DC Rainmaker

Week in Review–February 25th, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:01:00 PST

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRainmaker.com posts this past week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this week:

Saturday: Week in Review- February 19th, 2012
Monday: Lions, Tigers and (more) Gadgets…oh my!
Tuesday: George Washington Birthday 10K 2012 Race Report
Wednesday: Bontrager ANT+ Bike Speed/Cadence Sensor that requires no zipties or tools!
Thursday: DIY: How I made a trainer bike computer/iPad/phone stand for $30
Friday: Sneak peek at FINIS Hydrotracker GPS, FR910XT Firmware Updates…and just a nice evening run

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:
Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet:

1) A look inside a professional sports drug testing program: Completely. Awesome. Article. A must read. Really interesting look at what it’s like from the athletes point of view to enter in their location, life plans and availability for drug testing. Great piece.

2) Ironman Kona on live network TV this year? Perhaps, if discussions being held hold up, we might finally see a legit network TV broadcast covering the event life. Also see this about increasing live TV coverage for Lance-populated events. Regardless of how you feel about Lance, this is good for triathlon as a sport.

3) From competitive triathlete and runner to Coma: Fascinating read from Frayed Laces as she profiles a Washington DC area triathlete who was hit by a car and put into a coma…and the subsequent journey back into triathlon.

4) How the Dutch got their cycle paths: This may seem like a bit of a bore at first thought – but it’s actually really interesting. Some interesting lessons in there for other countries in there as well. (via Seattle Transit Blog)

5) Magnetically powered bike light on Kickstarter: This bike light requires no batteries, and instead works on generating power via magnets and your wheels. Though, given it’s price, it’s a bit hard for me to justify.

6) Epson announced GPS running watch, doesn’t print: Yes, Epson. And apparently, it will be the lightest GPS running watch on earth. However, dates aren’t really defined yet (beyond ‘this year for Japan’) – so the road ahead is long. But the more competition the merrier.

7) Bean bags in your helmet soon? Perhaps. An interesting twist in what may be some evolving of the helmet in the near future. Cool stuff.

8) A generation of cycling storytellers: An interesting look at how pro cycling has evolved from the standpoint of pro cyclists and the stories they tell. Things to ponder…

9) Team Garmin Spain training camp video: A bit of an overview of the team composition, thoughts around next year, etc… good stuff. Anyone got links to others from other teams for the upcoming year?

Team Training Camp – Garmin Winter Training from Garmin EMEA on Vimeo.

10) Going from severely overweight to competitive cyclist: An awesome series of guest posts, posted to Fat Cyclist this week outlining the journey of one man. Really good stuff.

11) Jasper Blake retirement post: Rather, ‘retirement’ autobiography. Either way, really interesting. I’d highly encourage you to read it. My bet is that after you read the first paragraph, you’ll spend the time to read the whole enchilada.

12) Crashing into a mountain at 120MPH – Part II: Last week I mentioned this would be on TV this week, and after it was, it found its way onto the Interwebs. Crazy GoPro footage from a very lucky wingman!

13) Maryland High School Girls Swim Team loses state title after shaving: For real. Interesting story, but even more interesting was actually that the Coach ended up posting deep in the comments thread of that piece. To save you the digging – go read the article, then come back and read her note (below).

“To set the record straight a swimmer from another team reported to her coach that my swimmer had shaved her armpits. I ran to my swimmer said "Why were you shaving, you could be disqualified!?" She asked, 'Why?' Right then I was sick with the realization that I had forgotten to tell my entire 40 person swim teams not to shave before, during, or after onsite at a swim meet. Instead of disqualifying my swimmer, I did not because I felt that I had done a huge disservice to her and the team by not informing them of the rule. I reported myself after the end of the meet to the Athletic Directors . So by throwing a life-ring to my swimmer, I sank my ship. Lesson learned by my team and me. Follow the rules to the letter and the outcome will be far better. Unfortunately, the press release didn't go out until over a week after the violation, so what has been listed as retroactive was actually done prior to regions so this became bigger news than it should have been. I apologized to all of my team, parents, and administrators. And I am sorry to my swimming community as this is a sport I love to coach and teach.” - Sincerely, Coach Winans

14) Presidential Bicycles: In honor of Presidents Day that was celebrated here in the US this past Monday, an interesting post on the bicycles of US Presidents.

Have a great weekend all, and thanks for reading!

Sneak peek at FINIS Hydrotracker GPS, FR910XT Firmware Updates…and just a nice evening run.

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:01:00 PST

Since it’s Friday, I’ll keep it quick and pictorial.

First up is yesterday’s announcement from FINIS about their new Hydrotracker GPS unit. This unit is designed to attach to your swim goggles and hang out on the back of your head and track your swim. The good ol’ swimcap method is back in town! Except, unlike that method, this one doesn’t require the unit to be inside your swim cap – but is rather instead securely attached outside on your goggles.

I’ve had a unit since December and got the chance to test it out during my daily openwater swims in Bora Bora back in December/January. The unit is painfully simple to use (on, off), and has a handful of settings that can control recording rate. Battery life goes upwards of 13 hours, depending on said recording rate. It can also be used for basic tracking of other sports as well.

The unit doesn’t tie into Swimsense from a stroke standpoint, and merely measures distance and time – so similar to stashing any other GPS in your swim cap. But it does upload your workout afterwards for viewing, and you can download the GPS track to upload to just about any site (TCX/CSV/KML files).

Now that it’s released, I’ll go ahead and write-up a full review on it shortly. In the meantime, I uploaded a slew of pics to a Facebook gallery to view (as a side note, one of the things I’m looking to address with the new blog design is the ability to create quick galleries that are easy to browse).

Next up is a note to any and all Garmin FR910XT owners that yesterday (Thursday) Garmin released the first update to the FR910XT which includes a bunch of fixes to issues that some folks have seen. This includes a fix to address the pace fluctuation issue, as well as some uploading and shutoff issues.

On the pace fluctuation issue – I actually finally figured out how to see the bug just this past weekend (I simply ran a lot slower), so I was able to confirm tonight during a short run that the issue is resolved on my unit after updating. Hopefully it fixes others! Note that no new features were added in this update – meaning, no TSS/NP/IF, nor anything else folks might have been hoping for. These were pretty targeted fixes to squash bugs.

Also of note is that those with Amazon orders have started seeing your units ship, depending on when you ordered (thanks for all who sent in a note!). They haven’t cleared the backlog yet, though, in talking with Garmin the current trend/status is to clear out the remaining FR910XT backlogged orders across all distributors over the next 2-3 weeks.

Speaking of that nighttime run – the weather out here in DC has been awesome this week, at least from a workout standpoint.

My easy 40 minute run on Thursday night was just awesome. The temperatures were shorts and t-shirt weather, but still cool enough to feel great. Sorta like those perfect fall running days...except almost spring And, there was finally no howling wind – making it even better.

It’s funny to see though what paces look like after a nice recovery week, compared to just last Saturday at the end of a three-week build. I was screaming along tonight with what felt like no effort, and the heart rates to show it. A good feeling.

So with that – hope everyone has a great weekend ahead, and thanks for reading!

DIY: How I made a trainer bike computer/iPad/phone stand for $30

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:18:39 PST

I’m often testing a multitude of devices on the bike at once, usually just due to the limited time I have to try and gather data across the 4-5 products I might have in the queue for the bike alone. One of the reasons I do a lot of testing on the trainer is because it’s one of the easiest places to discover and learn a new bike computer, app or device. Inaccuracies become easily apparent in a highly controlled environment, and are also easy to document photographically.

The problem though is where to stash all these gadgets during testing. Sure, I’ve got a 4-cup Oxo measuring cup that usually holds some devices (and my remote control), but triathlon bike aerobars don’t make for a good place to balance fragile items – especially during a hard interval session when the bike might be a rockin!

Last year I picked up a CompuTrainer head unit stand that took a microphone stand and added a modified piece to allow you to clip in a small portion of pipe that the CompuTrainer controller would latch onto. The problem was that while the unit wasn’t too expensive ($40), it didn’t actually allow much room for expansion beyond holding two CompuTrainer controllers.

So I set about trying to figure out how I could ~~make~~ put together a unit that cheap, easy to assemble, and would hold at least three devices. Turns out, it was far easier than I realized.

After a bit of shopping online, I ordered a whopping two pieces (plus a third component I’ll talk about later). The suspects: A microphone (mic) stand, and a boom attachment. One component cost $20, and the other $10. Bingo – $30 in total.

Here’s what they looked like when they arrived:

And after approximately 27 seconds of intense unboxing, I ended up with this:

Following an even shorter assembly period, I had the mic stand all set:

The boom arm could rotate any way and in any angle – basically just about 360* of movement options – ideal for cases where you may want things at an odd angle or coming from an unexpected direction. And then the large nob you see there has teeth in it to grip and lock tight. I’m reasonably certain The Girl could hang off of it without it sliding.

From there I decided to start loading it up. First I grabbed the Tacx handlebar unit, since that has actually been my biggest pain in the butt from a mounting standpoint – since they don’t make an adapter to mount to a triathlon bike. It easily fit though on the mic stand:

What I realized though is that while the Tacx handlebar unit clipped on – it would actually be better if the boom arm was a bit thicker. So I simply solved that like any other bike handlebars…I just added bar tape:

Now, I could have bar taped the entire length, but I simply just did a few loops around the relevant sections for the different mount types:

Note that if you don’t have bar tape handy, you can probably just use a bunch of duct tape. It just won’t look as pretty. Or, you could really use anything else to act as a wedge depending on the device your mounting. Most ziptie mounts won’t need it, but some of the screw-based ones have limited range and thus the bar tape covers the gap.

Next up was the Joule 3.0 head unit for the PowerBeam Pro:

But don’t worry, there’s room for both of them:

And we have the CompuTrainer controller as well:

Or perhaps we breakout a Garmin Edge 500/800 and mount it there. Also works with the FR310XT and FR910XT quick release kits. Or you can just use the generic watch mount.

Since some of my tests result in use of an iPhone app, how about a cheap iPhone mount:

And, even better is that now I have a handy place to mount my phone (including the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active with the new Sportypal mount). Also, this would prevent any sweat/water issues since it’s a bit away from my body. Don’t worry though, I won’t mention the name of any certain Seattle individual that recently killed their phone through sweat on a trainer…

But…that got me thinking. I was starting to fiddle with the Kinomap Trainer software, which is iPad driven – so how could I mount that? Well, turns out that there’s a nifty iPad mount designed for music and mic stands. A couple days later it arrived, and it simply snaps right onto the existing mic stand:

You can orient it either portrait (up) or landscape (side). And the thing is rock solid with little rubber snaps, no concerns about falling or being pumped off.

Combine that with the Wahoo ANT+ dongle and I’m ready to roll! Or, you can just pull up Netflix and watch movies instead. Or play Angry Bird HD. Your choice.

As you can see, I didn’t exactly re-invent the wheel and create some whacky concoction of 27 parts from Home Depot, RadioShack and Michaels…instead, I just used off the shelf pieces to put together the simplest, most versatile and most stable stand I could think of. And, the whole thing only takes a minute or two to install (or take apart for storage/moving).

Further, it’s really not limited to a bike trainer. You could just as easily use it to mount an iPad or other device in front of a treadmill, or really any other place where you want to watch data from. You could also use it to hang nutrition off of near a trainer, like a giant rope of gel packets or something.

Now, in the plausible event that you have your trainer near-permanently stationed near a wall (like in a garage), I found this little doohicky that would allow you to just buy the boom part (non-stand) and then for $4 mount it straight to a wall with the boom sticking out from the wall. Basically saves you $20 for the stand.

Cool, huh?

So, in summary, here’s the parts I used:

1) Mic Stand – $20
2) Mic Boom – $10

(Note: There are a slew of mic stands out there, I selected this one primarily because it had a heavy round base that wasn’t shaped like a tripod – but was still small. I figured the tripod style ones would be easy to trip over.)

And optional components:

1) iPad mount – $35
2) Generic iPhone mount – $13
3) Wall mount (no mic stand needed) – $4
4) Bar tape – $7
5) Wahoo Fitness iPhone key (review here) – $80
6) Generic/Garmin watch bike mount – $12
7) Cup holder for remote controls that clips on mic stand- $10

(Note: There are a gazillion iPhone bike mounts, the one I selected is kinda bulky, but it gets the job done. You can probably pick something more elegant…but it’ll likely cost ya. Similarly, you can use any bike mount that floats your boat for other phone types.)

With that, enjoy! Oh, and as always, if you use any of the links above, it helps support the site. Though, you could also just as easily hit up a local music store for most of the same parts.

Thanks for reading!

Bontrager ANT+ Bike Speed/Cadence Sensor that requires no zipties or tools!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:11:32 PST

It’s funny when you think about it, as much innovation that goes on in cycling computers – there’s been fundamentally very little innovation to date when it comes to the speed/cadence sensors that most of us have on our bikes. These little pods sit by the crank and watch the world of the wheel fly by. But up until now, they’ve always been a bit of a pain in the butt.

First, you’ve gotta find just the right spot for it where it manages to trip the magnet on the crank while at the same time your wheel spoke magnet. Then, you’ve gotta zip-tie the thing on there permanently – hoping you got it right. And of course, should you want to move the thing later on, you’ve almost always got to cut off the zip ties, hoping you don’t scratch up your expensive bike’s paint job in the process.

So back in September at Interbike (yup, 5 months ago!) I had heard of this new Bontrager ANT+ speed/cadence sensor that didn’t require any zip ties, nor any tools. I was pretty jazzed. Now, it wasn’t because I had some unexplainable desire to replace my existing trusty little GSC-10 on my bike. Nope, I actually wanted it because it made the perfect travel ANT+ speed/cadence sensor. Essentially, anytime I wasn’t on my own bike I could just attach it in a few seconds and be off and running.

Of course, the unit also work just as well in situations where you had multiple bikes and only one ANT+ sensor (though, I would point out that if you had multiple bikes, you could probably splurge for an extra $30 sensor for each bike, and then leverage bike profiles on your head unit). But let’s not let logic get in the way here…further, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.

So let’s dig into it.

I’ve had the unit since back in December and have been attaching and detaching it to everything I can find. Mostly to see how well it works in the scenario of constant bike swappage. I couldn’t figure out a way though to attach it to either the shark or my turtles.

So instead, let’s break down what’s included in the box:

You’ll notice four pieces within the box, these four pieces make up effectively three components.

First up is the ANT+ speed/cadence sensor itself. This is the brains of the unit, and is what transmits to ANT+ devices (i.e. your Garmin, Timex, Bontrager, CycleOps, etc… unit):

The unit attaches to your bike using the industrial strength rubber band pictured below. If you’re familiar with the Edge 500/800 mount system, it’s the same type of bands. Solid stuff.

Then we’ve got the crank arm magnet, which swings past the sensor to measure cadence. Unlike traditional magnets that attach via zipties, this one does require you to remove the pedal to use – but it then snuggly fits on there.

And finally, the ever-exciting spoke magnet for your rear wheel. This little guy goes around in circles like a hamster on drugs. But, no tools are required – he just snaps on.

With that, you’ll want to get it all installed. The main sensor portion simply has an industrial strength rubber band that catches on the two ledges of the unit and wraps around your bike frame opposite the chain stay.

Meanwhile, as noted above, you’ll have to remove your pedal to put on the crank magnet. It’s a bit too bad they couldn’t have done something here requiring no tools, but I also understand that it does need to be pretty tight. Nonetheless, most places where you would rent a bike would ask you which type of pedals – so you’d probably have the pedals off anyway (and in fact, in many places you take your own pedals with you). Of note is that this is the same crank magnet as the Duotrap units.

And finally, the spoke magnet. He simply clips on with a quick snap:

With that, you’re ready to ride!

I’ve been using this across an assortment of bikes (road, mountain and triathlon) – without any issues. The unit runs on a standard issue CR2032 replaceable battery, which is pretty much the standard these days for sports devices. They’re easily found at a grocery/drugstore, and will last about a year.

Since the unit acts as a standard ANT+ speed/cadence sensor, it’s functionally identical to that of the more commonly found GSC-10 (Garmin Speed/Cadence sensor). So it’ll work with any ANT+ device that supports the cycling speed/cadence sensor…which, is basically every device out there. Be it from Garmin, Timex, Bontrager, Wahoo, Digifit, CycleOps, Magellan, and more – they all support this sensor type.

It should be noted that with both the wheel magnet and the crank magnet, you can use anything that you might already have on the bike. Why is this relevant? Well, spoke and crank magnets can be had for super-cheap. Like, $1 cheap. In fact, if you’re a regular contributor to your local bike shops beer stash, they’d probably happily toss it to you. This is of note if you simply want to move the speed/cadence sensor unit itself quickly between bikes. As you can see below, on one bike I just have a generic wheel magnet:

Also, many times you’ll find that the rental bike you have may already have the cadence magnet on the crank.

Now, this is also of note if you manage to break the wheel magnet. The only complaint I have about the unit is that the wheel magnet is somewhat easy to break when removing, if you open the clamshell design in the wrong direction. Not the end of the world, since a new magnet is only about a buck, but a small bummer nonetheless.

Speaking of breakage, I will note that I did completely destroy one of these units a few weeks ago – though through not fault of the unit itself. I was testing the Polar Power Pedals and trying to align something else with the back wheel still spinning rather fast (very stupid, yes). During the process of which I bumped the cadence sensor into the wheel. With the bike wheel effectively a giant garbage disposal at 245 ~~1,300~~RPM (yup, that’s how many RPM’s a wheel goes at 20MPH), it slaughtered the sensor in the blink of an eye – shooting it out the back of the bike on a trainer at incredible speed. This…was the resultant:

But again, rear bike wheels will happily eat anything you throw at it. Like cookie monster. I’ve lost a Garmin speed/cadence sensor to one in the past, and I know others have as well. The nice part is that with the breakaway aspect of it, it didn’t injure my rear wheel or the spokes.

Finally, for those that are curious about size comparisons, I present the GSC-10 and Bontrager quick release speed/cadence sensor side by side.

Also, someone recently asked why I often place the speed sensor arm ‘upwards’ and not ‘downwards’. Well, it depends on the bike. In the case of my Cervelo P3C, there isn’t enough clearance between the bike frame and the wheel by placing it downwards, it would rub. Whereas on my Fuji road bike, there’s still clearance for the downwards angle. If you can go downwards with the arm, it’s a bit better in the situation where the wheel hits it – since you stand a better change it won’t snap it entirely.

So where do you find one of these magical sensors, and how much are they? Well, they just hit the market a few weeks ago and retail for $59, but I suspect you’ll be able to find them cheaper in due time. Since they’re relatively new, a lot of shops aren’t directly carrying them yet. As such, you can pick them up through only a few channels currently. The first is the Bontrager online store, and second would be just about any local bike shop can order them via their distributors. If they’re ordering it for you, they’re looking for part Bontrager #424634. I rarely make note of part numbers, but since there are so many speed/cadence sensors on the market, it’s important to ensure that if you pay sixty bucks for this one, you at least get the right one.

As always, if you’ve got questions, feel free to drop them below. Also note that if you’ve got general questions about speed/cadence sensors – then definitively check out my post: The ANT+ Bike Speed/Cadence Sensor- Everything you ever wanted to know . And if you’re curious about the Bontrager Duotrap (for frames that support them), then you’ll want to hit up that post instead.

Thanks for reading!

George Washington Birthday 10K 2012 Race Report

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:38:05 PST

Every year ahead of Presidents Day weekend I get a little notice on my front door saying that there’s going to be a race that upcoming weekend and to be aware of the impact it might have to residents attempting to use the roadway that sits a a few yards from my front door. And almost every year…I sleep-in right through it.

This year though, would be different.

I figured it might make for a fun early season race – a bit of a barometer, but also something just for entertainments sake. Since the ‘commute’ to the start of the race would be about as short as it would ever get (actually, there’s a race in June that starts about 300 yards away in another park) – I had no excuse for not racing it.

The only catch would be, with only about a month of stable training under my belt, how would I fair? Further, with zero taper and the last build week of the set, how would it impact things? Well, let’s find out.

First up though – the pre-race. The race start was in front of the US Patent and Trademark complex, and in fact – the race headquarters was inside the giant atrium of the main building.

I think one might be able to consider this to be the best place on earth to house the pre-race packet pickup and staging area. First off, they had free parking in a covered garage connected via a covered walkway (and Metro access was just a few hundred yards away too).

Then, once inside everything was in the giant (warm) atrium.

They had real indoor bathrooms, a massive area for hanging out and getting changed, and even an indoor bag drop. Awesome.

About 15 minutes ahead of the race start I got out and ran about a 7-10 minute warm-up, just a nice easy pace at first and then built up to a bit quicker. Once completed, I found myself at the back of the massive pack of folks:

So I made my way closer to the start line…ok…not quite that close, but just behind them:

There, with 1-2 minutes until start, I found this gentleman. I’ve never seen someone so ready to roll…but he was definitely ready for the gun! Like the Boy Scout motto…be prepared!

And, as I was standing there waiting to start, I caught the below out of the corner of my eye. Just thought it made a good picture:

With that – off we went!

The first 2/3rds of a mile was slightly downhill – which only serves to help you overextend your starting pace a bit further. But fear not, a solid overpass shortly thereafter puts a dent in any attempts at going out too fast. Just at the very peak of this overpass was this volunteer. I’m sure that many of us thought that perhaps now would be a good time to turnaround, and still keep this a ‘fun run’:

With the bridge behind me, I made my way back home…quite literally. The next mile towards my house is pancake flat – but slightly uphill. After all, you’re going upriver. Once there, The Girl was hanging out in the median cheering.

She would be the only non-volunteer spectator out on the course, aside from the first/last hundred yards. She has her cheering report here.

From there I continued uphill. In fact, save for that first section, almost the entire first half is uphill. A gigantic false flat of sorts.

Also a false flat that I’m painfully familiar with. I’m used to doing interval sets up and down it – usually in one-mile increments. Here’s a quick overview of the ‘false flat’:

But I actually hadn’t done a 3-mile up-interval before on the street at full 10K race pace…so by time I got towards the top of the hill, I was hurting a bit. It’s right around here I had my first reader say ‘Hello’. Nice timing. That’s him below:

By hurting, I mean, my legs were on fire. Aerobically I was fine – heart rate at roughly 180bpm, but holding on. My legs though, they were just burning from Thursday night’s hour-long interval-tempo run thing.

Luckily, shortly after the above picture we got to turn around and head back down said hill. At this point I just focused on high turnover. I’ve run this section so many times fast that I know with it being downhill the only thing that’ll keep my pace up is high turnover (cadence).

Well, that and perhaps seeing George Washington himself. Funny, I didn’t think he’d look so cartoonish in real life:

A bit later I stumbled back on The Girl and our neighbor Mark, who were still out cheering (Mark was awaken by The Girl’s use of cowbell…).

Along the way I met up with a few more DC area folks that read the blog – cool to get to run with you! Finally, we had that darn bridge to cross over again. You might mistake the below brightness in the photo as being a lens flare from looking into the sun. In reality, it was me seeing white from wanting to pass out going over the bridge. Sorta like my skydiving experience, only without the 14,000 feet of elevation.

Finally, down the last half-mile stretch I latched on with another guy and we went surge for surge towards the finish, keeping that last section solidly in the 5-minute mile range. Ultimately though, with the hill earlier on, I slipped to just beyond the 40-minute marker.

No worries though, I’m running pretty quickly these days in training for being early season, and looking forward to the bit of a planned recovery week that I’m in this week after three tough build weeks culminating in the race.

At present I actually don’t have a full season scheduled planned out. I’m kinda taking it a few months at a time, based on how I feel. I’d rather go into a race feeling prepared than just doing it because it’s on my schedule. Sometimes work and travel might impact that – so I like the freedom of choosing less high profile races this year and then aiming to do them when I feel right. That means at the moment I’m tentatively planning on doing the GW Parkway 10-miler in April as my next race. But again, if life events change that – that’s cool too.

Finally, post race they had a fair bit of healthy food, and offered the ability to hang out indoors.

Also of note was that a rep from Motorola was there giving demos of the Motoactv! Pretty cool, plus he had free water bottles and little key/money holders for running.

I went back outside to enjoy the finish area, and the incredible weather. Could have asked for a nicer winter morning to hold the race.

In wandering back outside I met up with a ton of readers, so very cool to put faces to names. Awesome to chat with those that said hello! And of course, thanks for reading too!

With that – hope everyone who raced had a great race! And enjoy your week ahead!

Lions, Tigers and (more) Gadgets…oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:44:15 PST

This weekend was (and still is, three-day weekend after all!) packed! Been busy doing lots of stuff. First up on Saturday morning was a 10K race, one that was actually held on my very own street. Crazy!

But I’m gonna have you wait until tomorrow to get the full race report. It would just be too long of a post to combine a race report with a weekend update. Too much stuff!

So, onto other weekend items.

Post-race (and post-nap) we decided we were going to do something Washington DC-esque. Ideally something that neither of us had done before, or things that The Girl hadn’t done but that I’d be up for again (or vice versa). We narrowed it down to the Newseum, the Zoo, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles. Ultimately, with the great looking weather we figured the Zoo would be a good choice.

I should clarify that when I say ‘great looking weather’, I really mean ‘holy cow it’s February and closing in on 70*F’. Yes, no coat required this day.

What was cool was that the animals were actually pretty active. The tigers and lion’s were bounding about a bit and visible, even roaring a fair some.

It is quite different though to see tigers in a zoo compared to in person. Part of the thrill of seeing them in person is just finding the tricky buggers. But in a zoo, that piece is taken away. On the flip side, it was neat to listen to the little kids comments (tons of kids there) and thoughts.

Additionally, at the zoo I get nifty displays about lion poop – something I don’t exactly get out in the wilds of Africa where you normally see lions.

We spent about 2-3 hours in total just wandering around. As you may know, since the zoo is a Smithsonian property the entrance is free (no gates even, you can just wander around as you see fit) – though the parking at $16 was most definitely not free.

Post-zoo we hit up Georgetown to a small gelato shop there - Dolcezza. It was recommended to The Girl from DC Chocoholic. It was simply awesome.

They also had churros…churros filled with warm caramel. Yes, brilliant.

Sunday brought a mixed weather forecast. Despite it being near 70*F the day before, Sunday evening it was supposed to snow/rain/slushie, thus, we figured we’d get out and enjoy the day a bit. I had a few cycling related items that I wanted to test, so we drove down to Prince William Forest National Park and rode there.

As expected, the place was essentially empty – it almost always is in the winter. Heck, even in the summer on a busy day it’s still relatively empty. Even better though was that apparently late last year they repaved everything. The asphalt was incredible looking. Sharp, smooth, and not a scratch on it. Amazing.

For those not familiar with the National Park, it features a 7-mile closed loop, with a 3-ish mile lollipop road out to the main road. This means there’s no traffic on it unless they are actually visiting the park. Further, half of the loop is one-way traffic, with the other lane dedicated for bike/run.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to test, but the one I wanted to really focus on was actually the ContourGPS camera. And not because I actually have too much interest in writing a review of that – but because I really want to write up a review of the Kinomap Trainer product, as well as use the same footage for the CycleOps PowerBeam Pro trainer software suite.

The goal being to capture HD footage with a GPS track associated with it. And the ContourGPS does exactly that – tying in GPS track information upwards of twice a second, to your video. From there, I can then ride that footage back again on a trainer. In the case of Kinomap, they allow you to leverage everything from an iPhone to an iPad. And in the case of the PowerBeam software, it’s a PC with their trainer.

So, I got the ContourGPS all hooked up. Though, not exactly in the recommended way. Since they didn’t include very many mounts, I had to improvise a bit with an old iPhone bike mount and the sticky mount. I even used the nifty safety cord system to safety the camera to the mount in case the camera fell off. It mostly worked.

(I also had a GoProHD2 on there as well, to compare quality/etc…)

And when I say ‘mostly worked’, it means that it worked great until I hit the absolute fastest point of a descent on the largest hill in the loop – at about 40MPH – whereby the ContourGPS decided to go for a 3rd person point of view shot…and left my bike.

So while I had tethered the camera to the mount, I did not consider the fact that the mount itself would separate. Nonetheless, the camera survived its first fall without much more than a few solid scratches.

Regrettably, for reasons I’m not clear on yet – despite having the recording light on the entire time, nothing more than the first 60 seconds of the ride was recorded. Trying to figure out what’s going on there.

Additionally, I actually can’t get the mount off the darn thing. So my first impressions are that technologically they are doing some things that the GoPro’s aren’t yet (such as the ability to calibrate the view on my iPhone using Bluetooth), I find the system a bit more clunky than the GoPro system. No doubt I’ll get used to both – but I find things like ‘hidden buttons’ on the Contour kinda silly. Either it’s a button, or it’s not – this isn’t kindergarten hide and seek.

So, no video for Kinomap review this week…but I’m trying.

I did however have much more success helping The Girl record some of her running form (with the GoProHD). I used the new GoProHD2’s ability to record at 120 frames per second (fps), which means that I was able to capture her running stride in crazy-slow Baywatch detail.

After we completed a few miles of stride analysis (and watching it change over the course of the run), we packed things up and headed home.

Last but not least – I leave you with the below. Merely because we’re just as confused. As we made the final turn off the highway exit ramp area from cycling we saw Pooh Bear hanging out on the sidewalk. We’re not sure why, or why he had a label on him that said “Prisoner of love”. But there he was.

Which…is sorta like a Sad Panda.

With that – hope you have a great week ahead (better than Pooh Bear). And look for the 10K race report tomorrow!

Week in Review: February 19th, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Rainmaker) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:36:02 PST

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRainmaker.com posts this past week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this week:

Saturday: Week in Review–February 11th, 2012
Monday Morning: Weekend Wrap-up- TrainerRoad, Cold DC Runs, and more
Monday Evening: RacerMate (CompuTrainer) resolves RacerMate One contract issues, might release this summer
Tuesday Morning: The Top 7 iPhone Swim, Bike, and Run apps I use regularly and why
Tuesday Evening: Garmin Vector power meter delayed until Summer
Thursday: Tip of the Day- How to clean your trainer tire block…the easy way
Friday: Friday Tidbits- Velodromes, 10K’s, Polar Power Meters, and a bike dishwasher

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:
Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet:

1) A detailed look at doping science vs law vs sport: Anytime the guys from Sport Scientists weigh in on something, it’s worth a read. Somehow I feel smarter at the end of it – even if I just end up more undecided.

2) Training Peaks CEO thoughts on Flash: No, not flashing, but Flash – you know, Adobe Flash. To the dismay of many (trust me, I’ve hear ya), their site runs on Flash. So this is an interesting and refreshing post on what their future plans are in this space.

3) Revolights project delays availability until June: Apparently this is the week for delaying cycling goods until summer. Kickstarted project Revolights announced very late Friday night that they’ve pushed out delivery until they can finish up some tooling machinery. Still looking forward to my order getting fulfilled though. Actually, just noticed that the link above requires you to be a backer for some reason to read it. So, I pasted the e-mail below (click to expand/read):

4) Things that really really really hurt: Sunday night on HBO they’ll be showing the full clip from the recent Wingman crash down in Capetown (don’t worry, he survived). But, you’ve gotta check out that video first. Crazy. Hopefully by Monday morning it’ll be available on the interwebs.

5) Top 11 Ways to cheat (and get caught) in a Marathon: An awesome look at the biggest cheating scandals to hit marathoning. Good stuff. (Via SuuntoUSA Twitter)

6) Are you a USMC triathlete or swimmer? If so, one of your own is looking for a bit of help.

7) Why running marathons and sex are very much alike: Not sure I need to add much more description here. The post is SFW, so no worries there. (via Lauren)

8) An overview of the 2012 DC Cupid Underwear run: I didn’t make it this year to the event (unlike past years), but here’s a good overview post and gallery from this years. But let us be honest for a moment, nobody’s reading the text on that page.

9) Nike designs a shoe for prosthetic running blades: Pretty cool look at creating a sole for those with prosthetics.

10) For those that have too much money: A $14,000 Gucci commuter bike. Nuff said.

Have a great remainder of your weekend, and thanks for reading!