Ellie-Bees

With the failure of my Strava app last week, I decided to get a Garmin device. I was very generously bought one as a belated birthday present. I went with the Garmin Edge 25. It’s about the size of a 50 pence piece and attaches to the stem of your bike. The advantage of the 25 over the 20 is that it comes with Bluetooth, so can get it to sync with your phone rather than having to plug it into your usb port with the cable.
The first occasion I had to try it out was Saturday, this is our normal mountain biking day, and standard rules applied (no rain at 8am). We frequently split up on our mountain bike rides, as it is rare that I can keep up, and since I’ve only been out once this year I’m a little out of practice. The boys left from BW down by the Cumberland Basin, and I left from Ashton Court. The plan was to meet in the cafe later. I was aiming to be out for about an hour, so I wouldn’t have to wait long in the cafe before the others turned up.
My planned route was to do Leigh Woods first then into Ashton Court, and see how I was feeling. When I got to the bottom of Stella Nova, I had to make a decision, go up to Beggar Bush Lane or go on to do the Quarry Section first, then up to Beggar Bush. As I stood there thinking about it I glanced at my Garmin. 4.35 miles cycled so far. Is that it, that’s not very far, Quarry Section it is then. When I made it back to the cafe my total was 7.38 and my total time out was 1 hour 1/4. My normal Saturday ride is about 6 miles and is normally under an hour. I wouldn’t normally check my Strava app while out cycling, so it definitely pushed me to go further.
Oh and when I got to the cafe, the others had been there about 30 minutes and they pretty much went straight there from BW. Even worse I had missed the coffee and a bacon butty special by 5 minutes.