The DeLorme Weblog

For all you cyclists and athletic device owners out there, I’d like to share with you how I use my Earthmate PN-20 and Suunto T6 heart rate monitor with Topo USA 7.0 during the training season.

I captain a group of employees, friends, and family that ride as Team DeLorme in the Maine Lung Association’s Trek Across Maine each year. The Trek is a three day, 180 mile ride from the mountains to the sea — it’s quite an event.

There is also a hardcore group of riders, some of us training for the Trek, that gets together each Thursday night for a friendly but competitive hammer fest (fast ride for you non-biking readers). We had our second group ride last night. Seven riders made it out; we put in 26 miles, averaging 16 mph. Not too bad for early season spinning… especially considering there’s still snow on the ground here in Maine!

I use the Earthmate PN-20 and my Suunto T6 heart rate monitor to record athletic data during the ride that I can later view in Topo USA. Here’s a photo of the three devices I use when I’m training. The PN-20 is on the left, my Flight Deck is in the middle, and my Suunto T6 heart rate monitor is on the right.

I know, I know — you’d never put that much weight on your road bike. I get harassed by the purists here at work all the time. Keep in mind that this is my training setup; it’s what I use to track my GPS location, record my heart rate data and monitor my cadence when I’m not worried about ounces and wind resistance. I’m also involved with too many outdoor activities to buy a specialized GPS device for cycling. There are some great units that capture GPS, heart rate, and cadence all in a nice little package, but they are expensive and can’t do the other things I need. I consider my PN-20 to be an all purpose device. I use it for cycling, geocaching, upland hunting, and driving.

Sorry — I had to address that issue, as it’s a barrier to the rest of this discussion for some riders. Perhaps these screen shots will also show you why I like to have the device with me. The screen shot on the left shows the Map Page with the info field configuration that I like to use. The screen shot on the right shows the Trip Info Page that I switch to when I want extra information.

The most powerful tool that we use during the training season is actually Topo USA. One of our co-workers has a gift for stringing together hill climbs… he uses the route and profile tools to plan each ride. We also added cycling features to Topo 7 that show proper trip times and avoid toll roads. When he’s finished, he sends them to us as DeLorme transfer files or posts them as MapShare links. Here’s last night’s ride… 

DeLorme MapShare

I take the route file that he sends and load it on my PN-20. Before the ride starts, I clear my track and trip info statistics to get a clean track file at the end. I also start logging with my Suunto T6, which I keep calibrated to GPS time for easy syncing after the ride using Topo’s GeoTagger. The PN-20 displays GPS location, trip, turn, and finish distances; the Flight Deck displays speed and cadence; and the Suunto T6 displays heart rate, trip time, and the clock time I’m on the road. I don’t have to touch anything during the ride and I have all the data I need to keep myself in a good training zone and prevent boredom during long rides.

When I finish the ride, I save my track on the PN-20 and my athletic data log on the Suunto T6 and then store the data in my 2008 Training Season project in Topo 7. I have each track stored as a separate file and can use those files with GeoTagger, the new Topo 7 feature I mentioned earlier, to link the location information from the PN-20 to the heart rate data from the Suunto T6. You can actually do this with any heart rate monitor that has the ability to output data as a text file. We’ve created special paths for Suunto and Timex, and we support direct import from the Garmin athletic devices.

Once I’ve finished using GeoTagger to combine the track and the athletic data, I can use the Profile tool to view my altimeter elevation, wheel speed, and heart rate. If I had a cadence sensor or temperature sensor, I could view that data as well. The screen shot below shows the track log over satellite imagery on the left and Topo USA data on the right. You can see the red profile line representing my heart rate, the blue profile representing speed, and the green profile representing elevation.

The info box covering the profile shows statistics for that section of the graph and highlights the location on the map. You can see how that particular climb got my heart pumping pretty fast. Clearly, there’s some work to do before the group rides strike out for the real hill sessions! Check back for more athletic data posts from Team DeLorme rides throughout the season.

-Chip