Garmin Edge 500 – other uses?

Ok, so it’s a pretty focused bike fitness unit…

But has anyone tried it out:

– skiing
– in the gym (ok for the HRM, not the GPS 😉 )

if so, any good – limitations etc

Not used it skiing or in the gym. If you just want historical data then I guess skiing would be fine.

I’ve used mine dinghy sailing and it’s ok for that. Mainly for SoG and heading.

Yes I’ve carried it in my pocket while skiing. I use it on the turbo trainer, where the GPS doesn’t work, but I have the cadence metre and rear wheel sensor for speed, it’d work just to monitor heart rate in a gym fine though.

thinking of buying one for my christmas present to me! didn’t realise you can upload and follow courses. that is probably what convinced me its the right piece of kit for me.

The course following works fine, but it’s not brilliant. You get a wiggly line on a small screen to follow. Find it ok for road rides, but trying to follow a route around swinley the other day was quite tricky. Oh and it did lock up and freeze the screen on one road ride, I was about 10 miles of course before I realised!

Does indeed work well on a turbo trainer, can show power too if you have a suitable power meter. Use it a lot for that. Also the garmin connect stuff is pretty good (though I’m told there’s better out there.)

Being able to program intervals is good too, though tend to use that more on the 405 when running.