As this blog is in its infancy and I am laying a foundation for the extended silences and benign neglect to come in the (probably near) future, I should continue my "stuff I think is important" theme. Last time I wrote about tools that are useful for assessing and tracking your training and performance. This time it's about more personal, practical, matters: gear.
The very word makes me happy. The clockwork of it. The well greasedness of it. Gear, like its homonymous analogue, makes things go 'round, mesh together, and transfer energy from point A to point B (where B is usually some form of gravity defiance). To torture this metaphor further: sporting gear can be made of hardened steel or pot metal; can mesh smoothly and silently or grind and throw sparks; and can make the same amount of effort produce results or whir away fruitlessly. Yes, Fair Reader, gear is a many splendor'd thing and yet also fraught with peril.
With so many things to chose from, it's easy to get spoiled by choice and make poor decisions. No amount of well meaning advice will change this. Take heart, it happens to us all. But COME ON just look at it all! Things that are shiny, clanky, light (or heavy), high- (or low-) tech. Things that make goofing off more than just a walk - or run or ride or paddle - in the woods (which isn't a bad thing all by itself). Things that, rightly or wrongly, raise your expectations of yourself. Things that are part of being au courant as an outdoors person. Things that are relentlessly hocked by advertisers and their puppets in the sporting press. In short: lovely lovely gear!
I have, on more than one occasion, been swept into flights of nostalgia upon opening my climbing pack or kit-crate and smelling the distinctive funk of sweat, rock dust, and aluminum 'biner residue. Boom! Right back to Zion. Snort! High up on Magical Chrome Plated Semi-Automatic Enema Syringe in Estes Park. Whiff! Somewhere along the Jamul time trial near San Diego. Oh yeah, I love me some gear.
Safety tip: do not intentionally smell my running, riding, or climbing shoes. *That* funk is a less joyful amalgam of flop sweat, micro fauna, sewage, unicorn tears, and leprechaun farts. It's been known to bring grown men to tears and cause children to flee.
When push comes to shove, for mere mortals, performance is still mostly in the muscles not in the gizmos, a fact that is brought home to many of us as we are humbled on the course, the route, the trail, or the track by some potbellied fred dressed like Forrest Gump in played out everything but still chugging along. It's also worth noting that new gear is almost always lighter, better integrated, and just plain newer (which for some textiles, such as rope or shoes, is justification in and of itself), but that's not necessarily a reason to trash something else that still works.
Am I gear whore? Of course not; a whore gets paid, contrariwise I pay (dearly). Therefore, I am a gear john.
Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts
Monday, April 16, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tools of the trade
If this blog is going to focus on athletic endeavors, and it is, and I'm going to blather on about how I feel, felt, or expect to feel as a result of a given activity, and I am, then I should introduce the gizmos and doodads that I plan to use to track my training. This way we can all say, "Oooh, that stretch of Widow Maker Hill where your pulse spiked to 185bpm but you maintained your 10 min mile pace must have been epic!" Or something.
At this point perhaps I should consider activating the "monetize" feature in Google Blogger so that ads related to the dingbats I discuss can be lovingly advertised alongside my super wicked word usements. Fear not, Fair Reader, I shall spare you this bit of overt lucre grasping - for now.
Now: on with the show!
In this post the focus is on tools that anyone can use to take a snapshot of their current state of being and track changes in their performance (and corpus) over time.
A heart rate monitor
Perhaps the greatest insight for any athlete is knowing whether they are working out hard enough for long enough to do any good. An heart rate monitor (HRM) is the most direct way to track this for yourself, and these days you can get HRMs that can download data to a computer so that you can see how your pulse changed over the course of a workout.
To use an HRM you need to work out a few numbers. There's a wealth of info on the net about determining your max, target, and anaerobic threshold heart rate values. Most will arrive at similar numbers using methods of various degrees of scientific merit and rigor. The easiest shorthand I've found for adult men is:
target = 180 - age
max = whenever you start to puke
Another popular version is:
max = 220 - age
target = max * 65%
In either case, you need to experiment and observe yourself while working out. I find that I am doing pretty well when my BPM is between 140-160 but if it gets up to 170 I really start gasping (and risk setting off an asthma attack). My numbers are well predicted by the formulae above, but there are aerobic mutants like Lance Armstrong (or Eddie Merckx, for the oldsters) who can maintain performance at his VO2max, i.e. at the edge of his body's ability to supply oxygen to cells, for extended periods of time. He's not normal. Us normal people should stay at or around our target heart rates.
I use a Garmin Forerunner 210 as my HRM which records my training data in a way that can be downloaded to a computer. You can also get bluetooth HRM straps that work with software running on a smart phone or tablet, which is pretty convenient!
Body Fat Scale
These scales know things about most people that they'd rather keep private! If you're already athletic, regardless of your real or perceived level of "fatness", get one of the models with an "athlete" mode which helps to compensate for higher lean body mass and bone density. I've a "Tanita BC-549" which can show weight, %body fat, level of hydration, BMI, and a number of other data I don't bother paying attention to.
I don't generally track my weight (a straight line is an uninformative graph) but I do weigh myself regularly and notice both my absolute weight and the percent body fat. These can vary a lot even within a single day, which is why the advice is to weigh yourself at the same time every day. Before or after your morning shower is the easiest, but, because you're probably somewhat dehydrated first thing in the morning, your weight may read low and %BF may appear high. Try not to dwell on the numbers as much as their trend ("down" for most of us) and their relationship to one another.
A GPS tracking tool
If you work out outside (run, ride, paddle, walk, golf... kite ski, anything!), associating where you were with how hard you were working provides incredible insight into what works for you and what works you over. My Garmin watch logs GPS data and watches by Timex, Suunto, Motorola, and others provide a similar functionality.
It's worth noting that GPS has problems in heavily covered areas (like deep canyons or cities with high buildings) and it's notoriously poor at representing accurate altitude (vs. position on the globe) but generally you'll get enough info to be useful. Again, as long as the data is consistent within and between workouts, it can be totally bunk vs. "reality". Here's a trace of time + HRM + Speed + Altitude from a recent ride:
Looking at this I can see that on downhill and on flats I went fast and had a heart rate at or below 150, on climbs my heart rate went up and speed down, etc. I can also see when I stopped, including the extended pause at about the 1 hour mark because one of the guys on the ride had a mechanical problem.
As mentioned in the HRM section, smart phones can serve this purpose, too! Many apps that integrate with bluetooth heart rate monitors also use the phone's built in GPS to track workouts and their data plan to upload directly to a tracking site.
An application that collects your data and lets you do some analysis
Now that you can gather your statistics, you need to track them in some way so that you can a) prove to yourself that you've been training and b) observe whether your training is going in the right direction (more miles per week, more weight hoisted, etc.). It's also critical to track your output so you know when to back off and let your body recover.
It used to be that a spreadsheet and calendar were the tools of choice, but in these internetified days, there are lots of tools (many free!) to track this info:
I like Endomondo, but any tool that you like and that lets you review what you've done will serve this role. Here's an example:
At this point perhaps I should consider activating the "monetize" feature in Google Blogger so that ads related to the dingbats I discuss can be lovingly advertised alongside my super wicked word usements. Fear not, Fair Reader, I shall spare you this bit of overt lucre grasping - for now.
Now: on with the show!
In this post the focus is on tools that anyone can use to take a snapshot of their current state of being and track changes in their performance (and corpus) over time.
A heart rate monitor
Perhaps the greatest insight for any athlete is knowing whether they are working out hard enough for long enough to do any good. An heart rate monitor (HRM) is the most direct way to track this for yourself, and these days you can get HRMs that can download data to a computer so that you can see how your pulse changed over the course of a workout.
To use an HRM you need to work out a few numbers. There's a wealth of info on the net about determining your max, target, and anaerobic threshold heart rate values. Most will arrive at similar numbers using methods of various degrees of scientific merit and rigor. The easiest shorthand I've found for adult men is:
target = 180 - age
max = whenever you start to puke
Another popular version is:
max = 220 - age
target = max * 65%
In either case, you need to experiment and observe yourself while working out. I find that I am doing pretty well when my BPM is between 140-160 but if it gets up to 170 I really start gasping (and risk setting off an asthma attack). My numbers are well predicted by the formulae above, but there are aerobic mutants like Lance Armstrong (or Eddie Merckx, for the oldsters) who can maintain performance at his VO2max, i.e. at the edge of his body's ability to supply oxygen to cells, for extended periods of time. He's not normal. Us normal people should stay at or around our target heart rates.
I use a Garmin Forerunner 210 as my HRM which records my training data in a way that can be downloaded to a computer. You can also get bluetooth HRM straps that work with software running on a smart phone or tablet, which is pretty convenient!
Body Fat Scale
These scales know things about most people that they'd rather keep private! If you're already athletic, regardless of your real or perceived level of "fatness", get one of the models with an "athlete" mode which helps to compensate for higher lean body mass and bone density. I've a "Tanita BC-549" which can show weight, %body fat, level of hydration, BMI, and a number of other data I don't bother paying attention to.
I don't generally track my weight (a straight line is an uninformative graph) but I do weigh myself regularly and notice both my absolute weight and the percent body fat. These can vary a lot even within a single day, which is why the advice is to weigh yourself at the same time every day. Before or after your morning shower is the easiest, but, because you're probably somewhat dehydrated first thing in the morning, your weight may read low and %BF may appear high. Try not to dwell on the numbers as much as their trend ("down" for most of us) and their relationship to one another.
A GPS tracking tool
If you work out outside (run, ride, paddle, walk, golf... kite ski, anything!), associating where you were with how hard you were working provides incredible insight into what works for you and what works you over. My Garmin watch logs GPS data and watches by Timex, Suunto, Motorola, and others provide a similar functionality.
It's worth noting that GPS has problems in heavily covered areas (like deep canyons or cities with high buildings) and it's notoriously poor at representing accurate altitude (vs. position on the globe) but generally you'll get enough info to be useful. Again, as long as the data is consistent within and between workouts, it can be totally bunk vs. "reality". Here's a trace of time + HRM + Speed + Altitude from a recent ride:
Looking at this I can see that on downhill and on flats I went fast and had a heart rate at or below 150, on climbs my heart rate went up and speed down, etc. I can also see when I stopped, including the extended pause at about the 1 hour mark because one of the guys on the ride had a mechanical problem.
As mentioned in the HRM section, smart phones can serve this purpose, too! Many apps that integrate with bluetooth heart rate monitors also use the phone's built in GPS to track workouts and their data plan to upload directly to a tracking site.
An application that collects your data and lets you do some analysis
Now that you can gather your statistics, you need to track them in some way so that you can a) prove to yourself that you've been training and b) observe whether your training is going in the right direction (more miles per week, more weight hoisted, etc.). It's also critical to track your output so you know when to back off and let your body recover.
It used to be that a spreadsheet and calendar were the tools of choice, but in these internetified days, there are lots of tools (many free!) to track this info:
- Endomondo: my personal choice, device neutral including a smartphone app, nice interface
- Garmin Connect: free for Garmin owners and is well integrated with the PC software
- MapMyRun
- RunKeeper
I like Endomondo, but any tool that you like and that lets you review what you've done will serve this role. Here's an example:
Conclusion
There we go. At this point you have more data at your fingertips than generations of Olympic athletes before you. You can make some objective judgements about your body, your athletic performance, and whether your routes make smiley faces or other patterns when viewed from above. Joy!
Next big post, I'll write a few thoughts in clothing, shoes, and other things not requiring batteries.
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