How to: Speedometer / Cycle Computer readings and making the most of it.

Its really more than a speedometer because its taking your:

• Speed
• Remembers your speed and if you are going faster or slower than before and indicates this with a little up arrow.
• distance travelled
• total distance travelled
• Clock (as in time piece too)

Important set up first:

You need to get things right. Firstly, the grey button is the control and the white sets or resets the function. So after you set it up you need to choose (Are you going European or staying British? Press the left to choose MPH (Miles per hour) or KM (Kilometers per hour)

And as with a pedometer you need to set your stride distance with this, you need to tell it the circumference of your wheel. Typcially, this is 26in to 28in on racers and mountain bikes. Mine is a 70x28/32c which gives a tyre circumference of 216 cm or 27 inches. Press the left button for 2 seconds to enter the the diameter of the wheel and the right button to confirm it.

OK so you are set up with the right size and mileage indicator. Good, lets move on to recording some personal records!

Recording times:

For all recordings press the right hand button to enter DST mode (distance) you'll see this flash mode. This is the mode you need to record the distances and reset the cycle computer. Press the left button until the Km or mh flashes and this records:

• TM - Trip Time
• MXS - Maximum Speed
• AVS - Average Speed
• ODO - Records your mileage

Nifty functions:

1. You can compare riding time against your average speed with the up and down arrow. You need to be on the AVS speed function.
2. With TM mode on you can record the time for your trip. And it stops clocking up secs when you are not riding.
3. There's a 12/24 hr cloc. If you press the two buttons together
4. Wheel frequency rotation indicated with an 'R' - can't work this one out!
5. Scan mode to flick through all the modes as you ride
6. Finally, the freeze memory. On race days you can freeze a segment of the race. then release it later to see (press right button) to see how you did. Press right & left together to release memory

All round a great piece of kit that helps you train and maintain and better your cycling to work and on more competitive race days. Buy a cycle computer for £6.99

Week three - train, train, train...

Monday 21st June after week 2 being a little bit of a mixed bag, I was hoping to get back to my schedule. I must have filtered out the reality of it though when I checked again and see last week I should have ran 25-35 mins each run for the Intermediate running schedule. To be honest looking back, if it was that long I may have given up the ghost because the 20mins was long enough but just about manageable.

So back to the schedule. Ahead of tennis league on Tuesday (not counting this as a run this week) I ran 31 minutes twice around the Mystery and home. It was a hard core, really hot on Monday evening too. But I pushed on through it. Tip of the week: Someone told me the best thing about running is if you feel like you need to stop, just run less hard until you get your breathe back and strength and then build up again to normal pace. I used this a lot on Monday.

I was happy to get round and that my new pedometer the Silva Connect pedometer that I was using gave me a distance of about 3.5km. I just wiped 4 days of data. So I can't now upload it so I'll have to start again - but promise - I did run it! I also got myself a really nice bit of kit for my bike which is a speedometer or odometer, I'm still struggling to use it, as a bloke I don't want the indiginity of having to read instructions but I can't figure it out so I may have to. Click here to read more about this cycle computer...

Last nights run got wiped off and tonight unless I run late on 9pm its not looking to good with a wedding at the weekend are my excuses already in the bag. Must try to get out there tonight. And I can put the three peds to the test - tete a tete.