Especially for Troy and anyone else whos interested.

Mountainbiking with a GPS is ace, plotting and then following a route from you PC means you spend all your time on the bike doing what you like best, riding and NOT stopping to check directions on yet another soggy map. With a good one it really is faultless navigation. ITS not a SATNAV, thats for idiots who want to be told where to go, a proper GPS lets you decide and just acts as a map on your bars.

So which one to get.

For a start there's only one place to buy from, a shop with some great prices. Fully recommended. http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/Handheld_GPS.html

I'd recommend the colour Etrex range, don't even consider a monochrome display, and the best one you can stretch too. Personally I would not bother with the ones that have an internal compass as this just drains the battery life (16 hours with one 40+ hours without) The compass is only missed when you are looking at the unit when stopped, the display tends to spin around because it can only tell which way you are moving when you are actually moving.

An Internal barometric altitude reading seems a good function, but to be honest the GPS reading tells you that anyway when you have base maps loaded.

The new versions have a micro-SD memory slot, my old one has 25Mb of memory anyway, but you can load the new TOPO maps with contours and bridleways on the new ones as its cheap to buy upto 2Gb of memory to upgrade it.

Theres also the added quandary of the Brand new just announced Edge series colour bike GPS's although they wont be released untill December and will be pricey.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=160&pID=10885

 

They combine the edge training, heart rate and speedo functions with the colour mapping screen of the Etrex series, seems like the perfect GPS, but it fully depends on what format Garmin do there tracks for this. The ETrex series can show multiple tracks in different colours while the current Edge ones only show one breadcrumb line called a Course. If the new Colour ones carry on using Courses I would not recommend it. Also it might be worth waiting untill they iron out the bugs as the first releases of the current Edges were crap.

Having said that if they genuinely have combined the qualities of the two devices I own , the Edge 305 and the Etrex Venture, then there will be two secondhand units for sale from me.

Troy you can wait and I'll sell you my black and white Edge or you should buy the ETREX-VENTURE-CX Gamin GPS Receiver 256 Colour TFT with optional microSD card

seems the best deal to me at £160. And I'll sort you out with the software.

 

Sportslogs is a free ride and heath log. With a great upload capability from any GPS device too. Log your running walking and swimming etc. Check your weightloss progress, and other stuff.
Download and unzip the file attached here then run the installer. Or get it from here SportsTracks
SportTracks supports a variety of formats to import your data from:

• Training Center .hst export file
• Garmin Logbook exported to .xml
• Timex Trainer database file (.mdb)
• Comma separated values file (.csv)
• Polar heart-rate file (.hrm)
• GPS eXchange file (.gpx)
• RunLog 5.0 file (.rli)
• Direct device import from Garmin GPS & Timex Trainer

Full help guide here : [Tutorial]

You can log your mileage and stuff without any devices but the Google Earth view of your GPS stuff is cool.

If you do try it and get stuck, ask any questins here. I'm using it loads and even uploaded every race I've ever done to it back to 2003 (yes i have been bored lately)

this is a tool for converting any file, memorymap or tracklgs or loads of others to any other type.
If you convert your files to GPX format you can then use them on googlemaps overlays and make graphics of them.

see the other tools on the same page.

Over the years I've seen several sites where people download Tracks from their GPS so others can follow them, they seem to come and go with no real definitive site to get free routes from.

Just found this place ROUTEBURNER which seems on first view a brilliant prospect.

The goggle mapping function is ace, and so fast too. Zoom in on the Uk and click the Chicksands route to show a map and route plan with elevation data (obviously did a few laps) - brilliant. I'm going to try this out by putting all our local routes on there, imagine if everyone did the same for all the UK great ride areas it would be a superb trail reference system. I'll let you know how I get on.