Bicycle Computer/SatNav

Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Matthew's wishlist

Now I have a number of these, some from over a decade ago ‘to be recycled’ for the children, and one fitted to my road race bike. However not one for my winter bike, because I need one that I can see in the dark, and until recently no-one had thought of that. Now they have with the Cateye Micro Wireless, costing around £35.

However, a Garmin Edge 705 would be even better, and I may end up having to get one of these for serious navigation during my LEL training.

Why do I need cycle computers? Well they are not computers really, what they do is give speed, average speed, distance, maximum speed and total distances, among other things. My road-race bike has cadence too (rpm). When out on a bike training or navigating you need to know how far you have travelled, and most certainly what average speed you are maintaining. Indeed for Audax events, Trailquest events and mountain bike trips into mountains they are essential if you don’t have SatNav. Without them I’d need to use a stopwatch and landmarks, then once home, calculate my times and distances! Not much use in an event. How did cyclists cope before these devices? Well we were all in the same boat, so I guess this is about an arms race :-)