I started cycling a few months ago and have been riding 5 or 6 days a week. I'm trying to prepare to ride 1/2 of the NYC Century in September and the full Pumpkin Patch Century in October. (Events details here.)

Being the info geek that I am, I also got really excited when I started learning about tracking training using GPS devices. Last week I got a Garmin Forerunner 301. You wear this GPS device as a somewhat large watch or mount it to your bike handlebars and start it up when you begin your workout. The Forerunner then starts recording your location and gives you some feedback including elapsed time, speed, distance traveled and heart rate (using the included chest monitor). You can also use other features including basic navigation that tracks where you are and provides a breadcrumb trail with turn instructions to get you back to where you started. Navigation features seem pretty basic, however, because they don't integrate with maps. Navigating might be better with a device such as the Garmin GPS V.

Using the Foreruner for training is incredibly easy. After you return from your run, ride, skate or whatever, you simply plug the small end of the USB cable into the Forerunner and the large end into your Windows PC and synchronize with the software package you use. I've been trying the Garmin Training Center that comes free with the Forerunner as well as Topofusion (one time $40 registration fee to remove the Demo watermark), SportTracks (free) and the web-based tool MotionBased (free version allows unlimited GPS data uploads, but added features for only latest 10 activities).

I've been pretty happy so far using the free options of SportTracks and MotionBased. If I end up liking MotionBased a lot and want to be able to see all my past rides (e.g. compare performance on a course over a few months), I may consider paying for this one because the entire experience (data visualization and reporting) with MotionBased is far superior to any of the other offerings I've tried so far. To view an example, look at a recent ride on the Prospect Park Loop.

Very cool stuff, these GPS devices. Kind of felt like buying a toy to me at first, but this is actually much more practical than using a cycle computer and writing down my data in a log. Only thing missing though, that the cycle computer offers is the cadence reading.