Garmin virtual race feature
 

I do about 99% of my riding alone and am woefully undisciplined as it pertains to proper training like intervals, sprints, etc. Although I do monitor my HR and compare rides to try and beat my best times.

I finally got a chance to try the virtual racing against myself on my Garmin 500 that I've had since Christmas. If you haven't tried it yet you simply save one of your rides as a course on Garmin Connect and then upload it to your head unit. When you get back on the bike go into your menu under training, then courses and simply do the course.

It's pretty cool I thought. Graphically showed my ride upcoming hills (although I ride the same route most days so I know them pretty well), and pits you against yourself. Shows where you are in relation to what I imagine must be your best ride on that course, how far ahead in seconds, distance, etc. The only downside is that I was so dedicated to staying ahead of my virtual me that I practically gave myself a heart attack on all my climbs and instead of pacing myself properly as I should have I went all out right away then fell back later in the ride.

Still I beat the time I had listed by over 3 minutes, came in on my ride at exactly 1 hour for 16.7 miles with over 1500ft of climbing (for me pretty good)! I'm going to load a few more of my favorite rides and do this more intelligently moving forward. In the absence of a training partner I think this is a really great feature.

For those of you that know how this works... can you tell me does it always compare and use your best ride so long as you save each one as the proper course, or does it simply use the last one you have saved?

Hmm, good question. I'd assumed it always used your best time, but not sure. My problem with this feature is that I always get notices that I have left the course when I really haven't. Probably a GPS accuracy issue.

Yeah I received the same message pretty regularly but it didn't seem to compromise anything. When I upload it to garmin I still had to save it as the course. I guess I'll know in a couple of rides which time it uses best or last.

I believe it just uses your most recent saved ride.

You should be able to go into garmin connect, look at your courses and edit them. For example, if you're averaging 16.7 now, you might want to set the avg speed to 17mph in garmin connect. Then next time you do the course, your ghost rider will be going at 17mph, you'll be chasing, and you'll push yourself harder.

Of course, you can also take your rides and upload them to strava and compare yourself to others in the area on certain segments. This has helped push me. I'll usually target one or two segments during a ride, and hammer on those segments, then compare the results when I get home.

Does Garmin still call it a "Virtual Partner?" It should be called a "Virtual Competitor."

I tried it a few times but it's so damn windy here that it's a crap shoot as to how consistent you can be. We never get the same conditions twice in a row so I was always way over or way under the time. It was too much work to go in and edit the course according to the conditions.

That said it's good you had a positive experience with it...sounds like you had fun.

Used the for the first time today. Good way to train when riding by yourself.

I did the same thing the other day but used a single course per Strava Segment.
Using http://strava-tools.raceshape.com/vpu/ , I created a course using my PR.
As I get closer to the start of the segment, I load up the course for it.

At least with the 800 - on the device - you can simply set the speed the "partner" is riding when you save the course....one of the options after loading/saving the course, same menu page as turning partner on/off on that course...