Happy to hear that the bicycle computer is probably more accurate than the GPS on my phone - it always shows more mileage and that's what I like to use for my monthly and yearly stats. I did calibrate my cycle computer once, long ago. :)
Quoting myself: "Being something of a belt-and-suspenders type, I like having some level of redundancy. So ... I also mount and use a cyclometer and (when on tour) a dedicated GPS.
Batteries quit. Devices overheat and stop working. Things fail, or fall off and get run over (or lost) before you can retrieve them."
Today illustrated the value of redundancy. When I left my driveway I had my cyclometer running, as well as RWGPS and my heart rate monitor app [EDIT: the HR monitor also records the route and distance, when it's told the activity is outdoor cycling] running on my phone. Something happened in the first mile, and the heart rate monitor app stopped recording the ride. Had I been relying on it alone I'd have had no idea how far I'd gone, only that I was out for a total of 5:43.
As it is the only thing I lost was the data that would have enabled me to equate the effort I spent on the ride to what I spend in a typical one-hour spin session- a definite "nice-to-have" but nothing important or vital. It definitely falls into the category of a "frill", not an "essential".
Wayne
I have always ridden in the hope that the summit is just around the next corner, or the one after that or the one after that!
YMMV
Mike
I have always ridden in the hope that the summit is just around the next corner, or the one after that or the one after that!
Don't believe it if you smell burning brakes.
And be skeptical if you hear it from a motorist. ;-)
For me the main benefit of an elevation cyclocomputer is knowing how much more climbing remains until I get to to the summit. To do that, I need to know the elevation of each major summit in advance. During tours I carry a printed elevation profile sheet with the summit elevations marked in pencil. That works for me because my routes are always carefully pre-planned. It's not a practical approach if your route is not known in advance.
Of course you don't need an elevation cyclocomputer if you carry a standalone GPS AND a smart phone. Especially if one or both of those devices are visible on the handlebar.
I have never owned a standalone GPS. I carry a smart phone that has my route stored offline in RideWithGPS. But my phone stays in a pannier. On the rare day that has more than 2 turns, I occasionally have to stop, pull out the phone, and look at the route map. I use it like an electronic version of a paper map, but with a handy "you are here" function that doesn't exist on a paper map. I don't use visual or verbal navigation cues and I don't record the actual track for later upload. That would run down my smart phone battery MUCH faster.
I think it's great that we have so many electronic mapping/navigation options. But I'm not happy that my preferred simple, small, cheap, reliable altitude cyclocomputer option is disappearing.
2 years ago