)
Total: 1657.7km (1030.0mi)

As noted above, the weather this week is looking incredible so I'm going to do what I can to take advantage of it. I'm half tempted to change the tires around on the bike and take her outside, but I'm hesitant to do that this early in the season lest I tempt the fates to bring another storm our way. Either way, this sort of spring-like weather is promising as it signals that we are nearing the end of the winter season and it won't be too long before the trainer can start collecting dust once again :D


Longer term, I'm starting to solidify a plan for the rest of the season at this point. A few friends are looking at doing their first Duathlon up in Peterborough so I'm strongly leaning towards joining them and doing my first Half-Ironman up there. It's far enough out that it will require a hotel unlike Milton, however it's worth the extra expense to have some company to enjoy the race with. They're looking at doing the half-distance Du as well, so given the starting times we'll likely end up hitting the bike stage at about the same time so things should work well.

As for Boston, I'm leaning against worrying about it at this point. My preference has always been to focus on Tris this year, and the more I think about it the more I realize the only reason that I was considering a shot at it was because of the change in qualification times. The point of all of this is to have fun and stay healthy, and doing this out of some obligation to hit a wholly artificial goal is the wrong direction to take. Given the stories that I've heard of Boston I'd still love to do it some day, but I'd rather do that on my time table even if it requires a harder fight to do so. Further, the meaning of getting a BQ would be somewhat diminished by eeking in at the last minute in order to hit easier qualifying times :OP

Weeks 7 & 8: Review

It's been a busy couple of weeks so I missed writing up my review of last week's activity. My knee was still bothering me a bit last week, so I've been taking it easy on the running front - keeping my mileage and pace down to better allow it to heal. Fortunately, as cycling and swimming didn't seem to bother it I've been keeping that up as planned and have got my cycling mileage up significantly.

Last week it felt good until I got around to the longer run when it acted up a bit again, so heading out this morning I was a bit cautious. Fortunately, after no re-occurrence of pain during today's long run I think I can start ramping the running mileage back up again. Naturally, given it's been about three weeks I'm going to have to work my way back there, but it will be good to not have to worry about it all the time.

On the bike front I've got all of the mid-week rides up to the mileage that I'm looking for so it's just a matter of adding a bit more onto Saturday's long ride over the next few weeks. I even managed to squeeze in a decent brick session on Friday, upping the effort on the ride segment a bit to get in a better workout. Hopefully I can keep this up so that when the weather does get better I can hit the ground running rather than having to build myself back up.

Week 7 Totals:
Running: 32.0km (19.9mi)
Walking: 0.9km (0.6mi)
Cycling: 165.1km (102.6mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 206.8km (128.5mi)

Week 8 Totals:
Running: 31.9km (19.8mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 200.1km (124.3mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 242.0km (150.4mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 347.6km (216.0mi)
Walking: 10.4km (6.5mi)
Cycling: 995.6km (618.6mi)
Swimming: 65.8km (40.9mi)
Total: 1419.4km (882.0mi)

On the longer term front, I've been discussing the idea of doing the Peterborough HIM as a couple of friends are looking at doing the Duathlon up there. It's a bit of a longer trip than Milton and will likely need a hotel stay to be practical, but the route looks a bit more scenic and it'll be nice to have some company to share the experience with. This will also be their first foray into multisport racing and given that they're jumping into the deep end (2K run/90K ride/21.1K run), I'd like to be there to help them through it.

Boston Marathon

Qualifying for Boston has been a long term goal ever since finishing my Marathon a couple of years ago. After selling out in less than eight hours last year, however, it was evident that they'd have to do something about the qualifying standards and that has brought a new urgency to taking a shot at that goal. With the existing standards, I was looking at having to run the distance in 3:10:59 or less to make the cut (an average pace of 4:31/km or 7:17/mi). That is within the realm of possibilities, but it's skirting the outer edges of what I can do so if it is tightened much more it'll likely close the door.

Today the BAA announced it's verdict on what will be done for the 2012 and 2013 marathons. For the 2012 marathon, the qualifying standards remain the same but they've added a graduated registration system that will allow faster runners earlier access. For 2013, the base qualifying standards will be tightened up by 5 minutes and the 59 second grace period will be removed (effectively meaning 6 minutes). Given the scenario they had little choice but to do something, and this seems to be about the fairest way to handle it that I can imagine. Given a finite supply of spots, it's certainly better for them to go to faster runners rather than those who are lucky enough to get through an overloaded web server.

With that said, it does make things a bit more complicated on my end and is going to require some consideration. I don't think that the 3:05 standard coming in for 2013 is possible for me, so this year will likely be my last opportunity in the immediate future to take a realistic shot at it. Unfortunately, with the progressive registration there is a high probability that it will be sold out before the general qualifiers round comes up (effectively tightening it to 3:05 (or worse) anyway). Shooting for 3:10 will require a lot of work and likely some significant compromises on my Triathlon training, so the thought of working my arse off, getting that time and it all being for naught is disconcerting.

Naturally, the other option would be to simply wait until I'm 35 and aim for a 3:10 marathon at that juncture. At this point I've only run one marathon, and I would have liked to have a few more under my belt before taking a shot at such an aggressive target. Working a few longer distance Triathlons into the mix would be beneficial as well, as their longer duration (~4-5 hours for a HIM, ~11-12 hours for a full) would do a lot to boost my confidence. I'm not that far off so the extra age likely won't hurt me too much, and while I'll have to be 59 seconds faster that's not likely a huge problem. The other benefit is that I'll have a better idea of how big a risk things selling out are as right now that's an unknown quantity. Further, depending on when I run the qualifying race, it may be possible to try and register the next year.


Either way, I've got a lot of thinking to do at this point and have to come to a conclusion quickly as formal training will have to start soon. Given the Triathlon schedule I had hoped to do the marathon in the fall, but with the registration deadline on September 19th I might have to do it in the spring (as most of the fall marathons are after that date). With that said, it's good to finally have a concrete answer on what I'm up against as it will allow me to make a more objective assessment of the different options.

With all of that said, as much as this arrangement doesn't work out terribly well for me I do have to give the BAA credit for coming up with a fair system to handle this. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place here and a tough decision had to be made. Given a fixed number of openings, the standards need to be designed so that the fastest runners are the ones that get them.

Week 6: Review

While it has been a relatively cold winter, we've been lucky that most of the snow that's fallen has been cleaned up pretty well and I haven't had to run through too much of it. Unfortunately, last week's long run was an exception to that and had me going over a lot of uneven terrain. The result of that was that the inside of my left knee felt a bit off on Tuesday and after my group run on Wednesday it was a bit uncomfortable so I ended up taking off the rest of the week to be safe (nipping things in the bud when it's just discomfort is easier than dealing with injuries after it becomes pain). Naturally, the result of that is some pitiful mileage on the running front.

Fortunately, it didn't seem to bother me at all in the other two sports so I was able to keep things up on those two fronts. The knee seems to only be aggravated by lateral motion, and as the bike locks my motion into a single plane that's not an issue there. In the pool, the arms do most of the work and the kicks come more from the hips than the knees so it doesn't pose an issue there as well. To be safe, however, I made sure to push off on my right leg at the end of each length as that can sometimes put stresses on the joint.

I did miss one ride on Monday as that's when I did last week's aforementioned long run, but other than that I hit all of the sessions as planned (including a 60K on Saturday). I did back off the intensity to be safe, as fatigued muscles may lead to slightly more eccentric motion of the joints, but other than that I stuck to the schedule. In the water, however, I followed my normal protocol with the only exception being that I replaced kicking drills with others to be absolutely sure it wasn't a problem.

The upside to a multi-sport regime is that when stuff like this happens you aren't totally shut down. While I've likely lost a bit of fitness over this week, the cycling and swimming should do a good job of keeping my cardiovascular strength up so it's just a matter of rebuilding a bit of lost strength in the legs (which is a lot easier to get back). It also has the benefit of warming up the tissues in the legs to allow me to properly stretch things on a routine basis and hopefully help to resolve whatever the underlying cause is. Naturally, it doesn't always work as there are a lot of bits that are used across the sports, but fortunately this time it was isolated to one of them :D

Week 6 Totals:
Running: 8.6km (5.3mi)
Walking: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Cycling: 110.0km (68.4mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 127.4km (79.2mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 283.7km (176.3mi)
Walking: 8.3km (5.2mi)
Cycling: 630.4km (391.7mi)
Swimming: 48.2km (30.0mi)
Total: 970.6km (603.1mi)

Either way, the knee is feeling much better today and I'll likely be good to get back into the swing of things tomorrow or the day after. I probably could have gone out on Sunday, but there was still a bit of tightness left in the joint and I didn't want to risk wasting the time off this week. Right now it's just a tiny hint (although that may very well just be in my mind) and I'm hoping that by tomorrow that will be gone and I can give it another a shot.

Week 5: Review

This was a bit of a complex week due to a couple of major snowstorms on Wednesday and Saturday night. Fortunately, I was able to move things around to work around those problems and get all of the planned miles in. The downside was that it meant missing my group run so all sessions were done solo, but that's part of the equation of running in Canada during the winter.

Aside from direct interference, however, the snow this week also meant that most of my runs were completed on uncleared sidewalks and roadways. This meant additional work to push through thick snow and low traction and also limited the pace at which I could safely maintain. Monday's long run was probably the most difficult of the runs, as there were segments where I had to plow through deep (~1-1.5 feet) drifts of snow and dodge/leap over puddles. That, in turn, took a lot more out of me than a normal 16 miler would take.

Thankfully, both swimming and cycling aren't affected much by the weather outside so both of those sports went ahead as planned. As last week's long run was done on Sunday, I was finally able to squeeze in all four rides which allowed me to get my mileage back up to where I'd like. Thankfully I'm getting used to the psychological aspects of riding indoors for long periods, so it's just a matter of pushing the distances up slowly over the next few weeks. Naturally, I'd still much rather be riding outside, but we've got at least a couple more months before that's feasible again :P

Week 5 Totals:
Running: 49.9km (31.0mi)
Walking: 2.0km (1.2mi)
Cycling: 140.1km (87.1mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 200.8km (124.8mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 275.1km (170.9mi)
Walking: 8.3km (5.2mi)
Cycling: 520.4km (323.4mi)
Swimming: 39.4km (24.5mi)
Total: 843.2km (523.9mi)

Week 4: Review

Aside from missing the ride on Monday (as it was supplanted by last week's delayed long run), things pretty much went according to plan this week. The weather was reasonably agreeable and my schedule wasn't too messy so I was able to squeeze things in as planned. As the weather was relatively comfortable yesterday, I brought my long run back up to 16 miles which helped to get the numbers back to where they needed to be.

On the cycling front I finally made my way back up to 50K on the trainer thanks to watching video while I ride. I did have a bit of a hiccup as the Garmin speed/cadence sensor was dropping out a bit during the ride, so I had to stop periodically to get it up and running again. I'm still on the factory battery that's been in there for a year or so now, and as far as I can tell they weren't smart enough to put in an explicit low battery alert (like Polar does with their sensors) so that's likely the culprit. Easy enough to fix, but it would be nice to get some kind of warning before it happens.

Week 4 Totals:
Running: 51.8km (32.2mi)
Walking: 1.5km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 100.1km (62.2mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 162.2km (100.8mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 225.2km (139.9mi)
Walking: 6.3km (3.9mi)
Cycling: 380.3km (236.3mi)
Swimming: 30.6km (19.0mi)
Total: 642.4km (399.2mi)

Netflix is still doing the trick and after a bit of playing around with the VCR's service menus I've mostly eliminated the Macrovision problems. Unfortunately, with the CRTC's recent boneheaded UBB decision the feasibility of this solution likely isn't going to be there after March 1st (barring the Federal Cabinet stepping in, but I'm not holding my breath on that one). For the programming that they have it's likely worth the $8/mo, but with the punitive overage fees that the commission has allowed it's going to work out to ~$1-2 per show which quickly dwarf what Netflix charges. As such, I'll probably continue on for another month or so and drop it once the new fees come into place. After that point I'm going to have to figure out something else to help pass the time :( Always fun when the government helps to reinforce the Bell/Rogers duopoly and crush any semblance of innovative competition in this country :oP

Anyway, I'm getting off track here so enough about that and back to the training front ;) This week the plan is to hold the running and swimming at the current levels and continue increasing the mid-week cycling mileage. I'm not in formal training now so the primary objective is to get the base ready for it, but I'm going to have to get started soon.

I'm still trying to figure out the plan, but at this point I'm leaning towards just focusing on the Triathlon side of things and worrying about Boston down the road. The BAA hasn't really said much about their plans for the 2012 marathon, and I don't want to risk all-out training (ie sacrificing time in the other two sports) with the risk of them making it all for naught by moving the cutoff from 3:10 to 3:05. If they do hold the line for my age group's qualifying times, then I can always make a run for it in the fall after doing a few Tris in the spring/early summer.

Week 3: Review

This week got off to a rough start as last week's long run being moved to the Monday meant no ride and as I was out of town on Tuesday I didn't end up getting any sessions in. I added a run on Friday to make up for the missed session, but there was no way to make up for the lost ride and swim so those two are a bit low.

Adding to the complexity was the extreme cold that came in over the weekend, so I ended up pushing my long run back to Monday again. With the windchill it was a little below -30C on Sunday morning, and I had 16 miles scheduled so I chickened out and put it off until the next day. On Monday morning the temperatures were just as bad, but fortunately it went down to -20C with the windchill in the afternoon so I headed out for an abbreviated run (getting in 14 of the scheduled 16 miles). It actually didn't end up being that bad, so I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't go for the full distance.

Other than that, however, this week went fairly well. I've mostly been running at recovery paces lately to take it a bit easy during the off season, but on Thursday I elected to start bringing some speed back and did the 5 miler at a GA pace. I would have tried it at a tempo pace, but the sidewalks were still a bit icy so I didn't want to push it too hard. I also pushed my Saturday ride up to 45K this week and hope to get to 50K next week.

Week 3 Totals:
Running: 48.9km (30.4mi)
Walking: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 95.0km (59.1mi)
Swimming: 4.3km (2.6mi)
Total: 149.3km (92.8mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 173.4km (107.7mi)
Walking: 4.8km (3.0mi)
Cycling: 280.2km (174.1mi)
Swimming: 21.8km (13.5mi)
Total: 480.2km (298.4mi)

Either way, it's been a busy few days so I'll keep it short this week. I'm hoping to continue ratcheting things up again next week and will have to figure out my long term plans pretty soon as it's getting near to the point where I'm going to have to start formally training ;)

Week 2: Review

I redoubled my efforts this week to better follow my prescribed plan and fortunately managed to fit everything in. I did have to move yesterday's long run to today and while that will effect mileage for the next week, it means that I did manage to hit my target this week. Running mileage was a bit lower than last week, but that was by design as I figured that a recovery week made sense after a couple of 16 milers in a row.

On the bike I finally managed to get in all four sessions for the week adding up to a total of 120K (30K on Monday and Friday, 20K on Wednesday and 40K on Saturday). I still have to work on building my tolerance for longer distances indoors, but getting all of the sessions in was a good first step. Over the coming weeks I plan to slowly increase the mileage on all four of those rides until I can be comfortable squeezing in at least one 80K+ ride per week and hopefully a couple of 50Ks.

One of the big things that helped with this is that I finally set things up in my training area so that I can watch videos rather than relying on whatever happens to be on TV at the time. Part of the trouble that I've had this year is that the timeslots that work well for my riding no longer have anything on, so I was stuck either staring at the wall or just throwing it on a news channel to fill the time. Having something interesting to watch makes a huge difference in being able to stay on the bike for extended periods.


Along with that, I also signed up for the free trial month being offered by Netflix. The concept of this service is pretty much perfect for this application, as it allows me to pull down whatever I want at a whim. Earlier in the week I was just recording stuff on my Media Center box and watching that, which worked well but required a lot of planning (ie figuring out how much material I needed and what I could record without anyone spoiling it for me before I got around to watching it). Their selection here in Canada is pretty limited, but I only need it to last for a few months until I can get back outside so there are enough old movies/TV shows that I wouldn't mind watching over again.

Unfortunately, when I tried it out the first time the picture was slowly sequencing between light and dark. After fiddling around with the connections, I figured out that the idiots are using Macrovision (an archaic 'copy protection' mechanism which was defeated a long time ago) which messes around with the gain on my VCR (I'm using an old TV that only has an F-connector, so I need that to modulate the composite signal provided by the XBox). The videos were still watchable, but it's annoying enough that I'm unlikely to continue on once the paid period starts up (unless I can figure out a way to turn off the AGC circuitry in the VCR). It's too bad, however, as aside from that the service worked quite well.

Week 2 Totals:
Running: 46.3km (28.8mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.7mi)
Cycling: 120.1km (74.6mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 176.4km (109.6mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 124.5km (77.4mi)
Walking: 3.7km (2.3mi)
Cycling: 185.2km (115.1mi)
Swimming: 17.5km (10.9mi)
Total: 330.9km (205.6mi)

Week 1: Review

Since moving my bike inside a few weeks back, I've been slacking a lot on my cycling mileage. As such, I doubled my efforts to get back into the routine and am starting to re-build myself to where I was. I did end up missing one of my planned rides this week, however that's a significant improvement over what I've been doing. I also have been progressively increasing the mileage that I put in on those sessions, and hope to get back into the mindset that allows me to do 50-80K rides on the trainer.

One thing that helped a lot with that was setting up an XBox by the trainer so that I can watch recorded videos while riding (costs less and does more than any of the dedicated boxes). In previous years I just stuck with whatever was on television, but unfortunately this year there isn't much on in the time bracket that I'd prefer to ride so I had to look for an alternative. I'm probably going to give the Netflix one month free trial a spin to see how it works, but looking at the catalog on their website I'm not really expecting it to be great.


On the running and swimming front, things pretty much went as planned. Running mileage is a little lower than the previous week, but that's largely because I didn't do the much-longer-than-planned group run that I've been doing lately. As with last week, I managed to put down another 16 miler which is pretty much my plateau for off season training. I'll likely back off a bit next week for recovery, and then build back up to this level.

Weather this week has been pretty hostile, however fortunately it's been possible to simply move sessions around so it didn't mess with things too much. Pace is a little lower than normal as running over ice and snow covered trails requires a bit more care, but that's pretty much par for the course in January. After doing a few runs through thick snow, the legs are starting to get used to the extra work ;)

Week 1 Totals:
Running: 52.4km (32.5mi)
Walking: 1.5km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 65.1km (40.4mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 127.8km (79.4mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 78.2km (48.6mi)
Walking: 2.5km (1.6mi)
Cycling: 65.1km (40.4mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 154.6km (96.1mi)

As for this year's plan, I'm still working out the details so I don't really have a structured training routine worked out as of yet. At this point, the primary objective is to hold my swim and run mileage as is and work my cycling mileage back up in order to have as good a base as possible for when I do start formally training. With that said, if I do want to make a run at a BQ this year I'm going to have to start getting into a routine sooner than later.

2010: Year in Review

While I had substantial plans for 2010, they were largely short circuited by scheduling issues preventing me from hitting my primary targets. Physically I had a good training year, seeing improvements in all three sports and getting in some solid training. Unfortunately, without the races it's difficult to quantify those improvements as those all-out efforts are typically the best way to test things out.

The one thing that I did mange to do very well this year is avoid any injuries getting in the way. I did have some back issues at the beginning of the year, but they were largely a result of trying to do too much mileage during my base period at the end of 2009. I've had a few things pop up since then, but on those occasions I was able to detect them early, back off and prevented them from flaring up. Catching those signs is a good step in the learning process, as straddling the line between avoiding injuries and working out hard enough to see gains is critical to squeezing out maximum performance.

If there is one thing that I do need to learn from this year it's not to put off registering for races. My primary goal for 2010 was to race Ironman Muskoka but the high cost to register had me holding off due to scheduling concerns. With a $300+ registration fee, that's a lot of money to lose if I couldn't make it so I wanted to be 100% sure that nothing would get in the way. Unfortunately, work was unpredictable this year and I kept putting it off until it was too late. The other races I wanted to do this year fell to similar fates, and that resulted in me only getting one 5K in (which I didn't really race).

The Numbers:

Running: 2,247.0km (1,396.2mi) - 188h12m (5:02/km avg.)
Walking: 97.2km (60.4mi)
Cycling: 4,482.4km (2,785.2mi) - 148h30m (30.2km/h avg.)
Swimming: 345.5km (214.7mi) - 138h42m (2:24/100m avg.*)
Total: 7,172.1km (4,456.5mi)
* Note, swim time and averages include breaks and drill sessions.

Relative to 2009:
Running: -447.5km(-16%)/-41h50m(-18%)
Walking: -139.8km(-59%)
Cycling: +423.8km(+10%)/+14h17m(+11%)
Swimming: +164.8km(+91%)

My overall mileage this year was pretty much exactly what it was the year before although the makeup was significantly different. As my focus largely shifted to Triathlons, my running and walking mileage dropped while my swimming and cycling mileage climbed. I'd have liked to see most of those numbers higher than they were this year, but unfortunately scheduling time on the bike and in the water is a bit more complicated than on foot as there are more constraints to work around.

With that said, pretty much all of those totals were effected by the lack of racing that I did this year. Without the races I never built up to the extreme mileage weeks that I normally do, so the miles this year were more evenly distributed throughout the season. For illustration purposes, the following is a diagram from running free online plotting my mileage from this year (Polar's ProTrainer software generated a better plot for last year, but unfortunately I have no way to import my Garmin Edge 705/800 files into it):


For comparison purposes, last years mileage looked like this:

As you can see, the peaks don't quite reach the same levels as last year, but there is less up and down over the year. The other thing that you'll likely notice is the drop off in cycling mileage at the end of this year, as the weather wasn't nearly as accommodating as it was in 2009 near the end of the season. That meant going inside on the trainer earlier, and it always takes a while after that transition to get back into the routine of things.


On the fitness side of the equation, my weight continued to creep up a little higher than I'd like so that will have to be a focus this year. A portion of that is likely upper-body muscle mass due to the addition of swimming into my routine, but I don't think that can account for all of the gain this year. I'm still within the healthy range for my height, but the more mass that I have to drag around the harder I need to work so getting back into the low-160s/high-150s should be an objective.

	01/01/2007	01/01/2008	31/12/2008	31/12/2009	31/12/2010
Weight	240lbs	180lbs	151lbs	166lbs	173lbs
HR-Rest	74bpm	62bpm	43bpm	41bpm	41bpm

2010 Racing History:

• April 3rd Harry's Spring Run-Off 5K 21m35.5s
  

As mentioned above, I didn't really do any significant racing this year. The only event that I did run was the Harry's 5K, but that's more of a social event and I rarely go all out. Given the hills on this course a PB isn't likely to happen, so while I pushed reasonably hard this year it wasn't really a full effort race.


Looking Ahead

As I didn't really hit my objectives for last year, they're pretty much going to carry through into 2011. With that said, the main difference this time around is that I had a chance to build up my swimming and cycling this year so I can go about things in a more aggressive manner. Ideally, I'd like to run a half iron distance race in late June as a test and then build up to an all-out race of the same distance in Muskoka. That wasn't possible last year as I hadn't build up enough, but with this year's training in the bag it should be feasible. As Welland isn't an official M-Dot race, it's a lot less expensive so I won't feel so tempted to go all out on it.

I was thinking about making a BQ attempt at either the Mississauga or Toronto Marathons in May, however doing that would require me to hold off on the above a bit as it would require more focus on running training. Unfortunately, with the threat of the BAA adjusting the qualifying standards I'm leaning away from that idea as there is no sense in putting in that level of effort if I can't get there. Aiming for 3:10 will be extremely difficult, but I think that it's within the realm of possibilities - if that's adjusted to 3:05, however, there isn't much point.

As with last year, I'd like to try and get my 5K time under 20 minutes at some point this year, but it's not a huge priority. My fastest time in this distance so far was 20:55, but that was nearly two years ago and on an injured ankle so 20 minutes should be within reach. With that said, this needs a different type of training that the endurance focus that I'm currently working with, so finding a way to slot it in without disrupting the primary objectives may be difficult.


Either way, I need to look over the race schedules for the year and formulate a plan to achieve those goals. The schedules for the Triathlon season are still tentative, so I can't really get into too much detail until the organizers nail them down. Muskoka is going to be somewhat questionable as the WTC moved the World Championships to the same weekend so it's likely that that's going to be moved around a bit. I'm also hoping that the BAA speaks up sooner or later about what they're going to do, as if I want to make that attempt I'm going to have to start training for it in the very near future.

On the cycling front, I'm also going to have to find a way to get some longer rides in this year. While I got decent overall mileage, my individual rides still maxed out at a little over 100K. I don't like doing much more than that solo, and unfortunately I wasn't able to talk my friends into doing anything longer than that. I'd like to progressively work my way up to at least 100 miles at some point this year one way or another.

Week 52: Review

The last week of 2010 was pretty busy and, combined with picking up a mild throat infection, I ended up missing one of my swims and didn't manage to get on the bike. Fortunately, thanks to Frank talking me into a 13.1 mile group run on Wednesday, my running mileage ended up being higher than planned. Thankfully, I was feeling much better by Sunday and was able to get the full 16 miler in as planned.


I also managed to do a bit more mileage on Tuesday's pool session, doing a little over a kilometer more than usual. Unfortunately, we had a swim club invade the pool on us and they didn't have even a basic understanding of pool etiquette which made things difficult (obviously used to having a reserved pool). They started off by diving into the deep end of active lanes without warning and narrowly missing a few swimmers already in the pool. Once in, they swam in tight packs with one another (which made it impossible to pass them when necessary) and when they took breaks (which they had lots of) they piled up against the wall leaving nowhere for others to turn around.

When there is a lot of traffic, I generally skip taking breaks and just stick with a continuous program to keep things clean. Generally speaking, this makes it easier for lane mates as it makes me more predictable and, thus, allows them to better work around me. The result of that is that I tend to do a bit more mileage as without the breaks I simply have more time to work with. When people follow the rules (resting on the sides of the lanes, avoiding blocking, etc.), this typically works very well.

Unfortunately, with this particular group they just kept gumming up the works and made no effort to work with me. For the first twenty minutes or so, I tried to be polite and do what I could to work around them. It quickly became evident, however, that that wasn't working and they were either (a) trying to force me out of the lane (they were using 4 of the 6 lanes, and the remaining two were packed with much slower swimmers) or (b) completely oblivious to how much of a PITA they were being. As I had about twenty pounds on all of them, I got tired of tip toeing around them and just switched over to freight train mode. Fortunately, after a couple of minutes of that they did a pretty good job of staying out of my way and I was able to finish my workout without any further issues.


Either way, I won't go on too much more here as I'll be putting together a full yearly review later today - just wanted to quickly log the details of the week. Fortunately, I noticed that my total mileage this year was approaching that of last year so I bumped up the mileage on Friday's run from 5 miles to 10K to push me over the edge. My running mileage was lower this year, but as my focus was on the Triathlon side of things that was made up for by significant increases in cycling and swimming miles.

Week 52 Totals:
Running: 56.9km (35.4mi)
Walking: 1.4km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 0.0km (0.0mi)
Swimming: 5.1km (3.2mi)
Total: 63.4km (39.4mi)

January 1st 2010 to Date:
Running: 2272.7km (1412.2mi)
Walking: 98.2km (61.0mi)
Cycling: 4482.4km (2785.2mi)
Swimming: 345.5km (214.7mi)
Total: 7198.8km (4473.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 25.8km (16.0mi)
Walking: 1.0km (0.6mi)
Cycling: 0km (0mi)
Swimming: 0km (0mi)
Total: 26.8km (16.6mi)

Week 51: Review

With Christmas this week, it was inevitably going to be a difficult one to fit in everything that was planned. Fortunately, largely thanks to an 18K group run on Wednesday I was able to hit both my running and swimming targets. Cycling mileage was pitiful this week, but I'm happy that I was able to get in as much as I could as I didn't have a lot of time to spare this week.

Weather-wise it has actually been pretty good lately, so I've been able to squeeze those longer runs in without any issue. It's certainly been cold, but at this point I'm getting used to it so that's not a huge impediment. As such, I'm hoping to continue ratcheting up my weekly mileage again ahead of the next build phase for the spring races. I'm back up to 15 miles for my long run at this point, so next week I should be back to 16 which I'll hold until I start formally training again.

Week 51 Totals:
Running: 50.2km (31.2mi)
Walking: 0.7km (0.4mi)
Cycling: 15.0km (9.3mi)
Swimming: 8.6km (5.3mi)
Total: 65.5km (40.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2215.8km (1376.8mi)
Walking: 96.8km (60.1mi)
Cycling: 4482.4km (2785.2mi)
Swimming: 340.4km (211.5mi)
Total: 7135.4km (4433.7mi)

The tricky part is figuring out exactly what I want to do this year. My focus has shifted more to triathlon than running lately, but with the threat of Boston modifying their qualifying times I was strongly considering taking a shot at that in the spring. After doing an early May marathon, I could then focus on building up for longer Triathlons over the summer and race in the fall. Splitting my focus isn't ideal, but I'd really like to run Boston at some point and I was worried that this might be my last chance.

Unfortunately, while I had hoped that the BAA would hold the line for at least one more year, it's looking like they'll be making adjustments for the 2012 event. Hitting 3:10 is a possibility with enough work, but I don't think that 3:05 is achievable no matter what I do. As such, there isn't much point in putting in the effort if they're going to horse with that qualifying standard for next year's event and make it unachievable. If that's the case, then I should focus all of my effort on building up to the Ironman 70.3 distance - ideally doing a non-WTC race (just to finish) in June and then race IM Muskoka in September.

Weeks 49 & 50: Review

With Christmas coming the last few weeks have been extremely busy, so I've fallen behind a bit here. Combined with the weather, this has also resulted in a few missed sessions as well since it's difficult to move things around to make up for adverse conditions. Regardless, it's thankfully still the off season so a bit of missed mileage is probably good for my recovery ahead of the proper training coming up.

Fortunately, I did manage to get the bike into the shop to get the rear tire switched over. In previous years, I've just had them put on an old tire for the trainer, but I got a good deal on a trainer-specific tire at a bike show so elected to go that way. Unfortunately, I think I overtightened the resistance unit a bit as after a couple of short rides the tube ended up blowing so I had to bring it back down to get that addressed. The Continental Trainer tire is a good deal firmer than the Vittoria it replaces, so it's likely going to need a bit of a learning curve to figure out exactly how tight to go.

I'm still psychologically working my way back up to proper distances on the trainer, as it's a lot harder to keep going indoors. As such, I've kept most of my rides at or below 20K (a pitiful distance if done outside) and am going to slowly add more as I get used to it. Finding watchable stuff on TV this time of year is difficult, so that adds to the complexity of the equation. I'm still flirting with dragging a computer or XBox down there so that I can stream video to the bike, but have to figure out what the best solution is for that.

The upside, however, is that being back on the trainer means that I can again work with power readings on the bike. While I'd love to get a proper power meter, that's not really in the cards at this point. Fortunately, thanks to the resistance formula that Kurt provides for their fluid trainers I can roughly figure out my power output while riding indoors. It doesn't do a heck of a lot for the long static rides, but when doing interval sessions (which are much easier to do on a trainer than on the road) it can be quite informative of my progress through the year.


As for running, I'm starting to get used to the winter conditions again. Aside from the more restrictive clothing, it takes a bit of time for the stabilizer muscles in the legs to build up strength after being idle for most of the summer. Running down bumpy snow covered sidewalks is a lot different than when on nice flat concrete, so it always gets a bit sore for the first little while.

I had a great run through a few inches of snow last Wednesday, as one of the other runners wanted to go a bit longer than normal. Rather than the usual ~10K we usually do for the group runs, we ended up doing a little over 17K. While I wasn't planning on going that long, I had missed the run the night before as the visibility was pretty much nill thanks to a heavy snowstorm. As most of the sidewalks hadn't been cleared yet, many parts of the route took a lot more work to run/trot through as the thick snow added a good deal of resistance ;) With that said, other than the snow the conditions were perfect as was the scenery, so despite all of that it was a great session.

Week 49 Totals:
Running: 41.1km (25.5mi)
Walking: 0.6km (0.4mi)
Cycling: 15.0km (9.3mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 65.5km (40.7mi)

Week 50 Totals:
Running: 46.4km (28.8mi)
Walking: 1.4km (0.9mi)
Cycling: 40.0km (24.9mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 65.5km (40.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2165.6km (1345.6mi)
Walking: 96.1km (59.7mi)
Cycling: 4467.4km (2775.9mi)
Swimming: 331.8km (206.2mi)
Total: 7060.9km (4387.4mi)

A couple more weeks to go this year and I've done reasonably well with the totals. My running mileage isn't going to make it up to the 2700K/1700mi that I did last year, but that's largely a symptom of switching my focus from running to cycling. As such, both my cycling and swimming mileage are considerably higher than last year (~409km/151km extra respectively). While I didn't get to do everything I wanted to this year, it's been a good learning experience and should help me to better manage the upcoming season.

Week 48: Review

Things are definitely starting to look like winter around these parts, and as I haven't had a chance to bring the bike it yet to get switched over for the trainer my cycling mileage is still pretty pathetic this week. I did manage to get out on Monday thanks to a brief interruption in the weather pattern, but pretty much every other day was shot down by the conditions outdoors. I had hoped to bring the bike in on Friday so I'd be able to use it on the trainer on the weekend, but unfortunately other commitments got in the way of that.

Fortunately, while the cold and snow have been somewhat unpleasant on the runs, it wasn't enough to get in the way so I managed to get everything in as planned. This morning's 13 miler was a reminder of what it's going to look like in the not-to-distant future, with heavy blowing snow for the duration and windchill approaching -10C (in a month or two that'll be a warm day, but I'm still not acclimated to it).

While the conditions themselves didn't pose too much of a problem, it's going to take a bit of getting used to breathing through a neck warmer again. Again, in a month it will be second nature, but at this point in the season having to pull that air volume through a layer of technical fabric added an extra degree of difficulty to the run. As much as I hate it, however, it's a necessity as in these sorts of conditions having any exposed skin for a long run is a bad idea.

Swimming-wise things went pretty much to plan as the indoor nature of this sport pretty much makes it immune to the weather. I did have to skip some of my drills on Thursday due to other commitments, but I was able to get the main sets done so the mileage didn't suffer too much.

Week 48 Totals:
Running: 47.4km (29.4mi)
Walking: 1.9km (1.2mi)
Cycling: 30.4km (18.9mi)
Swimming: 8.3km (5.1mi)
Total: 88.0km (54.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2078.1km (1291.3mi)
Walking: 92.1km (57.2mi)
Cycling: 4412.4km (2741.7mi)
Swimming: 314.2km (195.2mi)
Total: 6896.8km (4285.5mi)

I'm hoping to bring the bike into the shop tomorrow to get everything ready for use on the trainer (change the rear tire/skewer, drivetrain cleaning, full tune-up, etc.). Once that is done, I'll be able to ride whenever scheduled so my mileage will hopefully climb back up to where it was. Naturally, the prospect of staring at a wall for hours isn't particularly appealing, but I've procrastinated enough on this front and need to get back into a normal routine.

On that front, I've been looking to figure out a better way to fight off the boredom on the trainer this year. Last year I just relied on an old TV and whatever re-runs happened to be on at the time, but that was hit and miss. I love the idea of Netflix for this sort of thing (being able to pull up whatever I want up on a whim), but their Canadian catalog looks pretty pathetic (I can live without just released stuff, but they don't even have much classic stuff either) so I'm not sure that's a viable choice just yet (and with atrociously punitive UBB fees coming down the pike for Canadian ISPs, it's viability will be hurt even more). I'm also flirting with the idea of either setting up an XBox or an old computer down there so that I could play stuff from my media center, but that would require a lot of planning and preparation before each session (ie intentionally not catching stuff live so that I can watch the recordings on the bike).

Either way, I'm playing around with all my options and trying to figure out what will work for this task. The kicker is that there appear to be plenty of great options for Americans, but unfortunately all of them are either crippled (eg Netflix) or simply not available up here (eg Hulu). I can cobble something together by recording stuff from broadcast television, but seeing all of the great options available down there makes me feel like we're stuck in the dark ages :oP

Week 47: Review

Starting to get back into the groove of things this week, although thanks to the unpredictable weather lately my cycling mileage is again pretty pathetic. Will likely end up moving inside to the trainer in the next week, but I've been procrastinating on that front as I'm not looking forward to making that change. Last year's spectacular weather spoiled me a bit, as I was able to comfortably ride outside well into December, but this year is supposed to be much colder so the only reason I've held out so long is my stubbornness.

The one ride I did manage to get in was originally supposed to be 30K, but I ended up cutting it down to just over 22K because of the cold. The temperature was just barely over freezing and the wind made it quite chilly. I wore the warmest cycling clothes that I had (including plastic sandwich bags over my toes), but at cycling speeds the wind just went right through them. I could certainly buy some proper winter clothing for the bike, but given our climate it's hard to justify the costs as there is a very short window where they'd be usable.

As noted in my previous post, I managed to pick up my new Edge 800 this week so getting this ride in gave me a chance to use the unit at least once outside. It worked flawlessly and, at least for my tastes, is a significant step up from the 705 that it's replacing. There are naturally a lot of things I still need to figure out about it, and unfortunately many of them are likely going to need to wait until spring to fully flesh out. I'd still like to compliment it with a 310xt for my races, but after this outlay that will have to wait until summer at the earliest (the upside being that it is due for a replacement, so waiting could pay off with an improved version).

On the running front everything pretty much went as planned this week. Many of the runs were cold and/or wet, but I've run in a lot worse so there was nothing that got in the way. I am going to have to get used to the cold again, however, as my paces are getting a little too fast (easier to do when you're not fighting off overheating) so I need to redouble my focus on discipline. As for my long run, I simply added another mile to bring it up to 12 so it was relatively easy to get done.

Week 47 Totals:
Running: 45.6km (28.3mi)
Walking: 2.2km (1.4mi)
Cycling: 22.4km (13.9mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 79.0km (49.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2030.7km (1261.8mi)
Walking: 90.2km (56.0mi)
Cycling: 4382.0km (2722.8mi)
Swimming: 305.9km (190.1mi)
Total: 6808.8km (4230.8mi)

Either way, I'll leave this post a bit short as I've already burnt enough time writing up that Edge 800 review this week. I'm hoping to get the bike switched over for indoor use some time this coming week, and once that happens I should be able to get my cycling mileage back on track. I'm not looking forward to it, but one has to do what one has to do.

Garmin 800: First Look

In a standard display of Murphy's Law, shortly after I bought my Edge 705 last year Garmin announced the newer Edge 800 to replace it. The 705 is an incredibly powerful unit, but the concept was ahead of the technology available in 2007 so it was showing its age. This update brought to bear the advancements made since then, replacing the cumbersome joystick interface with a touch screen, adding a more modern and responsive user interface and a host of new features that have trickled into lower-end units over the last few years. It also addressed some of the primary concerns that I had with the 705, including the addition of a third telemetry screen.

After the announcement I was resigned to the fact that it wouldn't be worth the trouble and cost to make the upgrade. Fortunately, however, a friend that I ride with regularly was impressed by the 705 and offered to buy it. That opened the door to making the upgrade relatively easily with the added benefit of being able to help out a friend at the same time. As such, I picked one up as soon as it became available in this market (we Canadians always have to wait a bit longer than our neighbours to the south). The upside to this approach is that I will have both units for a short while, so I'll be able to compare them directly.


Overall Design

As I already had the sensors and maps from my 705, I elected to buy the basic unbundled package. Unlike the 705, the 800 isn't offered in a bundle containing the sensors but not the maps. Had such a mid-range option been offered I'd likely have grabbed it, as the fellow buying my old unit doesn't have the Cadence sensor yet and I wouldn't have minded switching to the new premium heart rate strap. With the maps included in the $650CDN bundle, however, it was cheaper to just buy those bits separately.

Fortunately, while the Canadian prices were substantially higher than the American prices for the Edge 705, the Edge 800 is a lot more competitive. The price is also a lot more uniform from retailer to retailer - while I usually don't mind paying a premium from my LBS, with the 705 there was a nearly $300 difference over the radio shop I ended up buying it from. With the 800 though, prices are all within about $50 of one another ($450-500CDN) so I'm guessing that Garmin is doing a better job of leaning on their distributors to not rip off the little guys.


Inside the box is the unit itself, mounting kit, combined power brick/USB cable and a handful of basic documents. Rather than a CD like the 705, the user manual and software are actually stored on the flash memory of the unit itself. As I never really bothered using the CD with the previous unit (easier to download a newer version from their website) that makes a lot of sense. While it does use up some space, it means that you'll never have to look for the box when you need to look something up (and if you don't want it you can always just delete the files).


The one thing that I was a bit disappointed with was the new power brick and USB cable. The 705 came with two separate cables (left side of following image), both relatively heavy gauge and about 1.5 feet long. With the Edge 800, however, they used a combination set (ie the power brick has a USB connection rather than an integral cable - see right side of image) with a cheap six inch cable. It certainly works reasonably well, and is a bit more compact, but the quality is not up to what its predecessor offered.


On the upside, they were quite generous with the mounting hardware including two full mounts and 14 attachment bands (7 large and 7 small). The 705 came with two mounts as well, but one was for a stem mount and one for a handlebar mount so it didn't offer as much flexibility. While I was a bit concerned about the elastic band design of the mount, having actually seen them in person they're much heavier duty that I imagined and I don't see it being a problem. Time will have to tell how well they compare to zip ties, but so far so good.

Getting back to the unit itself, the use of a touch screen rather than mechanical switches like its predecessor means it is a much sleeker overall design. In contrast with the 705's seven buttons and a joystick, the 800 sports only three physical buttons - a power switch on the side, and a pair at the bottom of the front face (lap/reset and start/stop). The rest of the functionality is handled by menus on the touch screen, but those simple buttons cover most of the actions that will be needed while underway.

The buttons themselves are made out of a hard plastic rather than the soft rubber that their predecessor used. They do appear to be better built and will likely be more robust over the long term, but the increased force required to actuate them and their smaller physical size makes them a bit more difficult to use while moving. That's likely a trade-off for making the unit as small and light as it is, but I likely would have preferred a slightly larger/heavier unit to get the easier to use buttons.


The flaps covering the microSD and USB ports on the back of the unit have also been improved significantly. The USB port cover on the 705 (top left corner in the following photo) was pretty flimsy and it was hard to be sure that you had a good seal. The microSD card slot was placed below a simple plastic cover (bottom centre just below the FCC logo), which while plenty secure had no o-ring to seal it in. On the 800 both ports have been moved to the very bottom of the unit (where they'll see less moisture to start with) and have much more substantial seals around the ports (see below). Further, the rubber gasket covering the ports is now connected by two exposed screws so if it ever breaks (mine never did, but I've seen lots of reports of it happening), it should be easy enough for the user to replace it.


One of the biggest improvements that the Edge 800 offers over the 705 is the new mounting mechanism. The 705's slide and lock mount (bottom of the image below) was pretty flimsy and, considering the value of the unit, always left me a bit concerned. Aside from the cheap feel of the plastic used in the mounting harness, the latching tab was a bit finicky so one had to be very careful that it actually engaged when mounting the unit. Further, getting the 705 off was a bit annoying as I had to reach under the aerobar extensions to flip the release lever. It got the job done, but it didn't exactly instill confidence.


The Edge 800, on the other hand, uses the excellent quarter turn mounting mechanism shared with the Edge 500 and the Forerunner 310xt's quick release kit. As such, in addition to being substantially more secure than the 705's mount (and offering a very positive click when it locks), it also means that you can share a single mount with those other units if so desired. I've been tempted by the 310xt for a while so that I could use the same HR strap for both cycling and running during actual races, so the ability to share a mount is a pretty significant plus. Further, as it is compatible with the 310's quick release wrist band, it is possible (although still kludgy) to use the 800 while running.


The only downside to this mount design is that the unit needs a good amount of clearance on both sides. As unlatching it requires the Edge to be rotated a full 90 degrees, any obstructions near the mount can make it impossible to attach/remove the device. On a pure road bike this isn't a big problem, but as I've got clip-on aerobar extensions flanking my stem this design meant that the Edge 800 couldn't be mounted where my 705 used to be. It's not a huge deal as I just grabbed a computer mount for my aerobars and stuck it a bit further ahead, but it was nonetheless a bit of an annoyance as the stem was a better position for me.

On the topic of the mount, I should quickly mention that the speaker opening is now placed in the centre of the mounting latch (presumably to better protect it from the elements). While the overall volume level of the 800 is actually a little higher than that of the 705, the new design appears to be a lot more focused. As such, the warning chirps generated by the device aren't quite as audible as the mount ends up muffling the sound a lot when on the bike. At low speeds that's not much of an issue, but when the wind is blowing by one's ears it is a lot easier to miss the tones than it was with the 705.


Touch Screen

One of the most central components to the design of this model is the replacement of physical control buttons with a touch screen display. As such, the performance of this core component is absolutely critical to the usability of the entire device. Touch screens open a lot of doors to designing unique user interfaces, but when implemented poorly they can make using a system a painful process. When done right, however, they can be an absolute joy to use.

Garmin appears to have used a resistive touch screen display rather than the capacitive displays that have become so popular on modern electronics. This means no multi-touch gestures like pinch-to-zoom or two finger rotation, but in return for those sacrifices it is capable of detecting any object that produces pressure on the screen surface. As such, gloved fingers and sweaty hands won't cause any problems with this device, and given the hostile conditions we often ride in that's a pretty critical feature.

The display does offer pretty robust swipe gestures (rare for resistive displays), facilitating quick navigation of the device's interface without having to pick off tiny buttons. The various workout displays can be navigated through by a quick swipe left or right, allowing a moving rider to quickly pull up additional information without having to look closely at the screen. Further, complex menus can be intuitively scrolled through by swiping up and down, which is a lot faster than pecking at the small up/down buttons offered.

With the joystick interface of the 705, tasks like entering an address into the navigation interface were extremely time consuming as you had to manually move the cursor from letter to letter. In these circumstances, the Edge 800's on screen keyboard is a major step forward as you can quickly type in long strings of letters. Using a qwerty order rather than alphabetic sequencing would have made it even faster, but either way it's light years ahead of its predecessor.

With all of that said, where the touch screen really shines is manipulating the map displays (see above) in the unit. On the 705, panning was handled by a five-way joystick (ie no diagonal motion) and zooming handled by buttons on the top-right edge of the unit. Combined with its slow processor, examining the maps was often a painful process - panning up a bit, waiting for the screen to redraw, panning up more, waiting, panning to the left, etc. With the 800, however, the process is downright pleasant. Panning is done by simply placing your finger on the map and dragging it, and redraws are done in pretty much real time so there is no waiting. Zooming is handled by the plus and minus buttons on the top right and left of the screen which, while not as convenient as the pinching mechanism of multi-touch devices, works quite well.

The only issue that I've had with the touch interface is that it seems to be a bit less responsive when it gets cold out. It hasn't missed a beat for me on warm days or indoors, but the last few days have been below freezing and it has required a couple of attempts before responding to a command on a number of occasions. With that said, I haven't used it for long enough at this point to be sure that it's actually the display and not just my numb fingers causing the problems.


Despite the overall unit being smaller than its predecessor, the display is actually slightly larger than the one on the 705 (2.6" vs. 2.2"). Additionally, looking at the units side-by-side the 800's screen appears to offer improved contrast and brightness (when the backlight is set to full). Whites are also noticeably more pure and colours are significantly more saturated making the map screens much easier to read. It does, however, have a glossier finish that may be an issue when dealing with harsh sunlight (unfortunately around these parts sun is pretty rare this time of year, so I haven't had a chance to test that as of yet).

As seen in the image above, one major change that they have made in this unit is the use of anti-aliasing on the text used throughout the interface. Doing this gives these displays a crisper look and often makes small type more legible compared to the bitmapped text of the 705, however it also makes letters and numbers a bit bolder and can make things appear softer. I personally prefer this design to the old-school look of the 705, however a number of people have expressed concern that it makes the display harder to read. I can't say that I concur with that at this point, but if your vision isn't 100% it might be worth checking it out in person to be safe.

The one thing that I was a bit disappointed with is that Garmin hasn't increased the resolution of the screen. The punchier colours and anti-aliasing mean that the readability of the maps is significantly improved over the 705, and for turn-by-turn navigation it offers more than enough detail (reading street names is likely not wise when rolling). Unfortunately, when stopped and manually browsing the maps (eg figuring out a detour) the 240x160 display doesn't provide a lot of real estate to work with. Getting street names often means zooming right into the local area, which in turn translates into a lot of fiddling to get the information that you're looking for (zoom out, pan, zoom in, repeat...). Naturally, the touch screen makes this a lot more pleasant than it was with the 705's joystick, but not having to do it in the first place would be a big improvement.

The above screen shots provide a good example of this issue. There is plenty of physical space to fit names on those roads, but the low resolution of the display means that it doesn't have enough pixels to render them legibly so it leaves them out. Moving to the 200-300ppi displays commonly used on smart phones (vs the 800's 109ppi) would easily remedy this, allowing more detail to be provided on the maps and making the utility of this feature immensely more significant. Given that the mapping functionality is the main justification for this model costing 50% more than the Edge 500, adding a high density screen to make that feature more useful would make the leap a lot easier to justify. Note that the above maps are shown with detail set to the maximum level and font sizes set to their minimum.


Exercise Displays

As with the rest of the products in Garmin's Edge line, the main interface element that will be used are the telemetry displays that provide the readouts during a ride. As sophisticated as the 800 is, these very basic displays form the core of any cyclocomputer and are what the user is likely to be looking at most of the time. Like its predecessor, all of the pages presented by the device are fully customizable - allowing the selection of not only which fields to display, but also how many of them (up to 10 with the Edge 800, up from 8 in the 705). Further, if desired these fields can also be added to the map display so that a basic dashboard view is still available when navigation is necessary.

As noted earlier, one of the complaints that I had with the Edge 705 was that it only offered two customizable pages of telemetry data. Having come from a Polar device offering six pages, I was used to setting each of them up for filling a specific role - providing just the bits of information that I needed for the task at hand (eg cruising, climbing, speedwork, cadence drills, etc.). The 705 allowed for up to eight fields per page, so it could provide a lot of information on those two pages, but the clutter of all that data at once made it much harder to parse at a glance. As such, I was basically forced to set up one page for the basic information that I'd need when riding (speed, cadence, heart rate, distance and time) and another for examining totals and averages when I came to a stop (using all eight fields).


With the addition of a third screen on the Edge 800, however, I was able to set up a second page for use in other contexts. Further, as the larger screen now allows two additional data fields I was able to pack more information on the summary page that I set up (when stopped, the clutter isn't much of a problem). Either way, I'd still like to see more pages made available as it's purely an artificial limit and adding them really has no downside (the 800 allows you to hide any unused pages). With that said, the addition of the third page and the two additional slots certainly are a major improvement.

Like its predecessor, all of those data fields can be customized by the user from a plethora of options. Setting up the 705 was a bit of a pain, as all of the fields were in one big list and paging through them one-by-one to find what you wanted was a slow process. Thankfully, with with Edge 800 Garmin has grouped the settings so that you can drill down to what you want without having to go through the entire list. The following is a list of all of the fields available on the 2.0 firmware release (what the unit came with):

• Cadence - Instantaneous readout of crankset revolutions per minute.
  
• Cadence Average - Average cadence over the entire ride.
  
• Cadence Lap - Average cadence during the current lap.
  
• Calories - Estimated amount of energy (in kilocalories) consumed during this ride.
  
• Calories (Fat) - Estimated amount of energy drawn from fat stores during this ride.
  
• Course Point Distance - When riding a pre-programmed course, the distance from the current location to the next course point (generally the next turn instruction).
  
• Distance to Destination - Distance from the current location to the end of the current course.
  
• Distance to Next - When using the navigation subsystem, the distance to the next instruction.
  
• ETA at Destination - Estimated time that you will arrive at your programmed destination.
  
• ETA at Next Waypoint - Estimated time that you will arrive at the next waypoint in a pre-programmed route.
  
• Heading - Written compass bearing of your current motion (eg N, NE, etc.).
  
• Time to Destination - Approximate amount of time before reaching your programmed destination.
• Time to Next - Approximate amount of time before reaching the next instruction on a navigated path.
  
• Distance - The total distance covered during this ride.
  
• Distance (Lap) - The total distance covered on the current lap.
  
• Distance (Last Lap) - The total distance covered on the previous lap.
  
• Odometer - The total distance covered by the selected bike profile.
  
• Elevation - The current elevation above (or below) sea level.
  
• Grade - The percentage grade of the road that the bike is currently traveling on (only reported when moving).
  
• Total Ascent - The cumulative number of feet/meters climbed during this ride.
  
• Total Descent - The cumulative number of feet/meters descended during this ride.
  
• Vertical Speed - Instantaneous readout of climbing rate (feet or meters per hour).
  
• Vertical Speed (30sec) - Thirty second rolling average of climbing rate.
  
• Battery Level - Graphic indication of battery level (unfortunately no percentage readout).
  
• GPS Accuracy - Current margin of error in position information calculated by the GPS chipset.
  
• GPS Signal Strength - Strength of the GPS signals that the unit is currently receiving.
  
• Sunrise - Estimated time when the sun will rise given the current location of the device.
  
• Sunset - Estimated time when the sun will set given the current location of the device.
  
• Temperature - Current temperature reading of the sensor integrated into the altimeter.
  
• Time of Day - The current time of day in the specified format.
  
• Heart Rate (bpm, %HRR or %Max) - Instantaneous heart rate reported in either beats per minute, percentage of heart rate reserve or percentage of maximum heart rate.
  
• Heart Rate Average - Average heart rate over the entire ride.
  
• Heart Rate Lap (bpm, %HRR or %Max) - The average heart rate over the duration of the current lap.
  
• Heart Rate to Go - When using a heart rate target, this field will display how far the wearer is above or below the specified range.
  
• Heart Rate Zone - Reports the current heart rate zone being reported by the HRM (eg 3.2).
  
• Power (watts, %FTP) - Instantaneous power readings reported in either watts or percentage of functional threshold power.
  
• Power 30sec Avg - 30 second rolling average of power readings.
  
• Power 3sec Avg - 3 second rolling average of power readings.
  
• Power Average - Average power output over the entire ride.
  
• Energy (kJ) - The total amount of energy output by the rider over the entire ride.
  
• Power Lap - Average power output over the current lap.
  
• Power Maximum - Maximum power output reported over the entire ride.
  
• Power (Watts/kg) - Instantaneous watts per kilogram being output by the rider.
  
• Power Zone - Current instantaneous power zone being reported.
  
• Speed - Instantaneous speed being reported by either the GSC10 or GPS.
  
• Speed Average - Average speed over the entire ride.
  
• Speed Lap - Average speed over the current lap.
  
• Speed Last Lap - Average speed over the previous lap.
  
• Speed Maximum - Maximum reported speed over the entire ride.
  
• Speed Zone - The current speed zone being reported.
  
• Number of Laps - The total number of laps currently recorded during this ride.
  
• Time - The quantity of time that the timer has been actively running.
  
• Time of Average Lap - The average time taken per lap.
  
• Elapsed Time - The total amount of time since the Start button was first pressed (ie includes any breaks).
  
• Time of Current Lap - The amount of time consumed during the current lap.
  
• Time of Last Lap - The amount of time consumed during the previous lap.
  
• Calories to Go - When a caloric target is set, the number of Calories remaining until it is met.
  
• Distance to Go - When a distance target is set, the remaining mileage left to be covered.
  
• Reps to Go - Number of repetitions remaining in a pre-programmed workout.
  
• Time to Go - When a time target is set, the quantity of time remaining.

With that said, the one thing that I'd like to see added to this list are a few visual tiles rather than simply offering numeric readouts. Being able to work some real-time plots of key parameters (eg heart rate or power) alongside the numeric readouts would be quite handy to give an idea of trends. When climbing, for instance, I generally don't have much time to be looking down at the display - but when I hit the top it would be nice to have a quick at-a-glance look at how hard I worked.

My hopes were up when I saw a 'HR Graph' field in a table from another review, but as that was with a pre-production device I'm guessing that it was pulled before release (the groupings appear to have been changed since then as well). Doing so would certainly use more processing horsepower than the simple numeric tiles, but it would need nothing remotely close to what the moving map requires. Given the gorgeous colour display offered in this model, this is the type of unique feature that could really help to set it apart from competitive products.

It would also be extremely handy if the numeric displays could generate colour coded backgrounds when targets are set for the specified parameter. That is, if a heart rate target is set - change the background to red when one is above the target and blue when below it. It's a little thing, but such a visual cue would allow the rider to passively glance down after hearing an alarm and determine exactly what they need to do.


Garmin also worked a number of small touches into the new unit that offer welcome additions to its functionality. For instance, granular control of the units used by the device allows it to be better configured to meet the needs of the user. With the 705, it was an all-or-nothing choice between metric and imperial measures - if you wanted distances and speeds in kilometers, you had no choice but to have everything else in metric as well. While Canada theoretically only uses the metric system, there are certain measures (eg altitude, body weight, height, etc.) that for one reason or the other are almost exclusively stated in imperial units. While not a huge thing, it's a very nice touch that allows individuals to select the measures that they are most comfortable with.

Another nice touch is the addition of an auto scroll feature that has been offered in lesser models in the past, but is new to this particular market segment. When enabled, the display on the head unit will automatically flip between the various pages so that the user can see all of the data available without having to fiddle with buttons. For my requirements I don't really see myself using this a whole lot, but I can certainly see situations where it may be helpful so the option is a welcome one.


Originally added in the Edge 500, another significant addition is the optional Start Notice feature. When enabled, the device will generate a warning whenever it detects motion but the timer is stopped. I've certainly restarted my ride after a break without remembering to hit my 705's start button on a number of occasions, resulting in a big gap in my exercise data for that session. In those circumstances this feature would have caught that immediately, and I would likely have all that data that I failed to record.


Data Recording

As important as the real-time displays are, the ability of these devices to record all of that telemetry for later analysis is even more critical. The Edge 800 can capture a huge amount of data during a ride, and the ability to pull it up on a computer after the fact in order to analyze performance is one of its biggest assets. For the most part, the new unit works in a manner very similar to its predecessor, but there are a few important changes.

The most obvious of these modifications is a switch from using the XML-based .TCX format to the binary .FIT format. The downside is that support for the older format is more widespread in third-party software, but thankfully that is becoming less and less of an issue as its use in the Edge 500 and Forerunner 310xt means that it is being added to most packages going forward. The upside is that this new format is substantially more efficient and produces much smaller file sizes (~20X) - making managing logbooks and uploading files to online services easier.

Along with this switch, Garmin reduced the amount of on-board flash memory from 512MB to 105MB. Fortunately, the reduced size of the activity files more than offsets that difference as the effective recording time is still about 1,500 hours. If, for some reason, that isn't enough the Edge 800 also adds the capacity to store activity files directly on the memory card (the 705 could only use it for maps). With a 16GB card, for instance, you'd still have about 30 years of uninterrupted recording time available. With that said, the one downside to this reduction is that it basically means you have no choice but to buy a microSD card if you want maps (which haven't gotten any smaller).

Another big improvement in the Edge 800 is its use of a new heart rate based caloric computation algorithm that was first made available in the 405CX. The Edge 705's caloric estimates were pretty much useless as they were always laughably higher than they should be. Garmin's older algorithms were hamstrung by patents governing Calorie calculation based on heart rate data, so they relied soully on speed and distance data for their computations. Fortunately Garmin recently elected to drop this method and license a more robust algorithm from Firstbeat for their units going forward. That decision appears to have been a good one, as the Edge 800 now generates numbers in the same basic ballpark as my Polar unit provides (whose values I relied on when I was working on my weight, so I know they're pretty much bang on for my physiology).

The recording of altitude information also seems to be significantly improved on the Edge 800. The barometric altimeters used in the Edge series are much more accurate instruments than the GPS-based mechanism used in their Forerunner line, but the values are sensitive to drift caused by changes in barometric pressure triggered by passing storm systems. As such, Garmin has long used GPS altitude data to detect and work out those errors. With the 705, that system would often cause more trouble than it would fix, but fortunately from my experience with the 800 so far it is producing much better results. Adding to this, Garmin has also incorporated the long requested option to manually seed the starting elevation if so desired.


Unfortunately, along with these steps forward Garmin made one major step back by removing the option to disable their 'smart recording' feature. When enabled, this system records samples as it deems necessary rather than at a fixed one second interval. This helps to make file sizes smaller, but given the minuscule size of the new .FIT files there is little need for that (especially given the ability to store them on multi-gigabyte microSD cards). The downside is a more course recording of telemetry that flattens out a lot of fine details captured by devices using a more conventional recording technique (which has been clearly evident on the sessions I've done with both the 705 and 800 on my person).

With the 705, smart recording was the default but there was a menu item that allowed the user to force the device to record at fixed intervals. Unfortunately, Garmin removed this in the Edge 500 and that mistake has been carried forward with the Edge 800. Smart recording is thankfully disabled when a power meter is fitted, but for any user (such as myself) who doesn't currently have one we're stuck with it on.


Connectivity

Like its predecessor, the Edge 800 acts as a USB mass storage class device and thus doesn't require any drivers. That is, when connected to a computer it simply appears as a new drive (or two if a microSD card is installed) and is immediately ready to use. As such, if desired both devices can be used without installing a single piece of Garmin software on your computer. All of the telemetry can be accessed by grabbing the .fit files from the Garmin/Activities/ folder, and other files (courses, workouts, etc.) can be loaded by simply copying them to their respective locations. Naturally, Garmin's software does make the process simpler (it handles all the file management for you), but if you don't have access to your own computer and need to upload some exercise files it's nice to be able to quickly plug it into any available computer and get the job done.

The Edge 800 does offer a few differences compared to its predecessor, however. Unlike the 705, the 800 can't natively use the older .TCX and .GPX files - instead relying on .FIT for all of the functions they used to provide. Thankfully, however, Garmin added a handy 'NewFiles' folder that users can just drop the files into and it will sort it all out once the Edge is disconnected from the computer. If any files in these older formats are placed there, the 800 will automatically convert them to .FIT files and move them to the appropriate location. As such, the unit does a great job of taking care of the dirty work and saves a lot of storage space in the process. While this isn't a huge thing, attention to details like this can make a big difference in the day to day usability of a device like this.


Additionally, if the user does elect to make use of Garmin's ecosystem, the device includes scripts that will offer to automatically direct them to the Garmin Connect website whenever the Edge 800 is plugged in. That site will then walk them through the process of creating an account and getting the latest versions of the software installed on their computer. As such, the process of getting the computer set up the first time is actually quite elegant and should be relatively intuitive for even the least computer literate users out there.

Unfortunately, just like the 705 the performance of the file transfer mechanism in the Edge 800 is not particularly stunning. Transferring .fit and .tcx files are fine thanks to their small size, but trying to load a multi-gigabyte map file onto the SD card is brutally slow. Thankfully, it's easy enough to simply remove the card from the Edge and load these big files via a conventional card reader before re-installing it. I haven't had a chance to play around with things to see if it is the USB or SD controller in the unit, but it is something that I really would have liked to see them address - especially with the Birdseye Satellite Image feature that this model offers (maps are pretty much load and forget, but the subscription nature of this service likely means frequent changes). As such, I would strongly recommend making sure that whatever microSD card one elects to buy comes with a sled to use it in an SD card reader.


Navigation

The main feature differentiating the Edge 800 from pretty much every other device on the market is its navigation and mapping capabilities. Automotive navigation products have become ubiquitous, so pretty much everyone knows the benefits of this technology. Applying it to a bicycle, however, poses a variety of unique challenges that Garmin had to face when designing the Edge 705 and now the 800. Getting this right is key to the value proposition of this device, as it is substantially more expensive than the otherwise similar Edge 500.

With that said, I'm going to leave this section brief as getting the unit this late in the season means that I haven't had a lot of chances to fully test out this feature set as of yet. As I'll likely be forced onto the trainer for the winter pretty soon, I'll likely have to make up another post in the spring when I get a chance to fully try out the new functionality. In the meantime, I'll provide some brief thoughts based on my experience with the 705 and what I've seen in my limited time with the Edge 800.


The simplest form of 'navigation' offered is the courses functionality that has been present on Garmin products for a while now. Courses are basically breadcrumb trails following a pre-determined route generated by a mapping website or from a previous activity. As such, all of the routing decisions are made ahead of time by whatever software generated the file and the Edge simply follows those directions. While many lower-end Garmins offer this functionality as well, the 705 and 800's ability to overlay the route over top of a street map is invaluable for situations where you have to go off route because of an obstruction.

Despite this simplicity, the advantage to courses is that you can decide exactly what path to follow. While automated routing engines are great for cars wanting to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, a lot of additional considerations come into effect when cycling. For instance, the proportion of hilly versus flat terrain depends a lot on what you want to achieve with a specific training session, and the Edge has no way of knowing that. On a bike you are often starting and ending at the same place, so the specifics of the journey is a lot more important than the fastest/shortest route.

One other big advantage of the courses functionality with both the Edge 705 and Edge 800 is that they can provide a forward looking elevation plot as long as you remain on the route. Knowing exactly how long that hill is going to last, and precisely what the terrain looks like beyond the top is an invaluable piece of information to have at your disposal. It allows the rider to make better strategic decisions about how to budget their energy and how hard to attack a specific hill. Without this information, it's all too easy to go all out up a hill and then have nothing left when you realize there is another one right after it!

The 705's implementation of course-based navigation worked quite well the vast majority of the time, although sometimes on out and back legs of the route it could get confused and stop providing directions. The problem appeared to be connected to small drifts in GPS positions making the unit think that the rider was off route. When that happens, the Edge 705 simply waits for you to get back to any point along the route at which point it continues navigation from that point forward. Unfortunately, when both an outgoing and return trip run along the same stretch of road, sometimes it would lock onto the latter instead of the former. In that scenario, the next queued up instruction is in the wrong direction so you won't get any direction until you return to that point. Fortunately, the map display still shows the route line so you can easily navigate on your own when this happens, however it ceases to provide you with explicit guidance.

My experience with the Edge 800 has been flawless with courses so far, however given the rarity of the situation on the 705 I can't say that I've used it enough to know if that is just dumb luck or not. With that said, from the experimentation that I've done so far the handling of off course scenarios appears to be dramatically improved so I'd wager that this type of problem will likely be a lot more rare. On my last ride, for instance, I intentionally took a few short detours to see what it would do and it didn't miss a beat on any of them. I will have to play around a bit more to see how it handles more elaborate variations but so far it is looking like a big improvement.

The other advancement with the Edge 800 is the addition of a Turn Guidance mechanism to the courses sub-system. With the 705, the only instructions that you'd get on a course were the pre-programmed 'course points' prepared by the mapping software or website. These messages were simple text messages that could only be a few characters long, so 'Turn Left' was about as detailed as they got. The Edge 800 supports these as well, but it also generates detailed turn guidance messages on it's own (can be disabled, but is on by default). This means that you get complete instructions including street names, graphic icons overlaid on the map to indicate turns and a countdown display (see above) as you approach the intersection. This is a huge step forward, and makes using courses as easy as the inbuilt navigation routines.


In addition to the courses functionality, the Garmin Edge 705 and 800 both offer the ability to handle navigation tasks on their own as well. Like automotive GPS units, the rider can enter a destination and the Edge will use its maps to plot a route from the current position. Unlike courses, all of the decisions are made on the device itself and incorporate a long list of exclusions that you can specify.

Like the turn guidance in the courses mode, you get detailed lists of instructions, visual indicators overlaid on the maps and countdowns ahead of each turn. If you've ever used one of Garmin's automotive GPS units, the Edge 800 pretty much works in exactly the same way (which is a huge step forward from the Mapquest-style look of the 705). Although the small screen limits its utility, the new model even offers a 3D map perspective if desired (called 'automotive mode' it's disabled by default). About the only thing it doesn't do is give you spoken directions, but that's not really a big deal as wind noise would likely make that useless anyway.

The caveat, however, is that the routing algorithms used in the Edge 800 are basically borrowed from their automotive products and don't always consider bicycle-specific characteristics. They are smart enough to avoid unpaved roads and try to stay away from major streets, so the Edge isn't likely to put you in a dangerous situation, however it doesn't always select the optimal path. For instance, the unit might end up sending you down a hellishly hilly road because the flat one next to it was 100m longer (the city navigator maps don't have elevation data so it would have no way of knowing). It also seems to still use posted speed limits to determine which road will be faster, so it's likely best to configure it to find the shortest distance rather than the fastest (given that most of us can't pedal at 80km/h for very long).

Fortunately, you always have a map that you can look at and the unit will dynamically re-route when you make a wrong turn, so it's easy enough to navigate around problems on your own. While the 705 took ages to do those recalculations, the 800 does them within seconds so it's a lot easier to work with. Thankfully, the birdseye satellite images that can be loaded onto the Edge 800 promise to potentially make this task a lot easier (photos tell you a lot more about the road ahead than any map), but I haven't had a chance to play around with that much as of yet.

With all of that said, while I wouldn't use this functionality to plan out an entire ride, it is an extremely valuable asset when you are in unfamiliar territory and need to make a change. The exhaustive list of points of interest is especially valuable, as if you find yourself in need of more water than you originally brought along, being able to pull up a list of all of the nearby convenience stores and immediately plot a route to one of them can come in very handy. It's also quite helpful in scenarios where the weather is unexpectedly changing on you and you need to find the quickest way home.


Mapping

While the ability to help to direct the user along a specified route is indeed a handy feature to have, to me the biggest benefit to these devices is the fact that I can pull up a map whenever I want. If the weather out is great and you want to add a bit more distance to your ride, it's a cinch to pull up the map display and figure out how to do that. Given training rides can easily cover more than a hundred miles, we often get pretty far away from our base and it's impossible to know each and every road. Further, having this capacity encourages more variety in route selections, as you never have to worry about getting lost.

As mentioned above, one of the major new features offered by the Edge 800 is support for Garmin's Birdseye satellite imagery. Maps do a good job of telling you where the roads go, but satellite photos provide a lot more detail about what those roads look like. Riding under a tree canopy is a lot different than riding past open fields on a windy day, for instance, but maps won't provide you with that kind of information. As such, this feature alone has a lot of potential to make this mapping capacity even more useful.

While many riders have smartphones that can do this sort of thing, when riding out in the country cellular service can sometimes be a bit spotty. While it's rare to completely lose service, trying to download satellite image tiles over a 2G connection can be a painful process. With the Edge 800, however, all of the maps and satellite images are stored locally and will pop up at a moment's notice. Further, as the device is bolted to your handlebars you don't have to try and memorize all the turns that you need to make to get where you want to go.

With that said, the utility of the Birdseye feature is somewhat crippled by the artificial limits on the number of tiles that can be loaded at any given time. I haven't really had a chance to play around with it enough to determine the severity of this issue, but I'm hoping that Garmin lifts those limitations before spring rolls around to unlock the full potential of this feature. With this in place, however, smartphones have a potentially significant advantage here as they don't require strategic selection of which areas to cover. If a more expensive tier of their subscription service is required to facilitate this (at $30USD/year, I can certainly see bandwidth costs being an issue), than so be it - I'd rather pay more than try to work around a crippled feature.

The other handy feature offered by the Edge 800 is Garmin's custom maps capability. This overlays an image file that you generate over the map, so you can easily set the device up to show things like trail maps or race course diagrams (ie where aide stations are, hill classifications, etc.). I haven't had a chance to play around with this much as of yet, however when spring rolls around this is definitely something that I intend to do a lot of experimenting with.


Documentation

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but when I buy a new piece of equipment the first thing I do after plugging it in to charge is dig out the manual and read it cover to cover. When a product comes with a well written manual, by the end of that process I should be able to pull out the device and know exactly how to make full use of every facet of its design. I should know exactly what it is capable of, and exactly how to access all of those facilities. Unfortunately, that is a very rare thing in this day and age as proper technical writing is becoming a bit of a lost art. Most products nowadays come with a pamphlet that does little more than get you up and running, leaving the user to fiddle around with the device to figure stuff out on their own.

Just like the Edge 705, the 800's user manual is no exception to this rule. The provided documentation barely skims the surface of the deep feature set of this powerful device, leaving the user to fumble around and figure out how things work. It does a decent job of getting you up and running, but even the most advanced users will have to do a lot of playing around to figure out exactly how everything works.

For instance, after my first session with the 800 I wanted to adjust the vertical scale of the elevation chart to get a closer look at my workout before resetting the timer. With the 705, this was done by pressing the joystick up or down but obviously that wasn't a choice on this touchscreen device. I tried swiping up and down to no avail, then looked through the menus to find a way to adjust this. As I had no luck with that, I pulled up the manual but it had absolutely no mentions of this display let alone how to adjust it. After a bit more fiddling I figured out that it was done by taping the scale indicator in the top-left corner of the screen, but a simple single-line mention of this would have saved me a lot of time. Had I not used the 705 before I likely would have tried that sooner, but then again I likely wouldn't have realized that the scale could even be manually adjusted.

After a while this will become less and less of an issue as other people will ultimately run into the same problems and you can search for solutions on their official fora. With a new product, however, such resources haven't matured yet so you are often left to figure it out on your own. Regardless, many buyers of this product don't even know about the existence of that resource and will likely not explore half of the features that this equipment offers simply because they don't know that they are there.


Summary

The Garmin Edge 705 was an extremely powerful device and the Edge 800 continues that tradition as the flagship of Garmin's line of fitness products. While the 705 was largely a revolutionary product adding features to the bike computer that no other product even came close to, the 800 is more of an evolutionary step forward along that path. In effect, the Edge 800 is to the 705 as Google Maps is to Mapquest - it performs the same fundamental tasks, but it just does them in an elegant way that makes them much more useful. The technology available in 2007 severely limited what they could do at the time, but thankfully advancements in recent years have allowed them to put together a polished piece of equipment that lives up to the promise that it's predecessor tempted us with.

The difficult question is whether or not it is worth the cost and effort to make the jump from the 705 to the 800. Fundamentally, the decision really relies more on how much the oddities of the 705 get in your way. As noted above, the 705 can pretty much do most of what the 800 can - it might take a bit more patience and effort, but if you are willing to deal with that then sticking with what you've got is likely the best idea. If, however, certain aspects of the 705's design are getting in your way, the 800 does a great job of ironing out all of those quirks and just allowing you to get things done.

For someone coming to this market segment from simpler units, the main question you need to ask yourself is how useful you see the mapping and navigation features being to your particular set of circumstances. If you ride the same routes in familiar territory all the time, then those features will likely spend most of their time idle. If, on the other hand, you spend a lot of time exploring new ground, those maps can be a major asset. Aside from that, the Edge 500 does most of what the 800 can do, is smaller/lighter and costs about $150 less. Making the determination of whether those features make up for that additional cost is a question that no review can really answer for you.

Pros:
+ Additional customizable exercise page and the addition of two more fields per page.
+ Elegant and responsive touch-based interface with a larger full-colour screen.
+ Significantly improved bike mount compatible with other Garmin products.
+ MicroSD card slot can now be used to store exercise files.
+ Improved weather sealing over the USB and MicroSD ports.
+ Ability to load satellite image tiles onto the device itself in addition to street level maps.
+ Ability to produce custom map overlays to provide additional information on the map displays.
+ Improved algorithm for correcting altitude information.
+ Support for discrete wheel speed and cadence sensors (the 705 only supported combined sensors like the GSC-10).
+ Much better looking unit in a more compact package.
+ Temperature recording.

Cons:
- No method to disable smart recording feature without a power meter.
- Artificial limitation on the number of Birdseye tiles that can be loaded on the device.
- Incredibly slow file transfers to memory card makes loading maps unnecessarily painful.
- Reduced on-board flash memory means MicroSD card is necessary if you want any maps.
- No improvement in the resolution of the display.
- Smaller face buttons that require more force to actuate.
- Warning sounds are harder to hear than the Edge 705.
- Combined power adapter a step down from the cables supplied with the 705.


Firmware Wishlist

As noted above, many of my concerns with this device aren't related to the hardware itself and can potentially be addressed by future firmware updates. Garmin fortunately updates the firmware on their devices on a regular basis, so I figure that it's worth putting down a list of things I'd like to see modified on the off chance that something can be done about it. Some of these issues only require trivial changes, and some would require significant changes, so it's unlikely we'll see them all dealt with but it's still worth putting them on the record.

1. (Trivial) Restore the option to disable the smart recording feature and force a fixed 1Hz recording resolution. Given that the device already does this when a power meter is connected, it is just a matter of flipping a switch somewhere and would be a trivial thing to add. While smaller files are nice, given the massive recording capacity of these devices there really is no downside I can see to offering users the option of more detailed recordings.
   
2. (Moderate) Provide the capacity to add more user-configured training pages into the rotation. While three 10-field pages can display pretty much everything that I could need, I'd prefer to have a larger number of specialized pages to curb the information overload. As the device allows pages to be disabled for people who don't need them the option to add more wouldn't really make the device any harder to use. Further, since only one is displayed at any given time it shouldn't use any more resources.
3. (Moderate to Difficult) Remove the limitation on the number of Birdseye tiles that can be loaded into the device and bound it soully by how much room is available on the memory card. The usefulness of this feature is primarily for figuring out alternative routes when something unexpected comes up along a ride, so by definition we can't really predict which areas we are going to need. Given the massive amount of land area that can be covered on a 100+ mile ride, that's a lot of ground that needs to be covered. Further, expecting us to manually select the area for each and every ride is going to get tired quickly, so to be usable this system ultimately needs to be able to load up images for everywhere that we'd likely end up going (ie at least a 50 mile radius around the user's house). This may require some significant optimization work on the engine and/or file format used to store the tiles (so that it can rapidly find the specific tiles that it needs), but it's not an insurmountable task as only a small window has to be loaded at any given time (240x160 viewport, plus some caching of surrounding areas).
4. (Difficult) Add the capacity for visual tiles such as real-time heart rate plots to be added to the exercise displays. Additionally, add the capacity to colour code numeric fields when targets have been set (eg red when above target, blue when under, etc.).
5. (Difficult) Add a display similar to the elevation plot that shows overlaid historical telemetry plots for all major parameters (heart rate, power, speed, cadence and elevation). Given the colour display on this device, the ability to look back on the details of a ride (rather than just looking at splits) would make on-device analysis much more powerful. This can naturally be done on a computer after-the-fact, but it would be nice to be able to pull this up at a mid-ride lunch break to see how things are going so far.
6. (Trivial to Difficult) Adding advanced metrics like TSS, IF and Normalized Power would make analysis of rides on the device itself a bit more complete. Adding these features would draw a lot of potential customers away from competitive products like the Joule. Naturally the rub here is whether or not these metrics require licencing fees, as if they do adding them via a free firmware update would be unlikely.

Either way, if I could get the first three issues addressed I'd pretty much have everything that I'd want in a device. The last three would be great to have, but they're just icing on the cake. With that said, I'm not really holding my breath and I'd consider myself lucky if they just managed to hit one of them!


Further Reading

- DC Rainmaker's detailed first look review of the Edge 800.
- User manual for the Garmin Edge 800.
- Official product page for the Garmin Edge 800.
- Official Forum for the Garmin Edge 800.

Update (29-11-2010) - After experimenting a little more with the courses functionality of the device on the road, I made a few changes to the navigation section of the review. With what I've seen here, there are some substantial improvements to this area of the system and I hope to play around a bit more with them in the future.