Pair Bidon with MoguWind Plan, step by step

You sit down on Thursday night, look at Sunday's route and decide what you are going to eat. Two gels before the climb, a bottle of isotonic in the first hour, the bar for the long flat at the end. You write it down. Then on Sunday, at kilometre 70, with a 25 km/h headwind and your head somewhere else, you remember none of it.

That gap is what Bidón closes. You write the plan at home and carry it on the handlebar, and it prompts you by itself. To do that you pair Bidon with MoguWind Plan once, and it takes a few minutes.

What Bidon actually is

Bidón is a data field for Garmin Edge, the kind you install from the Connect IQ Store. It sits on one of the data screens of your head unit, next to speed or power, and during the ride it shows two big boxes, EAT and DRINK, each with a countdown. When the moment comes, a full screen alert fires with a different beep for each one.

Worth saying clearly, because the name misleads people. It is not a physical bottle, not a bottle with sensors, and not a website you upload anything to. It lives inside the Garmin. It is free and it does not ask you for an account.

It works in two ways. In Auto mode it works everything out as you go, from how long you have been riding, how hard, the temperature and the bottles you carry on the frame. In Plan mode it follows the specific plan you wrote at plan.moguwind.com, with your own food and your own timings. Pairing is for the second one.

What you need before you start

Not much, though it helps to have it all ready so you do not get stuck halfway.

• A Garmin Edge with Bidón already installed from the Connect IQ Store.
• An account at plan.moguwind.com, which is free.
• Your phone, with Garmin Connect on it and an internet connection.

The phone part matters more than it sounds. The Edge has no data connection of its own, so everything it downloads goes through your phone. If the phone is far away or offline, the plan never arrives.

The six steps to pair Bidon with MoguWind Plan

This is the whole process, and you only do it once in the life of the device.

1. Build your plan at plan.moguwind.com with the date of the day you are riding. You put in your food and the minute you take each thing.
2. Press "Pair my Edge". A six digit code appears. It lasts 30 minutes and works once.
3. Open Garmin Connect on your phone and go to Connect IQ, then Bidón, then Settings. Type the code there and save.
4. Wait for the Edge to sync. Turn it on and leave it near the phone. It can take a few minutes.
5. Start an activity with Bidón on screen. At first you will see it running in Auto.
6. Watch the label. When the plan lands, it switches from Auto to Plan. That is it, and you never pair again.

Step four is the one people skip. They type the code into the phone, switch everything off and go to bed. The Edge has to be on and nearby to receive it.

Three things to know before you worry

Almost every question that reaches us is one of these three, and none of them is a fault.

First, you pair once. After that, every day you head out Bidón looks for the plan for that day. There is no code to retype before each ride.

Second, if there is no plan for today, Bidón keeps working in Auto. It does not go blank and it does not quietly apply last Saturday's plan. It simply works things out on its own.

Third, and this is the one that confuses most people. Sending the plan to the Edge takes a few minutes. Seeing Auto for a while at the start of a ride is normal. If you set off expecting Plan immediately, you will assume something broke, and it probably has not.

Seeing Auto for a while at the start is not a fault. It means the plan is still on its way.

When something does not work

Three stumbles come up again and again. The expired code, because more than 30 minutes went by since you generated it, or because you already used it once. You fix that by asking for another one on the web, which costs nothing.

Then there is typing the code and apparently nothing happening. Nearly always the Edge has not synced yet. Open Garmin Connect on the phone with the Edge switched on and beside you, and give it a few minutes.

The third is still seeing Auto when you know you have a plan. Wait a bit longer, then check in "My plans" that the plan carries today's date. It is surprisingly easy to save a plan for Saturday and then ride on Sunday.

If you ever want to unlink the Edge, you do that from your account on the web.

Why the faff is worth it

Pairing is dull. I know. But it is the only time you will spend on it, and what you buy with it is not having to think during the ride.

If you want the reasoning behind the numbers it asks for, we go into it in how many carbs per hour. Auto mode is already good enough for going out and turning the pedals. Where a plan earns its place is when the ride matters, a long sportive or a hot day, and you want to eat your own food rather than a statistical average. Writing the plan calmly on Thursday and having the Edge remind you on Sunday changes quite a lot.

And if that day you never got round to preparing anything, Bidón manages on its own in Auto. No harm done.