I’m spending more time looking into the many features of the Garmin Edge 305. On my last ride, I tried out the Virtual Partner feature and it’s pretty cool.
Basically the feature lets you race against yourself on one of your previous rides. The display shows an icon of you and your virtual partner with a graphical display of how far ahead (or behind) you are. It also gives you the distance of how far ahead (or behind) you are. You can also see ride data or a simple map of where you are on the ride.
Like the other screens, you can choose what data you want to display. I just left it at the default settings and they seem to work fine.
Before this feature, I would “race” against myself using the clock and my average speed. The problem with that method was that I never knew when during the ride I needed to step it up. It usually ended up that I would push really hard at the end of the ride in order to beat the clock and make my average speed goal. Needless to say, if I was too far behind, it was futile to attempt to make up the lost time.
That all changed with the Virtual Partner. Now, I can see from the very beginning of the ride how I’m doing in relation to the last ride. Since I’ve ridden the route before, I know where the slow hills are and where the fast descents and flats are, so I can plan accordingly.
It’s not very intuitive to set up. The first thing you need to do is set up a course based on one of your previous rides. To do this, push the “mode” button until you get to the screen with the “training” option. Click enter on “training” and go to the bottom and click into “courses.”
From there, click “<Create New>” and choose one of your previous rides. Now you can name your course. You’ll see a box with 000 highlighted in it, click “enter” and scroll to the “delete” option to delete the 000s. Now you can spell out the name of the course – give it a name that you’ll recognize as a certain route. When you’re done, choose the “done” option. Then hit the “mode” button twice and make sure that the “Virtual Partner” is on.
When you’re ready to ride, go to the “training” screen, choose “courses” and click on the course you just created. Choose the “Do Course” option. When you start the timer, you’ll start the race.
The first “Course” screen doesn’t show you your virtual partner, to see that you need to hit the “enter” key a few times. You’ll scroll through the map and elevations screen before you come to it.
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