Mountain biking GPS Units - Garmin Edge 500 review

It's a known fact that I'm not one to stick with hobbies long term.  If you scroll down to the right you can actually see a widget I've created that shows just that, hobbies I don't do anymore.  One hobby that I started last year was mountain biking.  Now I do fully realize that I have obsessive compulsive disorder.  Mine is what is generally referred to as "compulsive hoarding".  Now I only say this half tongue in cheek because I generally am one that buys things for quantity not quality.  I have way too much "stuff".  Anyway, that small fact does have relevance to my mountain biking blog because I bought my first bike in July of last year.  I now have 4 bikes.  This is one hobby that I've actually kept up for the past 8 or 9 months.  The weather here in California allows me to ride most of the year but the past 60 days have been unusually rainy.  However, now that the rain has stopped and day light savings has kicked in, there really is no excuse for not riding one of my mountain bikes.  I thought to help me with my quest of becoming the least chubby man on my block, I would need to tackle this exercise thing from a different angle.  I'm a data guy.  I like to analyse information and track progress.  Well I found the perfect cure that will push me to using my mountain bike.  Garmin makes several models of gps units specifically designed for physical fitness activities.

 After speaking with a few of my friends that actually ride every day, I broke down and purchased a Garmin Edge 500.  Click here for the technical specs if your interested but in a nutshell, it does a few things that are really cool.  When you go on rides it tracks your average mph, elevation, outside temperature, distance and whole bunch of other cool stuff.  You can even get an added heart monitor and check your average heart beats per minute.  The technology is simply amazing.  Even better is the website that you upload your rides to.  http://www.garminconnect.com allows users to upload their activities so you can keep track of your progress.  You can reports that show how many miles you've biked for the month or how many feet of elevation you've climbed for the year.  Plenty of filter options to keep any OCD mountain biker busy.  Another great feature actually allows you to view a google map of your route.  You can actually play back your ride and it will show a small icon of you and display all of the data mentioned above on the map as you progress.  You obviously can change the time feature so you can fast forward.  Even better, you can download your previous ride to your device so you can try and improve your time from the last ride.  Ah.. I could go on and on, but instead of doing that, click here for a link to my first ride so you can see what the site looks like.  Don't laugh, I'm slow, fat and old so it won't be exciting.  Hope you enjoy.. Anyone for a cheeseburger? Nom.. Nom.. Nom..