A very brief moment of Strava Glory!

 

Strava is a GPS based training motivation tool. They reguarly have challenges, to ride at least a certain amount of time, or as far as possible within a certain timeframe. As a Randonneur, naturally the distance based challenges are well suited to me and during the “January Base Mile Blast”, while not at the top of the overall leaderboard, I successfully logged the longest ride. Not because I tried to, but because I needed a 600km brevet completed for qualifying for The Big Wild Ride 1200k in July.

 

 

It was nice to receive some goodies earn a small reward, after opening the Picton-Westort-Picton 600 with 300km of headwinds. I was impressed to get a handwritten note from a technology focussed company.

 

 

1200km again?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

I will be making way to the Western Islet of New Zealand shortly. This being the little island that serves as a prison colony to the western edge of this fine nation. The locals being uneducated believe they are free, and refer to their convict colony as “Australia”.

 

Unfortunately, the nzopengps project maps do not provide coverage for the Western Islet, and after some fickle efforts to compile OSM Australia maps myself to install on my Garmin Etrex30 I curiously discovered why the convict colony is also known as “downunder”.

 

 

However as discrepancies such as this are not present on the web version of Open Street Map, maps of the area, this is not so much a fault with that projects mapping data as my failure to compile it neatly for Garmin GPS use. (or, the fact that the convenience afforded by nzopengps is unavailable with this project)

 

It is very good of Mike & Stacey to put up with me for a couple of days before I head to Angelsea for the Great Southern Randonnee.  48 others and myself have entered the 1200km event organised by Audax Australia. With the ride starting at 6PM, Monday 29 October AEST. Locals along the route should be aware of the potential of 49 two-wheeled zombies arriving for halloween two days later.

 

For myself, the training has been lacking through a miserable winter then the painful ailment of kidney stones. However,  I was able to get in a 420km last weekend around the Pahiatua Loop and three laps of the Tour of Waikanae. That pretty much serverd as both my first and my last endurance training ride for this epic event :).

 

Obviously I have the disappointment of being narrowly over the 90 hour time limit in the Kiwi Hunt 1200 to rectify. There is also my 1200 personal record of 85h32 to improve upon. Regardless of my lack of training, I was reasonably happy with my strength last weekend so consider the PR as on the table. Whilst the GSR has no significant mountains it does have four steep pitches of about 400 vertical metres over the Otways, of which the last two are likely to hurt after more than 1000km in the legs.

 

 

There are some 20 checkpoints including start and finish, so if you are bored at your desk jump online and check my progress on my SPOT Tracker. This is several more checkpoings than the PBP, but using average speed at similar distances to get the PR I need to be tracking ahead of these times. PBP had a 30km bonus at 1230km long, so if I am able to maintain the same times (on no training)I should finish 2 hours faster.

Checkpoint	km	PR	Time-limit
1. Angelsea	0	29th 18:00	29th 18:00
2. Geelong	54		29th 21:36
3. Queenscliff	122		30th 02:08
4. Angelsea	196	30th 02:35	30th 07:08
5. Apollo Bay	269		30th 12:04
6. Port Campbell	364	30th 11:55	30th 18:28
7. Hopkins Falls	431	30th 17:02	30th 23:00
8. Port Fairy	481	30th 19:43	31st 02:12
9. Macarthur	529	31st 01:40	31st 05:28
10. Dunkeld	597	31st 06:24	31st 10:05
11. Halls Gap	662		31st 15:47
12. Moyston	694	31st 14:46	31st 18:35
13. Halls Gap	726		31st 21:18
14. Dunkeld	791	31st 21:21	1st 03:01
15. Macarthur	859	1st 05:39	1st 09:04
16. Port Fairy	907	1st 08:33	1st 13:22
17. Hopkins Falls	957		1st 17:34
18. Port Campbell	1024	1st 16:08	1st 23:32
19. Hordern Vale	1099	1st 20:45	2nd 06:02
20. Angelsea	1200	2nd 05:20	2nd 12:00

Kiwi Brevet 2012–Just my daily stats

I’ll get my photos and more short stories together over the week. But, here are GPS stats to start off with. Yes, I put in a huge push on day 7 to finish in under seven (elapsed) days – finished in 6d20h50m. Part of this was miscalculation, part was weather. Once it started raining heavy I decided to camp under the pines – always dry on pine needles. That way I would still be warm when I went to sleep.

It’s interesting how hard it can be to get statistics to add up correctly. As it was with my Kiwi Brevet. My Etrex30 is clearly showing 1100km travelled with a total ascent of 20004m – twenty kilometres. When riding it was roughly holding 2500m+ per day. However, when loading the data in Garmin connect the totals only come to around 16km ascended whether using raw, or “corrected” data. This indicates that more points are being summed up into the dashboard view, than are stored in the GPX files relating to this multiday bikepacking adventure. My data comparisons are showing the the raw data in the Etrex30 to be more accurate than the Garmin Connect corrected elevation data.

Note these distances include smidgens of extras for finding, food, campsites, accommodation and cue-sheet double-takes.

	Distance	Total Ascent (GC - Corrected)	Total Ascent (raw)
Day 1 - Blenheim to Molesworth Homestead	116.13km	2180m	2466m
Day 2 - Molesworth Homestead to Okuku Saddle	188.42km	1751m	2126m
Day 3 - Okuku Saddle to Lake Lyndon	104.2km	1578m	1704m
Day 4 - Lake Lyndon to Blackball	165.81km	1631m	1739m
Day 5 - Blackball to Springs Junction	128.4km	2396m	2089m
Day 6 - Springs Junction to Golden Downs	170.05km	2411m	2585m
Day 7 - Golden Downs to Blenheim	222.91km	4206m	3539m
	1095.92km	16153m	16248m

Kiwi Brevet by GPS?

Disclaimer: Any co-relation between red-circles and left turns, or green-circles and right turns with the cue sheet for Kiwi Brevet are entirely coincidental. The completeness and accuracy of this data is unverified – do not depend on it and also carry the relevant maps and cue sheets supplied by Simon Kennet and the Kiwi Brevet organisers.

 

This file is the result of converting the source .kml to .gpx with GPSBabel, which had some sectors out of order that I stitched back together with a text editor. Note: you should depend on GPS data created by some random dude that you have never met, that is still finding the most efficient ways of doing things.

 

Elevation data was added via an online service (so waypoints re-calibrate the barometric pressure in my Etrex30)

Waypoints were added in Memory Map and the final output was massaged in Basecamp before loading onto my GPS. There must be easier of ways of doing all of this… I’ll find one in the future no doubt.

 

Icons

• Many of the mountain passes and hill saddles on the route have waypoints marked with a “mountain” icon.
• Left turns are marked with a solid red circle icon.
• Right turns are marked with a solid green circle icon.
• Straight-ahead directions are marked with a solid blue circle icon.
• Where a direction is a compass bearing it is marked with solid purple circle icon.
• Call-in locations are marked with a telephone icon.
• Cycle lanes and the entrance to mountain bike trails are marked with a bicycle icon.
• Some of towns and villages where cafe, food, dairy or service stations may be available are marked with dinner plate icon.

 

That said, if your GPS is different or the GPX file is not loaded via Garmin Basecamp software it is entirely possible you will get a completely different, or even randomly applied.

 

Waypoints

• Left turns are prefixed the letter “L”
• Right turns are prefixed with the letter “R”
• Straight-ahead cues are prefixed with the letter “S”

 

Errata

I have not had time for proper QC of this data. If you see any errors or omissions please let me know so I can add them to the errata.

 

Attention

GPS is an additional navigational tool. It is best used to supplement other information from compass, maps, intuition, altimeters and cue sheets. You should make sure that your GPS is set to display locations using the “New Zealand TM” position format on your GPS to ensure GPS position information is compatible with grid references from NZTopo50 maps.

 

 

 

 

So this is why they call it mountain biking?

 

 

 

DOWNLOAD GPX:

I hereby agree to use the information is this GPX file at my own risk and to advise the author of any errors or omissions I find via comments on this post, or a “tweet” to twitter.com/craigofnz.

 

If you need this file in an alternative format please try GPSBabel or http://www.gpsies.com or Google for many alternatives.

Get more detail with the NZ Open GPS Project

I might like all maps, but I really love FREE maps!

 

Back in 2009, I wrote how to get free street maps from the NZ Open GPS project loaded into a Garmin Edge 705. As I look to venture into more mountain biking and perhaps even do a little more tramping I have found other maps from the NZ Open GPS Project that provide more detail and as such are far more useful when leaving tarmac.

 

For best results:

• Build UltraMaps (Free Open GPS NZ Combined mapset) with Mapsource and send to your GPS. Make sure that the ~700Mb gmapsupp.img file is copied to the Garmin folder of your Micro-SD card.
• Copy the gmapsupp.img file from  “Free Open GPS Autorouting” mapset into the Garmin directory for the internal memory of your GPS
• When on the road for latest maps and less screen clutter to help read street names disable the “Free Open GPS NZ Combined” mapset in Setup –> Maps
• When in the mountains or trails enable the “Free Open GPS NZ Combined” mapset in Setup –> Maps

Free Open GPS NZ Autorouting (~38Mb)

The Free Open GPS NZ Autorouting Maps (updated every weekly) are a well known and heavily used mapset. It includes all the NZ roads and are suitable for road navigation from a car, or a road based cycle tour or brevet. You can download the latest image from http://www.nzopengps.org/public/Direct_gmapsupp/ and copy it onto your GPS [instructions]. This mapset is about 30Mb is size.

 

 

Use this mapset if:

• You have limited storage
• You do not have Mapsource or Basecamp software
• Your journey is entirely on the road.

Free NZOGPS_DOC_SRTM (~220Mb)

For mountain biking or tramping, a little more detail may be cleaned from the NZOpenGPS_DOC_SRTM map set (last updated 2010) – this adds Department of Conservation tracks, streams, rivers as well contour lines from the NZ Topomap series, increasing the size to over 200Mb.

 

 

This mapset is updated infrequently. Probably best to miss this one.

I would generally recommend that you use either the Free Open GPS NZ Autorouting (above) or UltraMaps (below). But use this mapset if:

• You are venturing away from the roads and have limited storage capacity on your GPS.
• You don’t mind some old data and the screen is too cluttered, even after reducing detail when using the “UltraMaps” mapset

 

UltraMaps / Free Open GPS NZ Combined mapset (~700Mb)

 

“UltraMaps” or NZ Open GPS Combined set. Fully integrates the NZ Topo series with the routable street maps. This mapset is very complete at about 700Mb in size and may in some situations provide too much detail for a handheld GPS screen. It is not available prebuilt as a GMAPSUPP.IMG file, so it is more complex to install. You will need to have Garmin’s Mapsource or Basecamp software to build it and transfer it to your GPS.

 

This mapset was a little hard to find, but after delving into the forums of the NZ Open GPS project I came across a post from “Mr Purple” – thankyou sir. When installing it will be worth looking at more recent posts in the same forum to look for newer versions of this mapset.

MrPurple wrote:

LATEST VERSION includes latest changes to zoom levels, typ skin, and a recent road update.
Ive combined all the different ones I've made including Nevs improvements to the typ skin with the offical OS maps and provided an updater as a seperate program to grab any new OS road map you might install. To be clear the OS road updater doesnt update the OS roads, it grabs the OS roads you have installed and copies them into the combined map. You need to update the OS road maps yourself first.
Once you unzip the archive with 7zip you've got an installer with topo/title boundaries/OS roads/residual tracks
Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4
OS road updater
If you dont want any of the maps on your device just dont select them when you transfer, or better yet prepare multiple mapsets by renaming the gmapsup.img which you create to make mapsets that you can switch between.

 

 

This detail is fabulous when in the hills, especially on foot. In urban areas with a small  GPS sized screen it can be cluttered and getting the detail right so you see all the street names you desire can be a challenge.

 

Use this mapset if:

• You have plenty of storage
• You have Mapsource or Basecamp software
• You are spending time in the mountains or trails

 

 

The Ultimate Combination…

As per the “for best results” summary at the beginning of this post, I am now having my cake and eating too. When navigate the cities and towns of New Zealand I am disabling the “Free Open GPS NZ Combined” mapset. There may be other ways to achieve these same means but this is a simple and easy to understand method of achieving this result. Alternatively, if only routing from the “Free Open GPS Autorouting” mapset there may be more pure topomap sets to load which I will investigate over time.

 

I have tested this process on both a Garmin Etrex 30 and a Garmin 705 GPS.

 

For best results:

• Build UltraMaps (Free Open GPS NZ Combined mapset) with Mapsource and send to your GPS. Make sure that the ~700Mb gmapsupp.img file is copied to the Garmin folder of your Micro-SD card.
• Copy the gmapsupp.img file from “Free Open GPS Autorouting” mapset into the Garmin directory for the internal memory of your GPS
• When on the road for latest maps and less screen clutter to help read street names disable the “Free Open GPS NZ Combined” mapset in Setup –> Maps
• When in the mountains or trails enable the “Free Open GPS NZ Combined” mapset in Setup –> Maps

NZ Open GPS Routing Maps with your Garmin Edge 705 – as easy as cut and paste!

The Garmin Edge 705 is a great device. Although I ordered mine through a New Zealand Garmin dealer, it only came with Pacific Highway base map set. The screen wasn’t nearly as riveting as I knew it could be! A quick look for the an upgrade micro-SD card, with pre-loaded Garmin City Navigator maps, but at NZ$195 I quickly lost interest. I am already the proud owner of over 200 printed, 260 series New Zealand topographical maps so I didn't want to purchase the same information all over again! As we all so often do in this, the Information Age, I turned to my good friend Mr Google.

In New Zealand we are truly blessed to have the New Zealand Open GPS Maps Project. This project produces an electronic map set including routing information for navigating New Zealand roads. This is also updated very frequently, so changes due to new roading projects appear very quickly. So, don’t be shy about downloading updates to the “gmapsupp.img” file at regular intervals in the future.

To add all the streets in New Zealand and support Navman style, turn-by-turn directions and navigation features:

1. Purchase a micro-SD card. Note, this is a micro-SD. Do not purchase a micro-SDHC card. While these are the exact same dimensions and will fit snuggly in your Garmin device, it will not be able to read from it. Here is one I purchased from Dick Smith Electronics at lunch time.
   [Note: Subsequent to this original post, firmware verion 2.90 was released with support for SDHC cards]
   
2. Insert the Micro-SD Card. It lives in the slot at the bottom, underside of your Garmin Edge 705. [Please excuse camera phone blur and lighting effects – there is nothing folding over in the right-hand side]
3. Connect to your Garmin Edge 705 to your PC, via the USB data cable.
4. Two new driver letters will appear in My Computer, in the example below the internal Garmin memory is set as drive I:, and the micro-SD card is set as drive letter J:.
5. Create a new folder on your micro-SD card, name it “Garmin”
6. In your favoured web-browser visit http://www.nzopengps.org/public/Direct%20gmapsupp/. This is a data file for Garmin GPS’s pre-built by the New Zealand Open GPS Maps Project. Download the compressed .zip file containing it. In this case “20090619 gmapsupp.zip”
7. Open your downloaded file, and copy and paste the data file to the Garmin folder that was created in step 5.
8. You now have the 35Mb “gmapsupp.img” file on your Garmin Edge 705 (yay). This is Garmin speak, for supplementary map. Your Garmin Edge 705 will automatically look for the file when starting up.
9. Now disconnect your Garmin Edge 705 from your computer. It is best to use the windows safely remove hardware icon to ensure all data has been written to your device first. 
10. So now, instead of only seeing motorways and cities like this:You can see all the suburbs….The streets… And find useful things, like an ATM… A wonderful new world of navigation possibilities is all yours…

See Also: Get more detail with the NZ Open GPS Project