W.T.F. Wahoo Measurements
By Alan Millar
In the last year or so I have been using a Wahoo head unit to navigate and record rides. After a few thousand miles of use, I have been unable to solve the mysterious Wahoo Measurement Units that crawl across my little screen as I pedal slowly uphill. If a ride goes on long enough and I get tired enough then ultimately the question will arise- how far is it to the top of this hill I am on? The great thing about using the Wahoo is that you can see the elevation profile on the screen and know that you are heading uphill. By clicking buttons you can see the whole ride or a smaller slice of the profile. So you can see that the top is coming closer but exactly how far away is it? No one seems to know and Wahoo isn't telling you. The screen provides a grid so that I can tell how many WMU (Wahoo Measurement Units) I have left but not how far that is in real life.
This mystery measurement has occupied a lot of space in my brain at times, especially when I am bikepacking with a big load and running out of time and energy. Sometimes I try to look at the mileage and actually use math to figure out the length of a WMU. But I can't seem to retain the numbers very long and when I get the to top it doesn't seem to matter that much anyway- even though it was all I cared about 30 minutes ago.
Since the use of technology is not my best feature, I turned to my millennial son-in-law for help. He rode 2000 plus miles on the Tour Divide with a Wahoo. Surely he would have figured it out. He says that he spent those 2000 miles thinking about it but the exact distance of a WMU remained a mystery to him as well.
Wahoo could probably solve this problem easily with an update, but for now I kinda hope they don't. There is a certain mental state that I fall into on a long ride, a sort of continuous present moment when I forget the past instantly (like where were we this morning?) and the bike rolls on into an unknown future. I like that state of mind, although it is also when I care deeply about WMU and then forget about them in the next moment. Solving the mystery of WMU might be nice but for now it gives me something to think about and forget about as I ride on down the road.