A recent theme of things I wrote about was ‘My Ironman Journey’. Perhaps not the most novel of topics; but I enjoyed writing it and I hope I piqued someone’s interest along the way.
The next theme up is:
WAHOO – The Great Garmin Migration
I’ll probably change the title to something more controversial or self-explanatory. But that will do for now. And I’ll stick the whole series up there on the top menu bar.
Currently I use Garmin EDGE Cycling Head Units about 80% of the time for cycling and, like this evening in a time trial (new VO2max…yay!), I tend to fall back on those devices because I know them well and because one or the other is probably ‘perfectly’ set up for how I want it.
In some ways I would have preferred to use another brand, like Polar, but I have been constrained by a general shortage of Bluetooth sensors and also because I don’t particularly like some of the constraints of BLE eg restrictive pairing features make my ‘job’ here a bit of a pain-in-the-proverbials. That’s one of the factors that cause me, in total, to waste, err I mean devote, a huge amount of time to the5krunner.com
Then there are numerous other factors pulling me back towards Garmin EDGE units.
HOWEVER. There are also some quite significant and annoying PUSH factors: battery life; bugs; complexity; readability; and touchscreen being amongst them.
I was torn as to whether or not I should do this ‘series’. Firstly I would have quite liked to have spent a lot of time with the imminent EDGE 1030 – but, most likely, I won’t get hold of one for quite some time. And even if/when I do I just know there are going to be some bugs that annoy me. I/we are not paying product testers. So I’m hoping, by now, the WAHOO ELEMNT (presumably Wahoo Elemnt BOLT too) are mostly bug-free and, to be frank, I’ve not really looked at them much so it’s going to be an interesting learning experience for me.
Any pointers on what you’d like covering or what I should watch out for will be appreciated.
Anyway; to cut a long waffle short, I’m going to document my migration from Garmin EDGE devices to WAHOO’s BOLT and ELEMNTs. I’ll add a bit about the MINI along the way. Maybe the KICKR, maybe the speed/cadence sensors.
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I’ve been on the ELEMNT now since April last year. Prior to this, I’d trained for and raced a lot of 70.3 and IM with Garmin Edge 800 and a variety of watches including the FR305, 610, 620, 910XT, 920XT, Polar RCX5, and more besides. Wahoo got it right. It works. Properly. All the time. The readability is unsurpassable, the battery life is good, the interface extremely simple, and upload options numerous. Build quality is extremely high. The only thing I haven’t had th chance to try yet is the “track a partner” feature as nobody else I ride with has a Wahoo unit just yet. I’d be keen to see what you think of it.
Interesting topic. I’m curious how well the ELEMNT (BOLT) will work for you.
there’s a new player in town with the hammerhead, you might want to take a look at that one too 🙂
thank you. I was in contact a while back. at the time they only had something like one or two sort-of working devices. i’ll have to try again as by now things might have changed a bit. thanks again