It’s spring (almost), and a young (?) man’s dreams turn to ….

… data. I figure that if I am going to continue to do some racing then I need to get a bit more serious, actually do a training regimen, and then I might need some data. And then it gets down to a question of what data and which data collection device. Ugh!

I had been ignoring the issue for a number of reasons.

• Holding off on spending $$$ until the taxman has come and gone (hopefully with no more of our $$$).
• Waiting to get over my loathing of the PowerTap after dealing with The Wife’s early Pro model which has lots of warts.
• Waiting to see how serious I will be at racing.
• I am not big on collecting new toys.

But then last week ‘Uncle REI’ informed me of my yearly rebate, err, dividend which is a bit on the high side due to a number of purchases made for work.  REI does not carry power devices, except the Polar, but they do have the Garmin’s (though they do not quality for the 20% off one item deal).  Hmmmm, says I.  That overcomes the first reason.  OK, need some time to think this over.  It would seem silly to get a Garmin if I were to get a PowerTap soon; no reason to lug both around.   And though the new Garmin 705 works with the SRM it does not work with the PowerTap (PowerTap uses the early ANT protocol, not ANT+), so there is no way to get all the information collected in one device.   And until the SRM comes off patent and inexpensive 3rd party knock-offs come out I will not go down that path.  What to do, what to do?

While musing on it over the weekend I joined up for the Saturday PenVelo ride (thanks folks) and did a bit of an survey.  Funny it was an even split among the participants, 2 for the PowerTap, 2 for the Garmin, the rest (20+) undecided (of course the real zealots were at Merco).   So for now the data I collect will be speed and cadence (average and max) and will continue to wonder what I am missing, other than frustration.