New toy

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new software for my Garmin 301 GPS system. Ascent organizes the data collected by my GPS while I’m training and I can use it to study how I’m progressing.

The main screen shows a calendar of the activities downloaded from my GPS. When I select a specific activity, it shows the speed, pace, distance, time, heartrate, etc. Every little thing I’d like to know about my run or paddle. The map is really good too because if I click on a particular lap or distance in the list below the calendar, it highlights on the map where that lap or distance was.



There is a full view of the just the map. Very entertaining to see how far (or not) I went. In this one, I was in an OC6 and we paddled from Burrard Marina to Stanley Park past Siwash Rock and close to the Lion’s Gate Bridge. The view of the city from the water is fantastic. As you can see from the image above, we paddled around 10 km that morning.



The activity detail graph is what I find really useful. I can study my speed or pace over time or distance, which is really helpful when training. Or for races, the coach can see how the team did at different legs of the course. Pretty neat tool. The green line graphs the speed and the red line graphs my heart rate.



I like my new toy. I could spend hours just analyzing the data collected by my Garmin. Geeky fun!