Any Garmin Edge500 Specialists?

Soni

Hi Guys, got the Garmin Edge 500 for Chrimbo and went out on my first road ride of the year the other day having spent the Winter on the turbo.

Took in some hills on my route and what i'm trying to establish now is how do i find out the gradient of the hills from the data? I thought you would have been able to click on the highest point and it would flash up with the gradient or alike.....

Anybody know how to do it?

Here is my data, forgive the average speed, was taking things easy

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/63693530

marlin151

Try searching or posting your question here - usually v. knowledgeable

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=219

marlin151

Try searching or posting your question here - usually v. knowledgeable

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=219

antfly

I don't know if you can get gradient on connect but you can on training centre or sporttracks.

Soni

antfly wrote:

I don't know if you can get gradient on connect but you can on training centre or sporttracks.

Sorry mate but what does that mean? Are the other two options different software that operate with the Garmin? Or is it completely different equipment entirely?

antfly

Yes, it's just different software. Training Centre is Garmin software that used to come on a disc but is now a download from the website. Sporttracks is what I use, it`s pretty good and it's a free download.

hugo15

Training Center is Garmin software. SportsTracks is other software. ST is way better than GTC in my experience.

http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/

There is a paid for and cut down free version of ST3. I just use the free version. It takes a bit of setting up but I think it's well wroth it.

kettrinboy

Garmin Training Centre is ok for analizing basic ride data, but as said SportTracks is far better overall, on that though you need to mess around in "settings" to get the degree of data smoothing right, or it will reduce your maximums by a fair bit,fwiw i have most of them set to near zero and then the readings are right,the Edge 500 and 800 can occasionally lose their bearings,my 800 did it the other day,according to the map trace i suddenly veered off the road across a field and river and back again,i had a top speed of 241 mph on that ride,if this happens you can edit out the bad waypoints on SportTracks to correct things,i noticed on your ride that the start elevation was -69 feet which must be wrong,i think the 500 is like the 800 in that you can manually set your elevation at the start of the ride,then you will end a ride with a more accurate elevation graph.

antfly

With the 500 you can set the elevation for 10 locations and when you switch it on if you are at one of those locations it takes the altitude from that and adjusts accordingly. I find the altimeter to be pretty accurate.

John.T

Download your rides to http://ridewithgps.com/. You can do this direct from the 500 or export from Garmin Connect as a tcx file. It shows gradient at any point on the route. It is also quite good for planning routes to download to the 500. Uses Google mapping and your route follows the roads much better than on Connect. It is not so good at estimating calories used though. About 50% too high I think. The Garmin one is closer.