Starting biking again after about 5 years off. Was a member here but forgot my password and no longer have access to that email account anyway so just started a new account. Used to have a basic entry level type bike with cheap everything but seemed to get the job done. Traded it in a few years ago to get a commuter bike for one of the kids in college. Now that I'm back in the game I have a bike with all the fancy carbon-this, aero-that - and more importantly, the reason why I need help, is it has a Garmin 510 with speed, cadence and HR sensors.

What I need help with is what do all these numbers mean and what should I be aiming for? I never had access to this info before - just used to get on the bike and ride. I did have some cheap cateye that never seemed to work and was a pain to use. But now with real data I am thinking I should become "smarter" about my riding. What's the point of collecting this info if I don't know what it means?

Here is my latest ride data - keep in mind this is ride is my 8th since Oct 5th and longest yet. Cumulatively I've now done just over 66 miles. First two rides were about 4 miles, one last Sunday got cut short at 2.7 miles due to weather.

Date - 10/15/15
Distance - 15.17 miles
Time - 1:00:01
Elevation gain - 869
Avg Speed - 15.2 mph
Max speed - 29.8 mph
Avg HR - 172
Max HR - 199
Avg cadence - 65 rpm
Max cadence - 103 rpm

Felt fine at the end of the ride, could have done some more, legs felt a tad bit spaghetti-ish but not too bad was still able to walk just fine.

40 year old male, 5'7", 190lbs if that helps with some of the data. Goals are to lose some of that 190, get back down to my weight of 160ish just a few years ago. Also will be doing some organized rides, duathlons and being the bike person in a triathlon relay.

Any help is appreciated.

See red. It looks like you're on task, just ride more and you'll be set.

Did you really hit 199 bpm on that ride? If you look at the graph, do you have one thin line standing up like a sky scraper, or is that the peak of a mountain?

I think the first step if you want to ride smarter using all your data is to ride as normal for a couple weeks and just collect data. Get a baseline, see what stands out as meaningful to you.

Assuming you upload your data to Garmin Connect, pull up one of your rides, expand the speed graph, overlay elevation, and overlay HR too. See the relationship.

After that, figure out your heart rate zones (try to find your actual max, the formula is clearly wrong for you), and spend most of your time in zone 2.

I would try to get the avg cadence up to 80. I would also sign up for Strava if you don't have it. Figure out how to sync your Garmin to your Strava account and start following other people in your area and compare your data to theirs

Wow, have I been out of the game for a long time. I didn't even know about that - thanks for the tip.

Distance wise 30-50 miles is a lot to me, 3 hrs on a road bike. 15 miles in 1 hour is decent.

Time: 1 hour: Like i said 2-3 hours is a full day of riding. To do 1 hour, honestly many of my casual rides are about 1 hr. So, I say thats decent.

Elevation: I dont have a great base understanding of how much is what. Think i did a 2000+ elevation the other day. Was grueling but doable. 867 seems pretty average up and down over that much time. I assume no huge hills but you hit 30mph so I suspect at least 1 good size hill.

Avg speed: 15mph, I ride hybrid/ mountain bike so 10mph to 15mph is an average speed I reckon. On a road bike you can say 15-20 mph is fairly average. A little slow for a road warrior, hustling if you're on a mtn bike.

Top speed: 30 mph I suspect there was a hill somewhere and you kept shifting up and pedaled significantly down it.

heart rate: no idea what is normal or common for a human. Seems high even though idk what I'm talking about. 80 or 90 bpm but I'm a cool customer.

Cadence: the speed at which you pedal. Current trends say to have a higher than used to be cadence. Lance Armstrong made popular the belief you are best performing between 80-120 rpm but he was doping the hammer so of course he didn't mind spinning like a madman. Still it's stuck in our understanding and it seems to be true to be better to spin than mash.

Yes, I was going to say 199 seems super high for your age, but not sure what or where you were riding. I'm 35 and have been riding fairly consistently for two years now and when my heart rate hits much above 187 I feel like throwing up. 199 could be a spike from a flapping shirt or an inaccuracy. Still, most everything looks pretty good.

Raising your cadence will definitely help over time, but for starting out, 65 is fairly decently.

Garmin Connect will give you all the data that Strava will, but Strava is much more social and fun. And if you're super analytical and don't feel like doing the excel work yourself, VeloViewer can be a lot of fun for seeing how you're doing over time.

Actually it's about 21 hours short of a full day of riding.

Max HR was at the end of a climb. Didn't last long.

This Garmin thing is awesome. I continue to find new things it does. Unfortunately something tells me after I get the hang of this and figure out how to use it to improve, I will be "upgrading" to a newer bigger better badder model soon...

OP is 40, 5'7 190 (pretty overweight, no offense OP), sounds like he's been sedentary for a few years and just did their first ride after what sounds like several years off the bike and did 15 miles with nearly 900 feet elevation at a 15 mph avg. My heart would probably be beating out of my chest if I were him on those climbs.

Strava? Welcome to the dark side... Hehehehe.

Your Garmin won't make you faster, but it can provide motivation and it can give you the info you need to ride smarter. A newer and better model won't really do that more. You're better off holding onto your money.

Speaking of motivation, follow this link:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/calendar/2015/9

Try to put a little guy on a bike into most of the empty boxes.

Nailed it! Sad part is I used to be very active, played low level minor league hockey many moons ago so I've got some sort of athletic bone in me. Just took those 5 or so years off for family, work, etc. Started with a few weeks, then a few months, then...

My brother is 5' 7" and 190lbs, I'm 5'11"and 188 most days, I'm overweight and my brother is solid piece of muscle.

He's on his 8th ride in 5 years and the first very thing you're telling him is to pedal faster? Woah. The cadence Nazis are everywhere.

A Garmin doesn't provide data on how straight you ride/how squirrely you are, or how often you coast.

It doesn't strike me as unthinkable at all. I'm 51 and hit 195 this year. Like the OP, my fitness is currently ... entry level. When I'm in shape, I have trouble getting above about 188.

Upload your rides to Strava or Garmin connect to be able to see them in graphical format. This will help you to correlate heart rate with effort, location, speed, etc. and see those trends where you are improving.

That just seems super high to me - was thinking if you were out of shape, you'd not be able to go as high because you'd get winded too quickly...of course the more fit you are the lower your resting heart rate, so yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was just thinking backwards.

Congrats on getting back to biking!

I think the data says that your overall fitness could use improvement. Just keep riding. If you bike 10 hours a week for three months, at any speed, you will improve your overall fitness. Ride 4-5 days a week. On days you don't ride, get some other form of exercise even if it is an hour long brisk walk. Eat healthy meals. Cut out beer and desserts :-) You'll lose weight and turn fat into muscle.

What is your resting heart rate? How quickly does your heart rate decrease when you stop riding? These are indications of overall fitness level. 199 seems kind of high, but then my average heart rate while riding is high 150s. But it never gets above 180, 182.

The average cadence seems a bit low, but that's not uncommon for a lot of people I see riding hybrids :-) Without seeing the ride profile, it's hard to tell why it's so low. Remember, it's an *average* and if you stop pedaling, that's a big old 0 being averaged. Perhaps you choose to pedal slower instead of shifting to a lower gear. I think working on improving fitness and getting 500-100 miles under your belt is the first goal. Then start working on other areas of biking, such as cadence. I managed to train myself to ride at a higher cadence. I average 80-82, but often pedal at around 90-92. I just don't pedal the entire time I ride. I don't think it's in my future to pedal at higher cadence, but I haven't really tried.

Stretching after your ride will help the legs feel less rubbery the next day :-)

Hehe, I ride bikes so I don't have to cut these out.