Map My Ride and the Garmin Edge 200 - A marriage made in heaven for the epic bimbler?

In short, yes. Firstly, Map my Ride is a web based fitness tracking program for the storage and analysis of your bike rides (they do Map my Run for runners as well). It stores all your workouts along with timing and elevation detail and allows you to keep track of your progress.

Routes are created by drawing them on a version of Google maps, giving you distance and elevation info as you plan. When finished drawing the route, you either store it as a route and log it as a workout each time you do it or you can export it as a file suitable for uploading onto a GPS based bike computer or smart phone.

Alternatively, you just start it recording on your device when you set off and ride wherever you fancy. When you get back you attach your device and import the route into Map my Ride and it shows you where you've been on a map with timing and elevation distance. Pretty cool, huh?

You can use Map my Ride with a smart phone but a lot of people are starting to debate the accuracy of their inbuilt GPS functionality. Along with the fact that dropping an expensive iPhone when out for a ride would be an expensive mistake, I decided that a dedicated GPS bike computer would be a better bet. I couldn't really afford one that did full-on turn-by-turn navigation so the Garmin Edge 200 was the perfect choice for my needs.

The Edge 200 is a basic GPS bike computer that does everything the bimbler needs. It measures speed, elevation and location and offers a basic type of way finding called bread crumb navigation. You basically take your route file (.GPX for the Edge 200) and place it in the 'New files' folder on the device when it's hooked up to your computer. The route can then be selected from the 'Routes' folder on the device. If you are physically on the route, a dotted line is displayed on the screen along with a scale. To navigate, you basically follow the dotted line.

It sounds basic, and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to try it out, but it's an awesome function. James and I have been on some epic bimbles around large connurbations and bar missing the odd left or right turn (usually because I'm easily distracted by female joggers and cyclists :P), it hasn't let us down yet!

For anyone wondering, following nearly getting lost when in Chorlton Water Park in the pitch dark and nearly losing our toes to frostbite (I perhaps exagerate a tad but it felt like it...), the backlight can be set to constant on mode. Even in this mode battery life is impressive. I regularly use the device for 2+ hours and it still shows as having 80-85% battery life left when connected to the computer again - you can't do that with a smart phone!