Biking and the Handheld GPS Receiver?

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1 Biking and the Handheld GPS Receiver? Overview GPS in a Nutshell The US Military has a series of satellites that orbit the globe twice a day at an altitude of nearly 12,500 miles. In conjunction with a set of ground control stations these satellites broadcast time and orbital information using high frequency radio waves. When a cyclist is equipped with a handheld receiver that can hear these frequencies and interpret their information it is possible for them to precisely their position anywhere on the surface of the earth! Impact of GPS on Cycling For a club level cyclist who range far and wide on their bicycles, knowing her precise location can mean the difference between a successful club ride and getting lost or even worse. Why GPS on Bicycles? bananas and Goodness knows what else! So why would anyone want to carry yet another piece of equipment, and a gadget at that? My club ride experiences have answered this question for me as it relates to GPS units. I d like to try and convince you as well. GPS Solutions Garmin GPS units come in two basic varieties: Units that generally do not come with a base map and do not AUTOROUTE. Units that contain a basemap and a POI database and can AUTOROUTE. Either types are suitable for general use on a bicycle. Here are some of the basic uses you can make of them: Ultimate Cyclometer Did you know that a GPS unit could replace all the functions of your cyclometer? Not only will it give you SPEED, but in addition it can calculate DIRECTION, AVG SPEED, DISTANCE TRAVELED, RIDING TIME, and ELEVATION on all the bikes you own, without wheel size calibration! (NOTE: This is probably not as practical as using a regular cyclometer because of the Most daytouring cyclists carry lots of stuff around. In addition to extra clothing in the event of rain, there are water bottles, pumps, inner tubes, tools, bike locks and cables, bells, lights (front and rear), walkie-talkie radios for leading and sweeping group rides, energy bars, constant need to recharge your Beezodog s Place Website Publication

2 unit and the fact that if you are in an area where you lose contact with the satellites that support your GPS unit, you may have lost valuable mileage information.) Emergency Notification Some time ago I started carrying a cell phone with me on club rides. I got sideways glances for that. I suspect people thought it a bit pretentious to carry around extra weight on the off chance that someone might call me. But my reason for brining the phone was for outgoing emergency calls. On one ride from Wheaton to Crystal Lake a new club member collided with an oncoming rider along the Fox River and suffered a concussion. I had the only sure means of summoning help and did so by calling 911. The problem was that we didn t know our precise location along that river. We were away from obvious landmarks. One of our members rode ahead to find an access point to the river and came back with information that allowed us to indicate to the EMTs where we would be. If we had had a GPS unit with us we could have notified the rapid response operator of our exact location. (NOTE: Most cell phones today have GPS units built into them for precisely this purpose. It operates behind the scenes to give the operator your location. So it is quite likely you already carry a passive GPS system on your bike!) to keep tabs on useful locations I find along the way. Each commercial GPS unit allows you to capture WAYPOINTS of your current location. A waypoint consists of the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates of anything, anywhere. (NOTE: You simply press the MARK button on your unit and then give the WAY- POINT a name.) For instance I mark all portable outhouses I come across. I also mark all police and fire stations that we pass. This activity extends to hospitals with walk-up emergency rooms. I even mark great little eating spots so that I can return at another time. Last year one of our club members leading a hike marked the exact location of the Hidden Lake near the Morton Arboretum. Marking locations which don t have obvious roadways that can not be easily reached by automobile is very handy. (NOTE: Most units allow for up to 500 WAYPOINTS.) BackTracking Once on a club ride I decided to avoid a limestone trailway of some 20 miles and so turned back to our point of origination. This was a ride I had done one half of before but had never seen the middle third which was a bike route through Joliet from the western terminus of the Old Plank Road Trail to the I & M Canal. (NOTE: Trackback works like the breadcrumbs Hansel and Gretel used in trying to mark their path into the forest to find the wicked witch s gingerbread house. Of course we know that birds ate those crumbs and the pair was lost. A good GPS system would have saved them!) Route Mapping Either type of GPS can serve as a great companion to your bicycle trips. Battery life on many of the larger units is around 8 hours but some handhelds can offer a full 24 hours or more of run-time. (NOTE: If you are doing multiday tours or brevets you will most likely need to either recharge your unit or replace worn out batteries each day. You will probably want to bring a laptop to upload your daily TRACKLOG if you plan to archive your tour.) There are online computer route planning services that may be of interest to you. MapMyRide is a well respected service that many club riders use. My personal favorite is RideWithGPS. You may have yet another personal favorite. Find one that you like and create an account and get to work plotting routes that you can ride next weekend! Bicycle clubs routinely archive cuesheets of rides led by their membership. They even exchange rides from other clubs in locales their membership may have seldom visited. Chicagoland environs to aid commuters and recreational riders alike in finding their way around Chicago and its outlying suburbs. But what if you have a map and can t easily orient yourself because of a lack of landmarks or other confusing ground items? This is where a GPS unit can help. I routinely use a wristwatch style GPS unit on bicycle rides. Not only can I do a TRACKBACK in cases of emergency, but I can also count on the TRACKLOG that is automatically generated when the GPS unit is turned on. (NOTE: A new internet service has emerged from Garmin. It is called GARMIN CONNECT and provides a very easy method for archiving your TRACKLOGs. Visit this site and discover how easy it is to share your route maps, generated using your Garmin GPS product.) Cue Sheets One of my great regrets is that more club rides don t have cuesheets. I suspect that several reasons dictate this change in club ride procedure. Some riders complained that the cue sheets were inaccurate in terms of distances and so mistakes were made when they were separated from the main group. Another explanation is that cue I was able to wind my way from sheets are frankly hard to produce. the I & M Canal back to the Old You really need to drive your route Plank Road Trail quite easily using Useful Locations to produce the cuesheet but sometimes offroad portions cannot be the built-in TRACKBACK feature of The Active Transportation Alliance publishes a paper map of the When I lead rides each week I like my personal GPS receiver. 2 Biking and the Handheld GPS Receiver? Beezodog s Place Website Publication

3 easily described in a cuesheet and so it becomes troublesome to use a cuesheet on these route sections. Cuesheets are in essence maze solutions tools. A classical garden maze has shrub walls high enough that you can t see where you are in relation to anything else. So it is very useful to have a cuesheet which tells you how many paces to go and which direction to turn before reaching the exit point. But in open areas this is less useful when emergencies strike. If you are on a lonely farm road or in an unfamiliar suburban or urban setting, which way is north? All bets are off on cloudy days when shadows are practically non-existent. A GPS generated route map tells you not only how far to go before turning and in which direction but also gives you a glimpse of what lies a mile or more away from your current location in any direction. In essence a good route map allows you to modify or even re-route the ride when the need arises. If you print your route maps on waterproof paper using pigment inkjet inks you have a very handy tool for any kind of weather conditions that will last for years with careful use. Choosing a GPS OK. If by chance I have made some convincing arguments concerning the place a GPS unit might have in your arsenal of cycling tools, perhaps now is the time to discuss what kind of GPS is best for you and what it might cost. GPS Handhelds GPS receivers come in handheld and dashboard mountable sizes. I include in the former category units designed to be worn on the wrist. Cyclists will most likely want to avoid the 2 pound behemoths designed for automobiles, airplanes and boats. So we will concentrate on handheld units alone. Less Expensive Handhelds In the under $200 range are units which do not include internal maps. These units allow you to download WAYPOINTS into them for the purpose of doing some deadreckoning where needed or to find those outhouses I mentioned earlier but the are not AUTOROUTING tools. Garmin makes a wristworn GPS that I have always felt a nice compromise between a unit dedicated for bicycle use and one that would serve you well in camp when touring as well. The Foretrex 401 is an excellent unit for this dual duty. It does not have a base map so you should not expect to use it to AUTOROUTE rides. But you can use it to find your way back should you get dropped by your ride group or to merely capture a TRACKLOG for use on GARMN CONNECT to archive the ride you just finished. Battery life is about 17 hours and the display resolution of 100 x 64 pixels while small is fine because of the sharpness of the display. MSRP for this unit is $200. More Expensive Handhelds AUTOROUTING units allow you to identify a starting and ending point for your route and the GPS unit will generate a route for you. It s a great feature for motorists but has little value to cyclists who want side roads to travel away from interstate highways and congested main arteries. Nevertheless a good autorouting unit is worth its weight in gold in getting you to a remote start location for that next group ride. Autorouting units cost upwards of $350 or more! The single most important ingredient in selecting a GPS (from my point of view) is the kind of mapping software that will support it. The big manufacturers like Garmin and Magellan sell mapping software to help you manage waypoint archives and print route maps for your ride participants. You can even exchange electronic versions of routes with others using the same mapping format! The Garmin Edge line of products has shown a way forward when trying to find a GPS unit that can be dedicated to use on your bicycle. The unit pictured above is the Edge 500. MSRP is $250 and like the Foretrex 401 it is not intended to do AUTOROUTING. But rather is intended to serve as a replacement for your standard cyclometer. Battery life is about 18 hours so it means that after an all-day ride you will need to recharge the unit. It can be coupled with your heart rate monitor to make capturing information about your training all the more complete. 4 Biking and the Handheld GPS Receiver? Beezodog s Place Website Publication

4 The Garmin Edge 605 is not the state of the art anymore but it is a very serviceable unit. Like the Edge 705 and its touchscreen cousin the Edge 800 you are now in possession of a GPS unit that can AUTO- ROUTE. So in addition to having it find your way forward to the next location you can search for options of places to eat or hospitals to visit. If you are likely to be doing self-supported touring this could mean all the difference between an enjoyable tour and tragedy. Battery life for the Edge 605 is around 15 hours. So again you will need to recharge this unit after all-day rides. At an MSRP of $400 you need to consider carefully how desireable these features actually are. Summary My preference if your budget can sustain it is to own one of each. Units like the Foretrex 401 are simply great trail GPS companions. They work well to provide supposrt on the bicycle but of course cannot AUTOROUTE. They make nice geocaching tools when used correctly. For those who can afford them the AUTOROUTING units are really nice. Order your with a full base map and enjoy the benefits of all the Points of Interest material that comes with it. This might turn out be a lifesaveer when riding in unfamiliar areas. The units that allow the coupling of your heart rate monitor are great when used in conjunction with something like GARMIN CONNECT because they extend the effectiveness of your training. You get to see how well you are progressing over the course of a riding season and in addition have the benefit of a GPS unit for those longer day-rides and centuries. The Edge 800 is another step forward. It is slightly more expensive than the Edge 605 coming in at $450. But for that you get a chance to couple its use with your heart rate monitor to make those training rides all the more effective. 6 Biking and the Handheld GPS Receiver? Beezodog s Place Website Publication

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