# Garmin's Virtual Partner: who are you racing against?



## LUW (May 4, 2011)

The Virtual Partner is a cool way for you to push harder on your ride, but I'm a bit confused. When you get to a segment, that you d/led to your device, and you have Virtual Partner running, who is your opponent? Are you racing against _your_ best time on that segment or against somebody else who also ranked on that segment? And if so, who? The overall 1st place or only the guy that is immediately above you in the overall ranking?


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

LUW said:


> The Virtual Partner is a cool way for you to push harder on your ride, but I'm a bit confused. When you get to a segment, that you d/led to your device, and you have Virtual Partner running, who is your opponent? Are you racing against _your_ best time on that segment or against somebody else who also ranked on that segment? And if so, who? The overall 1st place or only the guy that is immediately above you in the overall ranking?


You can run Virtual Partner with whatever you want. It could be ANYONE. It could even be someone a lot slower than you, theoretically. As a realistic, useful training tool, however, it's a better idea for you to "compete" against an effort that's attainable for you. Maybe not today, maybe not this month. But definitely something that's attainable given the amount of work you're willing/able to invest to improve. Look at your own efforts for something and decide what an attainable goal would be. Once you decide your goal, seek someone's effort that's as close to that goal as you can find.

Virtual Partner is also not exactly something you use with Strava segments. You use it for a whole ride. You can't just load it and expect it to tell you "so-and-so segment is approaching, get ready" and then automatically load a prior effort via Virtual Partner. I think the Edge 1000 will tell you about upcoming Garmin Connect segments if you pair it with your phone, but it won't run Virtual Partner JUST for the segment. You have to set up Virtual Partner before you even start your ride and your device will display your progress the entire time. Theoretically, you could use it for individual segments, but you'd have to set them up manually on your device before hitting each one. Talk about a pain in the a$$.


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## LUW (May 4, 2011)

Either I'm reading it wrong, or mine is set up differently.

When I made a course, I set up my probable speed - let's say I used 25 km/h for that whole course. While I'm riding in a section that is not a preloaded segment, my Virtual Partner on my 810 is telling me how far I'm ahead or behind in terms of distance and time to that predetermined 25 km/h set when I made the course. No problems there, if I keep above 25 km/h I'm putting time and distance on my Virtual Partner.

But then I reach a segment where let's say that my best run through it was doing 30 km/h, and I'm ranked 10th. The overall record for that segment is 40 km/h, and the guy/gal ranked immediately above me did it going 34 km/h. When I reach that segment, in the Virtual Partner screen (and only there), the 810 resets whatever difference in time and distance I managed to do so far. After the segment starts, to keep ahead of the virtual bike on the lower half of the screen I have to go a lot faster then the 25 km/h I was doing up until then.

So, on the Virtual Partner screen, who am I going up against? My best time, the guy that is #9 or the overall #1?


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## ghettocruiser (Jun 21, 2008)

Hmm. When you say you downloaded the segment, where did you get the segment data from?

My 500, to my chagrin, always gives the VP a five to ten second "head start" (compared to Strava) which means that the speed of the VP tends to appear much higher than it was recorded, especially on a short segment.

Also, as an aside, when I created a *course* in strava (it was a long road ride) and followed it, it created a VP who was going ridiculously fast.... averaging over 45 kph on an all-day ride, even though I thought I specified a much more modest pace when setting it up.


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## LUW (May 4, 2011)

Yep, they're all in there. If you go to Files, they're all in the Segments section.
Would be nice to know who is trouncing me .


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