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GPSsing
Submitted by fiasco on Fri, 11/20/2009 - 22:21
If you like gadgets, then you'd have a GPS unit by now. Very useful, real-time for monitoring speed, heart rate, elapsed times in training or racing.
Pretty good back home to analyse your session/race with graphing out functions.
In Garmin land there is the obvious bundled Training Center for windows. The maps are crap and must be updated with commercial maps (mapsource?) or borrow a hacked version off a friend. This may have changed, though, since it is a couple of years since I had access to a windows computer.
You can go to Motionbased
http://www.motionbased.com/
and upload your tracks. First 10 are free. The advantage of this is sharing. When you send a .kml to a friend, they can access the full graphed data of your session in various formats.
The Training Center for Apple is unbelievably crap, although this may have improved with the late 09 version. Maps are shocking and graphing and organisation is basic, to put it politely.
Ascent on the mac is great, though.
http://www.montebellosoftware.com/
Organises tracks, allows input as text and as check boxes/drop down lists. I can label an activity as marathon/sprint/downriver etc, choose boat type, race/training/time trial and tick it as a pb. Activity data columns highly configurable. Tracks overlay on google earth image. Best yet is that activity can be edited. If your race has a bit of crap at the start or end where the auto-start had triggered while you were hanging around...chop this bit off.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~fiasco/fiasco/Picture2.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~fiasco/fiasco/Picture3.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~fiasco/fiasco/Picture4.jpg
Now you have the hang of the software, you start exporting tracks and viewing them on full GoogleEarth. In the three years I have used a GPS I have accumulated a few places. The Avon, from Northam down, the Canning from Maddington (short of Burslem Drive) and the Swan through the harbour to Cottesloe, The Moore, Blackwood (Bridgetown) Murray (pinjarra-ravenswood) Mersey, Bradys, Nepean (Penrith). Way short of where I have actually been.
Try opening these in GoogleEarth
http://members.iinet.net.au/~fiasco/tracks/fiasco-tracks.zip
I am thinking of tracking a few streams next year. Maybe Woorooloo bk, Helena, upper canning, Murray, Collie, Harvey, Serpentine and more. Brockman? I may need some guidance for some of these adventures when the time comes.
newer GPSs
The new Garmin 310XT plots your training runs directly into Google Earth, as well as the street directory. Others with a higher Geek Rating (i.e. capability) may still be doing the MotionBased thing but I'm quite happy with what the GPS itself does.
We did a Freo to Sorrento paddle last Sunday and as I zoomed in on my GPS track, a little white splodge appeared, so I zoomed in further and was able to zoom enough to see that the white splodge was actually a plane, and not just any plane, a Lear Jet. Very cool.
Data transfer is wireless and everything goes into the Garmin website (not onto your computer) - my one issue with my Garmin is that the website can take up to four days to register my data.
Apart from that it is a cool little toy, although I have had to learn to stop looking at my pace too often so that I don't run into things. :-) One day I may also be able to get my GPS to tell me what time it is!