by James Huang Bike Radar July, 9, 2008

Christian Vande Velde and his Garmin-Chipotle teammates have gained more than just a much-welcome wad of cash with their new title sponsor, Garmin.  The GPS giant has also outfitted the entire team with its latest Edge 705 computer and the riders have wasted little time in taking advantages of its packed feature set, which includes the ability to pair up with their PowerTap rear hubs.

In addition, the team has uploaded each day’s course on to each unit so the riders know exactly where they are, where they’re headed and what key markers are coming up.  These not only include sprint and KOM locations but also dangerous areas to pay particularly close attention and even seemingly mundane spots such as feed zones.  In the mountains, detailed course profiles also let the riders know how much climbing is ahead of them and where the road might kick up in pitch or let off a bit. 

According to the team’s physiologist and trainer extraordinaire, Allen Lim, other teams may have similar computers on their bikes but Garmin-Chipotle is supposedly the only squad to have gone to such lengths to upload this much data.