via Instagram

Todays ride started with a short train journey to Turramurra Station. From there we rode to Berowra via Bobbin Head, Galston Gorge and Berowra Waters. After that we turned around and did Bobbin Head and Galston Gorge again before returning to the city from Hornsby.

Its a great ride of around 80km with 1,300m of climbing. It was cool and misty so that helped keep the tourist traffic down and left the roads nice and quiet.

Posted in Cycling,Instagram,Photography | 0 Comments

Sir¹ Chris Hoy had a bit of a tough time in the mens sprint, having to come through the repecharge rounds before finally taking the bronze medal against Shane Perkins.

The next night he went on to pull an amazing win in the Keirin:

Imagine an angry jet powered vending machine on roller skates crashing through some shopping trolleys. Ben Sartori on twitter

Posted in Cycling,Photography | Tags: trackworlds | 0 Comments

via Instagram

I’m off down to Melbourne for the Saturday night session of the UCI Track Championships, the last big meet before the Olympic Games. I fancied trying to take some photos so I’ve hired a nice little lense for the weekend; I’m hoping the image stabiliser will help with the lowish light and fast moving action.

Posted in Instagram | 0 Comments

With the end of summer time coming up in a few days its currently still dark until about 6:30am. It can be tough getting out of bed for a run or a ride, especially when the wind is rattling the blinds and the rain is coming down.

Thus, a couple of motivational videos:

Also came across this one, not much to add really.

Posted in General | Tags: training | 0 Comments

Most cyclists (not to be confused with the oft-seen people-on-bikes) love data. Be it speed, distance, total climbing, heart rate, cadence, power or any other metric that you can think of.

Information is gathered and then processed, converted and put through the ringer of analyis packages. FTP, LTHR, VAM and such are the results.

“Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”
Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Since I’ve been running, I do the same as I do while riding; record data and peruse it afterwards. However, I see a great many other runners without any apparent form of what for want of a better word is a ‘training device’. Some do have iPhones and the like which may well be running an App like Runkeeper or Garmin Fit. Maybe I’m unusual, but it seems tough to see how you can improve when you have no idea what your current performance is. The people in question look serious; I can completely understand people just running for fun¹, but these people seem to be training.

My 610; a reward to myself after finishing the C25K program².

To me, data is important. Especially for running since I am unfamiliar with it so I monitor my heartrate pretty closely. It’s also kinda tough to sit up like I might on the bike if I overcook things, so I make sure I pace things reasonably and hopefully avoid injury; I’ll typically run to a heartrate (ish) or sometimes to a pace (more difficult with the terrain in run it).

I’ve also just started looking at Firstbeat Athlete which looks like it will allow me a bit more understanding of how things work while I’m running, over and above HR and Pace. The 610 gives a Training Effect which gives a function of time and effort to assess the benefits of a workout; you can either go hard for a fewer minutes or easier for more minutes.

EPOC/ T.E graph – more bricks!

How do you feel about technology and sport? Does data help your ride faster or run further or are you one of the ‘just run’ group?

Posted in Running,Technology | Tags: Toys | 0 Comments

For my trip home at Christmas, I figured that the gear I run in in Sydney would be somewhat less than up to the task of keeping me warm on zero degree days. Legs and torso wear easy – a couple of pairs of tights and a long sleeve top. Hands and head wear gloved and beanified for warmth. Trickiest though were shoes. My normal running shoes are about 50% mesh, and with a good chance we’d be running in slush or at least wet; I didn’t relish the prospect of cold wet toes.

Enter NikeID where you can create custom shoes. Not only could I spec a waterproof liner for a pair of shoes, I could also pick from a nice range of colours and a couple of other things. Inconveniently though, NikeID doesn’t have an Australian store. Not a problem I thought, i’ll just get them delivered to the UK and they’ll be there waiting for me when I get off the plane.

At this point I discovered that while you can design and build to your hearts content, actually ordering & paying bounced the site through a UK IP address and as a result my order would vanish before I could put my card details in. I tried various methods, but none would actually work from Sydney.

A couple of years ago when I upgraded to my current MacBook Pro, I passed my MacBook on to my parents as a second (and caravaning) computer. Since they are in the UK and I live on the other side of the planet, I installed LogMeIn which would allow me to help out on their laptop without physically being there to do it.

Through a stroke of genius, while Skyping them on their PC, I had them open the laptop on the dining table and was able to log in, do my design and order using a UK based laptop as a proxy. I know I could probably have done it using another proxy service but I knew this way would be secure! It turned out you also needed a credit card issued in the country too, but that wasn’t a problem for me (luckily).

When I arrived they were indeed there ahead of me. It didn’t actually snow and was unseasonably warm, but it still handy to have a second pair of shoes, especially when I decide it’s not going to rain and end up running in a monsoon¹.

The orange and black colours are of course inspired by everyone’s favourite digital goodguy turned badguy; Rinzler:

Title of the post stolen from Geeks in Running Shoes. Go check ‘em out.

Posted in Running | Tags: Toys | 0 Comments