CraigB

I broke down and got a 500 a few months ago when Nashbar had them on sale for a ridiculous price. As I understand the pitifully limited user manual, I have a choice of tracking the data on my own computer, or uploading it to Garmin's website and doing it there.

Which is the better approach, or does it not make any difference?

TrojanHorse

I upload it to garmin... I use more than one computer, so it's handy to have it on line.

I also upload the file to strava (they have a direct upload feature, pretty slick) because its fun to see how I do vs various segments, and a bunch of dudes from here are on strava as well. It's motivating!

Ultimately, I pay attention to how far I ride each month/year and whether I can feel like I'm improving at all. The strava segments are really handy for that.

Seattle Forrest

I'd tell you, but I have an 800, and now I feel left out. Waaaaaaah!

When I do out-of-the-ordinary rides (like taking my bike out into the mountains), I'll upload the track log to Garmin Connect, so that I can send my friends a link to a map (of my ride, not just of the area) along with the pictures. Otherwise, I just keep them around in case they come in handy later. For example, I can find out how much elevation I've gained in a year (or any other timeframe) from the data. All sorts of cool stuff can be done with it.

I used to put the data into a desktop app called SportTracks, but ... I don't like sitting in front of computers. Still, I prefer a desktop app over a web app. The data is for me, not the rest of the world. I don't expect most people to care about my rides (and hikes and kayak trips), and if strangers do care, they probably shouldn't, and I don't want maps to my apartment (sometimes including my HR) floating around the web.

BionicChris

No right or wrong way, i personally use the Garmin Connect web activity logger.

It is simple to use, has the Player to show your route on the map whilst comparing to a graph of say cadence and speed, or climbing etc.

Possibly my favourite thing about it though is being able to keep all of my data for Cycling, Swimming, Football and running on one simple website account. The weight tracker is also a neat addition.

CJ C

garminconnect website is 1000000x times better then the garmin training center on the computer. the website is a better user looking experience. both give you the same data its just the website is easier to use and analyze the data.

just started using the garmin data on strava. its very humbling but i personally like garmin website better. I wonder if the strava premium is better?

btw garmin connect took away the average moving speed and average moving time, but rumor says it will be back in April

Mr. Beanz

Sign up on Strava. Just about any ride I do is on the site. A gang of different segments of each ride. GMR for example, I do the ride, log in my info then it shows me where the segments of the ride are.

Very motivating. I see that on a one mile section all the other clydes have done the ride in 2 minutes whereas my time is 4 mintues. Heck, I had no idea I was on the clock ha ha! So naturally, I have to go back and pick up the pace next me.

Even the descent is listed as a segment. I saw that my time was very low as I usually descend with Gina and only having the Garmin for a couple months. My time 21 minutes while others at 15? We can't have that!

Fun and now I see a need to get back into shape. I'm liking it cause I don't try much when there is nothing of which to compare myself. Now I've got lots of targets and goals.

jethro56 

I've downloaded training center but just use Garmin Connect. It seems to work better with firefox browsers. How do I use the data? Mainly I dream of becoming mediocre. It's good to have a record of past performance especially when the gains are slow in coming. For example this morning I was thinking that I really haven't been riding as much/ as far as I should. I ran a report on cycling that broke the data up month by month. The truth is I've ridden twice as far and I'm over 2 mph faster than last March and that my memory sucks.

Another thing is that I have auto lap/splits enabled. This summarizes data for each mile. I can ignore warmup and warmdown data and focus on the meat of the workout. On the Graphs I tend to switch to miles mode so I can tell how I did on different sections of a ride. Things like my cadence going into the wind. (I'm trying to overcome a tendency to being a wind masher) Last year I let the wind determine my route selection as I almost always rode into the wind first. I'm actually faster if I ride with the wind first while warming up. I believe I warmup faster but don't have enough data to support that as of yet.

I think having the data allows one to look at the different portions of a ride and see actually what went on rather than depending on your memory/feeling of what happened. My system is watch type so I don't really look at it while riding. I just know of a few things I need to get better at and remind myself during the ride.

TrojanHorse

You forgot "bugs got in my mouth" and "Headwind!"

one thing I REALLY like about strava more than the garmin website is that you can drag your mouse over the graphs and it highlights where you were on the map. This is great for checking out your HR on a hill, or speed, or whatever you feel like perusing.

And while it's depressing to be #691 out of 692 on a hill (I have one of those somewhere) it's really nice when you go ride again and you get a little personal record alert. Progress!

Mr. Beanz

True, strava lists your pr's on each segment. Although I am not anywhere close to my climbing form, I did push hard on a couple of GMR segments just to get info as a guideline. I can build from there!

Seve

I think it was Drew Eckhardt ... who suggested this as a possible program for your desktop. It has a lot of options and is handy if you don't want to join Strava, Endomondo, etc.
https://goldencheetah.org/

Seattle Forrest

SportTracks does that, too. It's a very nice feature.

Drew Eckhardt 

Your computer.

While the Garmin web site will let you share your rides with friends, your computer can let you track training stress so you can be more intelligent about making your hard days as tough as possible and easy periods slack and long enough that you recover.

I use Golden Cheetah (runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and doesn't cost anything. Training Peaks on-line does many of the same things on the web but isn't free).

A power meter gives you additional options (zones can be recalibrated off representative short and long intervals as opposed to the last 20 minutes of a 30-minute all-out effort) although it's still usable off heart rate.

Unlike the social web sites you can edit data after the fact. A "long ride" which came from you forgetting to reset between rides or it hit stop until after you'd put everything away in your shed can be broken into the two real rides or t runcated. Intervals where you neglected to click the lap button can be defined with a mouse click and drag. Sensor glitches can be removed so you have actual averages and peaks.

magohn

I use Garmin Connect and Strava.

I like the idea that the Garmin website will have a better infrastructure to keep my data safe. Keeping it locally means its at chance to be wiped out with PC virus or hardware failure. I realize that the Garmin device stores previously recorded data but the thought of editing a couple of thousand "Untitled" rides isnt something I would relish.

volosong

I also. Paid for the premium on Strava. It's nice, but unnecessary. I did it more to support the web developers. Strava has good software behind their web interface.

floatsinwater

I broke down and bought a fancy Garmin too... I mainly look at my heartrate and compare it to previous weeks to see how much my body improved. It's pretty motivating to see myself doing the same workout at a lower heartrate than when I first started. At the same time, I use the heartrate data as a baseline to see how hard I should be pushing myself on my trainer, since I found out I always push myself harder on the road than on my trainer.

The only disappointment was the software. It's utter garbage, and its pretty obvious the new Garmin Edge's rolled out before they worked out the kinks. The online version is much better than the offline version, but still kind of lacking. It's got all these fancy graphs, but the basic functionality blows. You also can't manually enter your health stats (body fat%, BMI, etc) other than your weight. At first I thought I was just doing something wrong, but apparently they really want you to buy their $300 wireless scale... lol

Askel

I guess it really depends on what you want to do with all this data. Is it just for reference? Are you making training decisions on it?

I tend to archive all mine in a portable format such as GPX so I can use whatever app (web based or not) to get the answers I want.

Usually though, I'm just trying to figure out "Where the HELL were we?"

Daspydyr 

I also use the HR data to measure C/V health. I also saw a problem crop up because of health issues that started a 16 months ago. I had a heart afib problem pop up December 2010. Last Thursday I noticed that my HR spiked from 130 to 185, on a downhill while I was cooling off. Now I can take my print outs to my Cardiologist to see if an old problem is back. Months of rides where my max HR is @165. Then this spike. Its good to have details. Usually I just want to see total miles and average speed kinda details.

CraigB

I didn't pop for the HRM, just the GPS/computer.

bigfred 

"What do I do with it?"

Ans: I sit and stare at it, and continue to wonder how I can be so dillussional as to believe that I'll ever be anything but pathetically slow? I have found no real difference whether I do this on Garmin Connect or Training Center. The result is still the same. I suck. I suck slightly less than I did a few months ago. But, I still suck. It does have a way of beautifully illustrating the the diminishing returns as I approach my goal of not being "slow". So that as I get closer to being "not slow" the rate at which I continue to improve "slows" proportionally. Hence, I'll never achieve "not slow", because of my ever "slowing" progress toward that goal.

Oh, for the days when I was "truly slow". Then, my progress was "quick", even "fast" toward my goal.

So, will joining Strava help with any of this?

magohn

Im sure you realize this but the 500 has all the inner-workings for the HRM, you just need the chest - strap which aren't that expensive when you decide you may want a HRM. Or so I believe.

CraigB

Yes, but I don't take training seriously enough to worry about heart rate. I got it mainly for the usual computer features plus elevation data. Even for that, I probably wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for the insanely low sale price they had.

I guess I'm more interested in seeing what I've accomplished on a ride, than what any part of my body is doing during a ride.

Mithrandir

I would recommend against the computer software; Garmin has deprecated it and hasn't added features to it in a while. I believe they plan on stopping support sometime soon.

The web interface is better. I took my 500 on my trip with me this weekend, and was able to upload my data to the web using my work laptop instead of my computer at home. Very handy.

magohn

I agree 100% - I dont use it for serious analysis but use it in the following circumstance. Where I live I am literally locked in with hills. Before the HRM I would crank away at the hills and burn myself out time and time again as I could not judge how much effort I was putting out (newbie). With the HRM I can see in real-time how hard my heart is working and pull back my efforts. I have it down to such a science that I can judge by the HRM how much gas I have left in my tank. I full believe that the HRM is the #1 tool that aided me in riding back-to-back centuries - twice.

Mr Sinister

Just picked one up. I picked up only the 500 iteself, no HRM, no Cadence, No speed. I really want to try it out, but I won't be able to ride till maybe Fri or Sat. aybe I can sneak a ride in durring the week.