My Nike+ kit has died and was never that accurate anyway so been looking at the Forerunners for running duties. Can these also do roughly what the Edge does, mounting it on the bars and get current speed, etc? Can you plot a course out in tracklogs or memorymap and send it over to follow on the unit?

The Edge and Forerunners are the same units in different housings, but with different shaped screens. We use a Forerunner 205 and and Edge 305.

You can plot a course, but you send it as a course file rather than a route. I think Tracklogs may do courses natively now, but you can get route to course converstion software.

So yes they are pretty much the same.

Slight thread hiijack but of use to the OP I'm sure…

geoffj what route to course converstion software do you use? I found something called gpx2crs but I would be interested if there is anything else out there that is preferred – I am currently using Memory Map so can't do "course" natively in that as far as I know? I do have Tracklogs too (which does indeed do courses) but don't have mapping in that for the area I'm going to next week…

Yes I use a forerunner305 on my bike all the time. My OH has the 405 and that isn't as good, less battery life and no mapping as such – not that there is any mapping but no line to follow.

minkster – I mainly use a mac, so I'm using a combination of training center and this website http://www.gpsies.com/convert.do

A typical workflow is:

1. Plot route on Where's the path and export as GPX file – save to local drive
2. Convert to .tcx using http://www.gpsies.com/convert.do again saving to local drive
3. Open in Training Center and send the course to the unit.

Part 1 can be done in just about any route planning programme.

Garmin have manuals for these on thier home web site, so you can read them and see if the unit does what you want/compare it to the edge.

Try also geocaching and triathlete forums as I found those handy when trying to decide if to purchase. I am happy with my wrist unit but I dont use it for bike direction finding, just milage, speed, heartrate – and geocaching on occasion!