[NMCycling] A few tips on navigation and NMES

[Nathan Berg via Bike-racers]

Hi Folks,
At the ABQ MM BFL we had a couple people who weren't able to complete the
route due to batteries dying on their GPS making it difficult to navigate.
There's a couple ways to address this, depending on the GPS, but in my case
for events where I know I'm going to be testing the limits of my GPS
battery life I attach a cheap supplemental USB battery (like this one from
Amazon, a whole $8  http://a.co/2eqjIJj ) to the handlebar with some rubber
bands and connect to my GPS with a short right angle mini-usb cable (like
these, another $8 for TWO,  http://a.co/c6zMoni ).  With my old Garmin 705
and my 810 I can plug this in and it will extend the GPS life *while the
gps is running*.
As I understand it the Garmin 500 will not charge while on/running, so you
need to test your GPS unit to make sure it can charge while powered on and
running.  So, for an entire $16 you've extended your GPS battery life to
probably 24 hours or more.

Next, I've recently started playing with an app available on IOS and
Android called Gaia GPS.  For highly acceptable functionality a year
subscription will set you back all of $20.  With this you can make any GPS
enabled apple/android device a very good navigation tool.  You just need to
plan ahead and make sure you've downloaded the base maps and tracks for
offline use as you very likely won't have cell phone data when you need
it.  I'll be populating Gaia with the NMES course as we go, I've already
got the SYDC routes posted.  From here you can either save tracks to your
own Gaia account, or download the GPX for use in any GPS device:
https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/folder/35409e4e-b650-49ca-85d2-4b987b7b579c/?layer=GaiaTopoRasterFeet
This can be a good option for an inexpensive back-up for your primary
navigation GPS.

In other news there's been some recent additions in the world of GPS bike
computers from Wahoo and Lezyne that are quite a bit less expensive than
Garmin.  I just don't have experience with them in the real world for back
country nav so you'll have to do your own research on those.  Or if you
have personal experience, give me a shout, I'd like to know about it.

Cheers,
Nate



-- 
_________________________________________
Nathan Berg
F.I.S.T. Certified Tri/TT and Road Race Bike Fitter
F.I.S.T. Equipped Fit Center: EXiT cycling fit bike, Computrainer
Resistance Unit, Purely Custom Variable Length Crank.
Pedal/Shoe interface trained by Paul Swift of BikeFit LLC
http://fit2wincycling.com
(505)980-5388
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.swcp.com/pipermail/bike-racers/attachments/20180403/59f8b8b0/attachment.html>