Most of us use the Garmin 500 to display and record our training and racing data. It’s a great training tool. If you currently train with heart rate only it will record your HR data and allow for uploads to TrainingPeaks. If you move to power the Garmin will record the data from most of the common power meters.
I would suggest that everyone do a periodic firmware update on their Garmin. The easiest way to update your firmware is to download Garmin’s WebUpdater application at:
http://www8.garmin.com/support/collection.jsp?product=999-99999-27
There are Windows and Mac versions and the process is pretty simple. I would suggest doing this even if your unit is brand new as it may have been manufactured prior to the last update. Some of you may be having problems with your Garmin 500 units picking up multiple HR signals. The most recent update supposedly corrects this problem. Anyone with Edge 800 units should do it as well. A few months ago Garmin came out with an update that included some great new features-additional data screens and fields.
There are many data fields to choose from to populate the three screens. I suggest using a similar schema as this:
Screen 1 is your race screen. Just the basics-speed, distance,elapsed time, 3 second average power.Screen 2 is for intervals. For heart rate training-lap time, heart rate, lap average heart rate, cadence, heart rate zone. For power training-lap time, 3 second power average, lap average power, power zone, cadence, heart rate zone.Screen 3 is a summary screen. Anything else you may want to look at during a ride. Some things I like are elevation, calories, KJ, total ascent, temperature. On the Garmin 800 with power normalized power, intensity factor, training stress score.
Taking a little bit of time to set up your Garmin properly will help to make your training sessions more effective. Feel free to contact me if you have questions!