Long Distance Competition/Ultracycling, Randonneuring and Endurance Cycling - Don't use a GPS

if you do use a GPS, use your cue sheet so you know if it is lying to you about the next turn.

That is all.

And double check your cue sheet, even if you're with a group. The guy in front might not be right. (My apologies again to the 6 people I led down a dead end wrong turn on the Big Time Urban Pop.)

And double check your cue sheet, even if you're with a group. The guy in front might not be right. (My apologies again to the 6 people I led down a dead end wrong turn on the Big Time Urban Pop.)

I went off the route many times for a Starbucks(or equivalent). A couple times, I discovered another rider was blindly following me. No apology is necessary, since I never knew they were tailing me. Besides, who could complain about being led to latte?

I've never owned or used a GPS.

And on brevets and other organized rides, I actually prefer to use a map ... rather than a cue sheet.

if you do use a GPS, use your cue sheet so you know if it is lying to you about the next turn.
Thank you for the bald, unsupported assertion. ;)

GPS's can be wrong, so can cue sheets, so can maps. If you can pre-load your GPS with a route and the batteries will last, you're fine. If your GPS doesn't have those capabilities, it's still useful as a backup and/or way to find resources quickly.

Ok, let's hear the story.

This year I've become a true Luddite. No GPS. Not even a cycle computer on 2 of my 3 brevets (admittedly one was a route I knew by memory, but the other was in a state I had never ridden in before). It definitely forces a certain level of attentiveness to leave the technology at home.

Not even a cycle computer on 2 of my 3 brevets

Are you taking maps instead of cue sheets?

Are you taking maps instead of cue sheets?

No maps. Cue sheets and some serious attention paid to every intersection!

I don't think I have that much attention to pay.

The problem I see is that the cue sheets are made up to use with an odometer. For example, most recent ride, cue sheet says "Turn right on Skyview Lane" or something of the sort. I get to that point, and the sign shows a county road number, not a name. But, because I was at the right place on the odometer, that pretty well had to be it. You could just as easily write up the cue sheets without referring to milage so much, but would need to be more descriptive otherwise.

I really don't care if you use a gps or not. I was riding with someone who was using a gps which told him to take a wrong turn and he crashed hard because of it. He wasn't able to continue, although he's ok now. That took the fun out of the ride for a while.

I would not trust a gps, and I would use a cue sheet in combination. I am currently running with cue sheets and no odometer, and that method is less than satisfactory if someone decides to change a road name. The RBA on the brevets I have been riding does an excellent job with his cue sheets, he physically inspects the route the week before. I also plot the course on one of the route mapping web sites ahead of time.

The problem I have had with cue sheets is that when I get tired, the odometer in my head stops working. This is particularly the case when the cue says something to the effect of "turn left on unnamed road." Living where I do, it's rare to have a road that you stay on for more than 10 miles.

The problem I see is that the cue sheets are made up to use with an odometer. For example, most recent ride, cue sheet says "Turn right on Skyview Lane" or something of the sort. I get to that point, and the sign shows a county road number, not a name. But, because I was at the right place on the odometer, that pretty well had to be it. You could just as easily write up the cue sheets without referring to milage so much, but would need to be more descriptive otherwise.

On my cue sheets, I try to put both the "Skyview Lane" name and the Rural Route number ... around here there might be a big sign saying the name of the road, and then a little sign with the number, or one, or the other. In some cases there is also a Rural Route number and a Highway number, so I'll include both of those.

And I'll also throw in some description now and then as well. For example, on one route I had the riders cruise halfway down a fairly steep hill, and then take a road that led off to the right. Rather than having them fly all the way down the hill (because who looks for a road when they're concentrating on descending) I mentioned that the road was halfway down the hill in big bold letters on the cue sheet, and told them not to decend to the bottom of the hill.

I really don't care if you use a gps or not. I was riding with someone who was using a gps which told him to take a wrong turn and he crashed hard because of it. ...

Dude-- sucks about your friend's crash -glad he's ok.

Would you elaborate how the gps made him crash? I mean, sure you weren't on the road you thought you were on, but how does that cause a crash? My initial reaction is "how could the gps possibly be at fault for the crash?" but I would like to hear what you are thinking.

Or maybe, you are just expressing some emotions, which is totally understandable, but has genereated an irrelevant-to-you series of responses.

Peace

I blamed the GPS because it distracted him and told him to turn when he shouldn't have. The turn was somewhat difficult if you were distracted. Uphill turn with an off-camber slope after a descent. It's hard to say that the GPS caused the crash, but the crash wouldn't have happened without the GPS.

The real lesson I re-learned from this is to learn your tools before you need to use them. The GPS kept telling him we were off route when we weren't. I was doing my own navigation from the cue sheet, but there is always that nagging doubt when someone is going off course.

recording a GPS route/data is fun, but i never use the unit to tell me where to go.

cue sheets are easy enough to read, and never "stop working". i did a 600k going off a cue sheet alone (no computer), and made it without getting lost any more than usual. after a while you just know how long it will take to go 15.2 km, and can figure out when the turn should be coming.

but fwiw i don't think people get lost any more with GPS units.. think about it, cyclists have been getting lost since the first pedal stroke..

machka, if you only read a map, how do you read street names from it without stopping? interesting idea but it sounds hard.

Sorry to hear about your friend's crash. But it doesn't sound like the crash was caused by the GPS, but by your friend blindly following its instructions, despite the fact that it had repeatedly told him to take wrong turns.

On the DC Randonneurs website, we say: "Always get a copy of the final cue sheet. That final cue sheet contains the official route, so in case there is a conflict with the GPS file, you should resolve the conflict in favor of the cue sheet. Use the GPS as a handy-dandy adjunct. Keep your wits about you, as the GPS cannot notify you of road hazards — it is up to you to ride safely."

In partial defense of the GPS: On my last brevet, a 300K, I printed the cue sheet on waterproof paper because the forecast was for 60 percent chance of rain. (I took along the official cue sheet in a baggie, just in case.) When we got to Covington's Corner Rd, about 10 miles from the end, the GPS told me to make the turn, but the cue sheet did not. However, the cue sheet also said to go 0.8 miles to the next turn, but the cumulative mileage jumped by 1.8 miles. I checked the official cue sheet, which had the turn on Covington's Corner marked. Turns out, my printer cut off a line and the GPS was correct. I'm sure we'd have sorted it out eventually, but my stoker would have had some choice words for me :-)

Earlier in the brevet (first 15 miles) the GPS had told me to take the wrong course several times. Turns out I'd forgotten to reset it after using it in the car, so it was set for "Car/Motorcycle" and "fastest speed" instead of "shortest distance", so it was trying to take us off the tiny roads and onto bigger ones. Once I got that sorted out, it was flawless for the remaining 175 miles. The best setting seems to be "Car/motorcycle" and "shortest distance." Setting for "bicycle" seems to make it take flaky side roads on the assumption that you don't want to ride down Main St. because of the traffic. Your GPS may differ, in part depending on who made the route and what settings they chose.

Nick

When using GPS, I've done a few things that I think help minimize problems on the road:

(1) Program the route in yourself, rather than download the file from the RBA's site or from a friend. Doing it yourself ensures that you have no one to blame for any programming errors but yourself. And it'll get you familiar with the route in advance of the ride, which is a good thing. Every RBA I know will give out the cue sheet in advance of the ride if you ask. Ask day-of-ride if there have been any changes to the cue sheet since you got it.

(2) Break the route up into separate segments. Put in each leg of the ride, between controls, separately. Get them to sort in the order you'll use them on the ride by naming them like this, "A [first control location]," "B [second control location]" (solves the problem of the GPS automatically alphabetizing your routes).

(3) Don't use the "follow road" function. Select "off road" navigation instead. No chance of the GPS steering you wrong by trying to cut off your route by putting you on a street that's not part of the route. This does mean that you need to be careful about where you put your points in plotting the route, but this is a good exercise to go through. Don't let the machine do your thinking for you; do it for yourself!

(4) Put the GPS in your pocket, not on the handlebars. Unorthodox, I know, and it comes from a guy who has always carried a cue sheet in his pocket rather than in a holder. Unless you're running one of the Edge units or something similar, put the thing away where it's out of sight but still accessible. Keep your eyes on the road and the beautiful scenery instead of fidgeting with electronics. If you're not comfortable taking your eyes off the road and a hand off the bars to fetch and look at a GPS, then really, you probably shouldn't be looking at a map, cue sheet, or GPS unit at that moment, either.

(5) Share navigation duty with other riders around you. Many riders seem to defer to the folks with GPS and just blindly follow them. If you're the guy with the GPS, instead of announcing, "next turn is thus-and-such," say something like, "I have the next turn as Whatever Road in half a mile. Is that what you have?" This helps avoid people blinding leading others, or being led themselves, off-route. It also is a double-check against any error that might exist in your route programming.

...made it without getting lost any more than usual...

Now THAT is a rousing endorsement of navigational excellence! :roflmao2::roflmao2:

Now THAT is a rousing endorsement of navigational excellence! :roflmao2::roflmao2:

mattm and I are both in the "bonus kilometers" club.

mattm and I are both in the "bonus kilometers" club.

you betcha.

i like to think that it harkens back to the old days of velocio, when they didn't even have cuesheets! or maybe they had them carved in stone back then..

of course, these days we have it a bit easier, what with gears, light bikes, and such. but on some level, i don't want to make the ride "too easy," and (for me) i think GPS units are heading down that road, so to speak.

sure, it's hard enough to ride without worrying about navigation, but staying on course (or not) all part of the fun. hell, even GPS users get some of that fun sometimes anyway, so perhaps nobody is losing here.

machka, if you only read a map, how do you read street names from it without stopping? interesting idea but it sounds hard.

What street names??? :D

I depended solely on maps on my Manitoba rides ... remain eastward on Hwy ### for 75 km, turn north and remain on Hwy ### for 25 km, turn west and remain on Hwy ### for 75 km, turn south and remain on Hwy ### for 25 km. And you're done. You just look at the big rectangle on the map and ride it. There were cue sheets on the back of the maps, but I never looked at them.

I didn't even use a cue sheet on the RM1200 because for most of that event, if you happened to accidentally turn onto a gravel road, you were off the course ... return to the nearest paved road and keep going.

My first experience reading a cue sheet actually happened halfway through the 2003 PBP ... after three years of Randonneuring. I had the cue sheet in front of me on that event, but had been following the arrows and not paying any attention at all to my cue sheet when all of a sudden I glanced at this piece of paper with all this writing on it, and realized that it matched something I was going past at that moment. A few moments later I passed something else that matched the next line on the paper ... and it hit me that this page full of printing actually had something to do with the course I was on.

When I returned home after the PBP, for the first time I had a look at the cue sheets on the back of the maps I'd been using for the Manitoba brevets.

Here in Alberta I'd rather, for the most part, dispense with the use of cue sheets as well, but I do try to make a turn here and there in the route to make them somewhat more necesary than they were in Manitoba. I figure it's good practice for places where they might actually be necessary. I still have trouble following them.

Here's my map for the 300K brevet coming up this weekend, for example. I have to make a change to the route because of a massive amount of construction right toward the end, but most of the route will remain the same. Using that, and an actual map of Central Alberta a person could pretty much do the whole thing without a cue sheet.

that makes sense, and i'm jealous! our brevets usually have a lot of turns, sometimes shortly spaced.

i love routes with directions like "stay on i-90 for 30 miles, hwy 97 for 40 miles, then hwy 2 for 60 miles" - the cue sheets are always one page or less, that's when you know you can just focus on riding (and/or sightseeing).

sounds like for PBP you can either follow other riders or the signs, but i'll carry a cue just in case.

If I'd stayed in Britain any longer, I'd have broken down and got a GPS. There are just too many lanes to ride on over there and turns come up too frequently. The route sheet for the 2005 LEL was 8 x double-column A4 pages!

Don't have a computer on any of my bikes any more, relying on a estimation of the speed I'm riding at and the route sheet. I usually start thinking "next turn will be coming up soon" about 1 km before the turn.

Never used a PBP route sheet, except to give to Gerry Tatrai before he went behind a hedge. It was useful then, apparently...

A map isn't practical in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. People have been building roads here for entertainment for centuries now. It's like a beehive. I started riding in Southwestern Virginia, and it isn't uncommon to ride on the same road for 30 miles. Here, that's nearly impossible without making some turns. Ten miles seems to be about the limit in Eastern PA/NJ.

I have been changing my cue sheet strategy, and I think I finally came up with one that is good enough. I take the cue sheets, print them out and make an endless loop. Reading the cue sheet and navigating keeps me in the game and thinking, and I don't think I would want to give that up entirely.

that makes sense, and i'm jealous! our brevets usually have a lot of turns, sometimes shortly spaced.

And sometimes unsigned! My last bonus kms were due to a missing street sign, and I didn't watch my mileage for the turn.

I'm kind of jealous too. This weekend is my first 300K, and there are 200 cues on the cue sheet.