Fun with bikey GPS

Yeah, I know I'm coming to this a bit late, but a friend has lent me (with an option to keep, so he'll never see it again) a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, which has the rather nice functions of being able to download free maps from t'Interwebs AND being able to plot your ramblings on GPS, using a fantastic little piece of free software called MaemoMapper. I'm hoping to take it on my Nazareth Bike Ride in November, and will save my tracks daily, for upload to this blog for your perusal and possibly even enjoyment. Hope springs eternal.

Anyway, yesterday I had my first Big Ride planned - you need to remember that I am a complete newbie at this cycling malarkey, and 8 miles was pushing it a bit, as recently as, well, the day before yesterday. So, armed with my (it is now!) trusty N810, I set off on what was to be a 30 mile round trip from Greenisland to Dunadry. This was a mammoth undertaking for such a greenhorn, but it's darn all compared to what you Cycling Experts clock up before breakfast, and a far cry from what I'll need to be doing 5 days on the trot in November. Nevertheless, I recorded my track, then uploaded it to the marvellous GPSVISUALIZER.COM website for analysis.



So you can see the map (start and finish points removed), AND, here's an idea of my speed and elevation over the trip.



I'm a bit quicker on the downhill sections (for those of you who don't know, there's this thing called "gravity"), but I *really* need to work on the speed up the hills.

As it turned out, I was quicker than expected coming home, as my wife had managed to lock herself out of the house, and I had to make it home pronto to let her and the kids back in. Next time, when I'm up to 60 miles, we can't let a fiasco like *that* happen again.