What I'm Reading: Bike edition Pt. 2

More bike service & app news! The first one is called Capital Bikeshare and is based around the Washington DC area. The service uses a technology called BIXI that allows riders to access the bikes via a special key card. It seems to be pretty low hassle and affordable. Definitely one to check out this weekend for everyone headed to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity (like our friend Chuck over at Chicago Bike!)

Another bike-sharing system making use of new technology is SoBi, the Social Bicyle System.

SoBi is the first public bike share system to rely entirely on wireless technology for tracking, locating and unlocking bikes. The system is compromised of three elements: the social cyclist, the central server and the social bicycle.

Here’s how it will work: after creating a SoBi account — via web, mobile phone or street kiosk — a cyclist will have unlimited access to bicycles in the bike share system, which will be equipped with GPS, a secure lock and wireless communications. Once the cyclist locates an available bike, he can use a pin code to unlock it. The central server will approve and track the transaction.

Here's a video of SoBi in action.

And last up we have an iPhone app that lets you use your iPhone as a bike computer. This is pretty cool for casual techy bike riders, but as a more advanced bike rider I don't think this little app holds a candle to a standard power meter (although it is a lot cheaper, just a $100 kit).

Busy again

Classes are back in full swing, and I'm involved in more clubs and organizations this year than I was last year so school is dominating a lot of my free time right now. But, unlike last year, I'm managing to hold a consistent training schedule during the week. That's huge for me! My weekends are still pretty spotty (catching up on my social life) but I'm holding a steady 3-4 training sessions during the week. The sessions have been mostly biking, strength training and yoga so far, but I have kicked up my swim again (another big improvement over last year's off-season). I haven't put much focus on the run yet, but I'll get there. All in all I would say I'm off to a good start this off-season.

10 Performance Tips from Chrissie Wellington

There's a great article over on Active.com that has 10 performance tips from Chrissie Wellington. I wonder if they wrote this before or after she pulled out of Kona this year. They may have to add on one more tip, #11 - Stay healthy and try not to get the flu before your major A-race of the year! :P Kidding of course, I love Chrissie and was disappointed that she was unable to defend her title this year.

Here are my favorite tips from her list:

Performance tip #1: Passion gets you further than gear.
"You've really got to be passionate and enjoy the sport and never lose sight of that. Amateurs sometimes get caught up in the minutia. You've got to have the latest bike and this, that and the other thing. You have to keep the love for the sport in mind."

Amen to this, too many people get caught up in the latest gear and forget what got them interested in triathlon in the first place.

Performance tip #2: More isn't always better.
"There's always a tendency to think that more is better, especially with regard to Ironman training. People think, 'I have my log book and I have to be a slave to it and log as many hours as I can.' Whereas for me, people are always surprised that I don't do as much volume as they think. Don't get me wrong; I work incredibly hard. But always err on the side of quality rather than quantity."

Quality over quantity, that's my motto.

Performance tip #8: Develop a deep understanding of your own body.
"People say how do you know how fast to go? I've trained at that pace I know I can sustain for X number of hours. Whether you train with a power tap or heart rate monitor or another device, that's all well and good, but you need to be able to control your own effort and your own intensity and internalize that race pace so when you get onto the course you know what pace you can sustain. When everything's hurting 30K into the marathon, no heart rate monitor is going to help you."

Knowing how hard and how long you can go is key to race success.

You can read the full article over on Active.com.

Pro insight

USA Today has a series of diary entries from Chris Lieto covering his whole 2010 Kona experience. I love reading articles like this because they give regular age-groupers like us insight into the mind of pro triathletes.

The day is done, the fight is over, some would say I lost, but the battle was won. I fought hard out there all day, took the risks to try and win and the day did not go as planned. I may have lost the ultimate prize of becoming world champion, but I pushed through some of the most difficult times in my professional career and came home with the prize of top American.

Chris didn't do as well this year as he did last year, but he still have a great performance worthy of a champion. I was really rooting for him this year after last year's gutsy performance but it wasn't his day on Saturday. My other favorite, Craig Alexander, also didn't do as well as he did last year, but that's the nature of Ironman Hawaii. I spoke with a friend who just got back from Kona and she said it was one of the hardest races she's ever done. The heat and wind are overwhelming and it's truly a race where you have to have a perfect day to come out on top. I can't wait to see the NBC coverage on December 18th!

Ironman Live

I watched a lot of the Ironman Hawaii championship yesterday live via the Ironman website. They had a live video feed and status updates going throughout the day that made you feel like you were there. I'll tip my hat to the WTC folks, they did a great job with the live coverage and commentaries; not only was it informative but it was also pretty captivating. They had 8+ hours of airtime to fill during the race!

Not only was I watching the live video, the live status updates (with select tweets from the #IMKona hashtag) but I was also watching the power feeds of several athletes on the SRM.de website. I read an article last week about TJ Tollakson's odd bike setup for Kona, and in the article they mention that TJ would be live streaming the data from his SRM power meter during the race on the SRM.de website. I headed over there during the race and sure enough I could see the power numbers for certain pros including TJ, Cameron Brown and Faris Al-Sultan. Those guys were pushing some monster numbers for an Ironman; high 200's and low 300's whenever I checked in on the site. Wow, I wonder what their FTP number and W/Kg are!

The men's race came down to an exciting shootout between Chris McCormick (Macca) and Andreas Raelert, with Macca shooting ahead at the end to take the lead. Craig Alexander gave up too much time on the bike this year and couldn't make it up on the run, while Chris Lieto faded a lot faster than he did last year. There was a lot of talk over Chris Lieto's improved run form over last year but unfortunately it wasn't his day yesterday and he was caught easily on the run by the top contenders. On the women's side the sudden drop out of Chrissie Wellington left the doors wide open for Julie Dibbens and Mirinda Carfrae. Julie crushed the swim and the bike as expected but Mirinda managed to overtake her during the marathon. Great performances all around, especially for the Aussies!

McMillan Running Calculator

So if 19:00 is not a realistic goal for me at the 5K right now, what would have been a more appropriate goal? For that I turn to the McMillan Running Calculator, which uses your running time at a certain distance to estimate your times for other distances. I decided to use my best mile time, which I just recorded over the summer during track practices. We did the mile time as a performance indicator and I believe my best mile time was ~5:40 (I didn't write it down, I was ~5:50 the first time we did it this summer and I know my second time was faster). So, if I plug in 5:40 for my mile time into the calculator I get back a 5K time of … 19:38! Awww, that’s not good! I know I’m faster than that! Shoot… maybe my mile time was just slow… I thought I went all out but maybe I had a little more. What if I plug in 5:30, what’s my predicted 5K time then? 19:03! Hmmm, maybe I still have a little bit more to go before I can break 19 minutes at the 5K distance. Or maybe this calculator is wrong! :P

Bucktown 5K race report

Well, that didn't go well! I missed my goal by a whole minute so I wasn't even close. I would say it sucked, but even with a crappy performance I still pulled out a respectable time. My official chip time was 20:37 but the course was long (it was 3.2 miles according to several Garmin wearers), so my average pace came in at 6:27.

It was a chilly morning (~50 degrees) on Sunday, but at least it wasn't raining like the forecast indicated. I laced up my new Lunaracers and did a quick warm-up before lining up near the front for the start.

The horn went off and away we go! I started out a little hot (sub 6) but quickly settled into a 6:00 minute pace like I had planned. Things were going well but I noticed my speed dropping a bit and I kept having to kick it up a little to hit my target pace for the first mile. By the time I hit the clock display at mile 1 it said 6:10. Crap, I was already way off pace! (Btw, I wonder if this is where the “long” part of the course was… my friend said he heard a lot of watches go off early before the 2nd mile marker… I didn't compare my Garmin watch distance to the course until the end, when I realized it was .10 miles long). I tried to stick to my plan of doing a 6:07 pace for the next mile but every time I checked my pace I just saw it get slower and slower... by the time I hit the second mile clock I was 30 seconds off pace, and it wasn't going to get any better. I felt flat footed, out of breath, and my legs felt heavy. I just didn't have it that day. By the time I had a ½ mile left I was at a 6:50 pace and I just tried to keep it under 7’s to finish. No kick at the end, just a steady slog through the finish line. At the end I saw my time was 20:37 but that’s when I realized the course was long, so minus that extra bit I would have been right at 20:00.

So even with my crappy performance I pulled off a time I would have been very happy with last year. Heck, I would have been very happy with that time even at the start of this summer. I wonder if I just reached too far in going for a sub 19 minute time. If I had started off a little slower and aimed for a 19:15 or even a 19:30 would I have been able to hit my goal? Anyways, that’s the last race in my 2010 tri/run/bike season, it’s time for the off-season!