Patently Apple reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application called "Systems and Methods for Integrating a Portable Electronic Device with a Bicycle" that was received from Apple, Inc.  According to the article, "Apple's patent is about using a new iPod or iPhone system primarily on a bike so that they could share information with other cyclists riding in a group. It could also provide feedback to cyclists regarding their performance or the performance of other cyclists with whom they are riding."

Images copied from Apple's patent application filed
on August 5, 2010. [ Source: Patently Apple ]

This is really interesting and I didn't expect Apple to have worked on any such device.  There are many iPhone apps that offer some of the features discussed in the patent application (such as iMapMyRide+, Fitnio, etc.) but no one has developed an iOS-based app that provides so much integration with bike and personal sensors as well as real-time communications capabilities.

In my opinion, this is not a device that would appeal to the pro peleton at this level of conceptual refinement.  For one thing, I think that the user interface described in the patent illustrations will be extremely difficult to operate while moving.  Implementing something that sophisticated would need a radically different input mechanism.

I want to say that voice recognition would be helpful, mainly because pro riders wear a radio headphone already. But I have no idea if Apple could implement something like that in any foreseeable iPhone hardware configuration.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today I tweeted that I had found my Polar S625x and I was able to get it working with the speed and cadence sensors that are installed on my Trek 1500 before I rode it this morning.

This heart rate monitor is my favorite of all the models I've ever tested. The things I like most about it are its near indestructibility and its flexibility in that it works well in the three sports that I participate in most.

I started talking about the S625X on January 26, 2005, which means that I've been using it for over four years without a battery change or any service to the receiver. Over that time, I've ridden hundreds of miles on my bikes with the S625X strapped to the handlebars. I've also worn it during many hockey games, which is a great statement about its durability-- it's taken more than one direct hit from a puck.

The main claim to fame of the S625X is its support for running. This is accomplished through the use of a footpod which measures foot strikes and imputes distance traveled based on that. I don't care as much about accurate distance measurement when running as I do when cycling. I tend to run the same courses in training and measured distances in the 5 and 10k races that I run in from time to time.

The speed and cadence sensors for biking are simple to install and use. They simply measure how many times the front wheel and crank of my bike rotate by counting the number of times small magnets pass each of them. The sensors transmit their telemetry to the watch unit which acts as a receiver.

About all I can say that's truly negative about the Polar S625X is that the software that came with it, Polar Precision Performance Software Version 4 is out of date and only runs on Microsoft Windows. If you buy it now, you get newer software that's still Windows-only. I am hoping to start evaluating iSmartTrain from OTAG Technologies that provides similar functionality on Mac OS X, but I need to find the most compatible interface for it. iSmartTrain describes that as "a Polar IR-Serial interface and a USB-Serial converter".

I don't see the Polar IR-Serial interface on sale in a lot of places in the USA, so I'll have to ask where it can be purchased.

If you have any suggestions for where I can buy the IR-Serial interface, email me at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The ESPN program E:60 recently reported on the dangers posed by improperly tuned ice resurfacing equipment and ventilation problems in indoor ice arenas. This 13-minute long report claims that in 28 rinks that they tested that used propane or natural gas ice resurfacers, "nearly one-third were found to have dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide or ultrafine particles."

These are serious claims and the matter deserves further investigation. Over the years that I've been involved in the sport of ice hockey, I have heard about a number of serious outcomes and close calls as a result of indoor air quality problems at hockey rinks. One example is a game that occurred in September 2002 at Lehigh Valley Ice Arena that sent 25 college hockey players and coaches to the hospital complaining of "shortness of breath and a burning sensation in their throats and chests." [ Note: Sorry for the link to an article excerpt. This was the only way I could find to cite a published story referring to this event. ]

In my opinion, the questions that should be asked after watching this ESPN report are:

• How widespread is this problem in 2009?
  
• How often do indoor air quality problems that could cause a medical issue go uncorrected for a significant period of time?
  
• How many hockey players, figure skaters, and speed skaters that have asthma experience exacerbations as a result of air quality inside the facilities where they perform?

Reached at the Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology, Fred Berman - the director of the Toxicology Information Center - labeled that result of 59 {parts per million of carbon monoxide} more interesting than concerning. He said further study, preferably over a broader window of time, would be needed before the air was determined a hazard.

The article goes on to point out that Berman considered average overall exposure to indoor air pollution to be more important than a "snapshot in time" which is what the ESPN figures for this arena might be.

Regardless of what you think after seeing the ESPN report and reading the article from the Binghamton newspaper, this is a fascinating investigation that anyone involved in ice sports should keep watching.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been wanting to talk about my experience with iPhone headphones and exercise for some time.

In my opinion iPhone headphones manufactured by Apple are consumables. I have never had a set last for more than 4 months. They get so much use from me that the rubber holding the earbuds together wears away.

I tried carrying the headphones in several different plastic containers, but each of the containers made constantly connecting and disconnecting the headphones too slow. This says nothing of the problems that occurred when I exposed them to large amounts of my perspiration.

The first set of headphones that I noticed experienced severe wear and tear was a set that I had been using during a period of heavy road biking in June and July. The action button on the in-line microphone on my headphones started to become unreliable. The button stopped working entirely shortly after that, and I suspected that sweat infiltration was the root cause.

In July I started working full-time in Manhattan. At that time I started working out at Newtown Athletic Club five days a week. My workout consisted of riding a stationary bike or running on an indoor track for 40 minutes, followed by sets of pushups and situps.

Because I was working out indoors, there seemed to be an increase in my perspiration level. The new headphones lasted less than a month.

Two major problems occurred:

• the action button on the in-line microphone stopped working,
• the rubber holding each of the earbuds together disintegrated at an accelerated rate.

I bought another new set of iPhone headphones from Apple, and a much less expensive set of headphones without an in-line microphone from a warehouse club. I used the inexpensive headphones during workouts at the gym. I used the iPhone headphones everywhere else.

The result is that the iPhone headphones have lasted a great deal longer. I think I've gotten about four months use out of this set of iPhone headphones. I'm only now beginning to consider replacing them, because the rubber gasket that holds each earbud together is wearing away.

In talking to a number of friends and acquaintances who have iPhones, the consensus is that no third-party headphones are much more durable than Apple's. For the most part, they are just more expensive.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Cool Tool: StrollAway on Cool Tools: "... Once we got this hook, rather than just parking our stroller in the kitchen or dining room, we created a set, out-of-the-way place to store it. And since it's off the floor, that gives us more space to fill up with more baby stuff. The hook is strong (we have a Quinny Buzz stroller, which weighs abouts 15 lbs.). It doesn't require drilling or mounting into anything, since it hangs over the top a door....." Great idea.
• SightSpeed Goes Mainstream with Dell Video Chat « on Web Worker Daily: "... The SightSpeed software installed easily on my Mac, and the video conversation with Mr. Csathy was crisp, smooth and effortless as compared to any I’ve tried with Skype. He had a fancy headset, but I was just using the MacBook Pro’s built-in speakers and microphone. For once, video conferencing felt approachable to me beyond Apple iChat...." This article has a good screen cap of the theme that Dell applied to SightSpeed's software. [ Found out about the Dell / SightSpeed deal from friend Andy Abramson ]
• Access And Share Files With Box.net on The Apple Phone Show: "I have tried several online file store and share solutions since getting my iPhone almost a year ago now. Box.net seems to be the one application that has endured time. I like using it to store and share my most important files and collaborate on work. I’m still getting used to moving my workflow entirely online. I am used to have files that I can access stored locally on all of my devices. But, times they are ‘a changing. The reason I think I have continued using this service and have let others fall by the wayside is because the interface is so simple...." I have to try this.
• iPhone as Pedometer on Inside iPhone: "A short while ago, I discovered that Wii Fit could be used to track my progress as I walked on a treadmill. Wii Fit has a game where you jog in place in front of your TV to travel through a virtual landscape. Instead of bouncing up and down on the floor, I put my wiimote in my pocket, hopped on the treadmill and had a much better virtual exercise experience. And of course this got me thinking: if the wii can track movement, why can't the iPhone do the same?" Cool idea. Interesting execution.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year I look for blogs that attempt to cover L'Etape du Tour, the Cyclosportive that follows the same route as one stage of The Tour de France. This year I found Rob Mackey's blog at The New York Times called The Climb.

Mackey is a web journalist who has done a great deal of work for major publications. (See his portfolio at http://mackey.typepad.com/.) So, you can bet that he will produce a good blog if he survives the training leading up to L'Etape du Tour.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It looks like professional cycling is experiencing a bit of a revival.

Earlier today, Velonews reported that Garmin has become the title sponsor of the Slipstream-Chipotle Cycling Team. The Garmin logo will reportedly debut on the team's uniforms at an event in Brest, France on July 3 prior to the Grand Depart of the 2008 Tour de France.

This is exactly the kind of sponsor that an American pro cycling team should have going forward. Lots of people I know have Garmin GPS navigation systems in their cars, and Garmin's fitness computers have been state-of-the-art ever since products like the Garmin Forerunner 201 debuted about four years ago.

It's interesting to see the evolution of the Garmin-Chipotle Cycling team since its inception. It was originally sponsored by TIAA-CREF, lost that sponsorship at the end of 2006, and has been primarily funded by investors in the team since then. It's had a number of secondary sponsors including Chipotle, H3O (a sports marketing company partly owned by George Hincapie), and Felt Bicycles. Garmin started out as a secondary sponsor and has now made a primary sponsorship commitment to the team through 2010.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chris Brewer, a long-time contributor to the Livestrong and Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team Websites, is back again writing his "Fresh Brew" column for the Astana Cycling Team Website.

In one of his most recent articles, Chris talks about Mellow Johnny's, a bike commuter-oriented bike store in Downtown Austin, TX. Chris writes:

If I told you that 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong had opened a bike shop, I’ll bet you would imagine row up on row of high tech carbon bikes in a state of the art facility. And while there are certainly plenty of excellent historic and high-tech Trek rides at "Mellow Johny's" located in the heart of Austin, Texas, the 18,000 square foot brick beer-distributorship-turned-bike-shop is as good a place to get a tube or an inexpensive commuter bike as it is a rocket to win your next neighborhood world championship…

(Interestingly enough, Johan Bruyneel is doing a book signing there tonight, and flying from there up to West Chester, PA for tomorrow night's book signing previously discussed on Operation Gadget.)

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As gasoline surpasses $4.15 per gallon here in Newtown, I am starting to see more bikes on the road. A lot of the people riding them look like they are not terribly skilled bike handlers, and also don't look like they are riding as much for exercise as they are for transportation.

Here's a report from KARE, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis, that claims that people looking to shift their short-haul commuting and errands from cars to bikes are repairing and upgrading bikes they already have instead of purchasing new bikes:

I'm going to stop in my local bike shops and ask what their mix of business is now, and if the increases in sales activity this Spring and Summer are different than they expected. [ via Personafile ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Los Angeles Business reports that Oakley has donated $1 Million to the Lance Armstrong Foundation that was generated through sales of the Livestrong line of sports sunglasses. According to the article:

Oakley Livestrong Flak Jacket XLJ: A nice pair of
sunglasses for sports that supports a worthy cause.
[ Image: Oakley ]

The special-edition Livestrong line is based off of three of Oakley's most popular designs: the Radar, the Flak Jacket and the Straight Jacket. Out of each purchase, $20 goes to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The program took only eight months to reach the $1 million mark.

That works out to 6,250 sets of sunglasses per month.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning I received a Nokia N78 as part of my participation in the Nokia Blogger Relations Program. I just posted a bunch of photos of unboxing the N78 to Flickr.

See more of my Nokia N78 Unboxing Photos on Flickr.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello. ]

Some of the Nokia N78's big features are a 3.2-megapixel main camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, 2 Gigabytes of microSD memory, and a free three-month subscription to Nokia's voice-guided GPS navigation system.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

One of the best ways to entertain my son Jimmy over the past week or so has been to put him in the Chariot Cougar 1 Carrier that I use as a bike trailer and tow him around the backroads near our house in Newtown, PA.

Jimmy in the Chariot Cougar 1: We've ridden the backroads around
Newtown together for the past few sunny days, building up our
endurance. [ Photo: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

Kathleen and I bought the Cougar 1 last year, around the time Jimmy turned one year old. He wasn't really ready to ride in it last summer. I got it out right after Memorial Day and started riding with him for 10 or 15 minutes at a time through the neighborhoods of Newtown Borough. He's really starting to like doing this because he can see people mowing their yards, and walking in the area around the Starbucks on State Street in a way that is different from when we push him in the stroller or pull him in his wagon.

If you are wondering, we bought the Chariot Cougar 1 because we thought after thoroughly researching the different models that this was the best, most protective child carrier we could get for use with our bikes. It's very solidly built and quite obvious to the other vehicles on the road.

Today we went on our longest ride yet, up and down Linton Hill Road through the intersection with Washington's Crossing Road in Newtown Township.

Riding up Linton Hill Rd in Newtown on a mtn bike with Jimmy in a Chariot Cougar 2 1. Felt like Alpe d'Huez, except the tifosi yelled "Daddy!"

If you pull one of these trailers with a two-year-old who weighs about thirty pounds riding in it, a speed bump is going to feel like a Category 4 climb in a bike race. Who needs any other aerobic activity? This is challenging.

I think Lance Armstrong did this with his son Luke in the offseason before he retired. Now I know why.

I hope that Jimmy and I can build up to an hour of riding, so I can take him on some of my training routes. I hope that he finds the scenery interesting enough. In the meantime, it's fun to get out with him, and here him yell and point at the lawn mowers, and the trucks, and the blue cars.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The Polar Infrared Interface USB commonly
used with PCs running Windows XP doesn't
work on a Mac [ Photo: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

The Polar Infrared Interface USB that many people got with their Polar S-Series heart rate monitors is a USB 1.1 device. I've been trying to use it without success on my MacBook Pro with Polar Precision Performance Software 4 running under Windows XP on VMware Fusion.

According to a number of articles that I've read, the only way to reliably get the Polar Infrared Interface USB to connect with a Polar heart rate monitor using Mac hardware is to boot into Windows XP directly from Boot Camp. No configuration of Windows XP under VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop 3.0 seems to work properly.

A number of people on the Polar user support forums have reported success when using the Polar IrDA USB 2.0 Adapter with PPP4 under Windows XP with either VMware Fusion or Parallels.

The biggest problem with the Polar IrDA USB 2.0 Adapter is its expense. In my opinion, a lot of Polar accessory products that aren't proprietary are similar to Apple-branded products; They are very nice looking and well-supported by the manufacturer, but not economical. Some purchasers of the Polar IrDA USB 2.0 Adapter agree that it's nice looking, but think documentation is very sparse.

A far less expensive IrDA-USB adapter that some people claim to have gotten working is the Cables Unlimited USB1510.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal's Golf Journal column carried an a great interview with Frank Thomas, the former technical director of the U.S. Golf Association (USGA). Thomas makes some great points about the impracticality of state-of-the-art golf technology to the grassroots golfer. The quote that jumped off the page for me was this:

...the thing that concerns me is how commerce now dominates golf and is trying to squeeze the last dollar out of its most avid customers rather than trying to open the game up to more participants. If the goal is to improve the overall health and enjoyment of the game, that's the wrong direction.

I see the same kind of issues happening in sports that I am more involved in, namely ice hockey and road cycling. All three of these sports have grown rapidly in the past ten years, and are arguably having difficulty sustaining that growth rate because they are all expensive sports to play.

The media that helps people follow these sports focus on the personalities at the top of the elite pyramids (people like Tiger Woods, Sidney Crosby, and Levi Leipheimer), and the technology that makes greater achievements possible.

I'm in favor of talking about the technical advances in sports-- Operation Gadget wouldn't be what it is with out them. But, the key to continuing the growth of technologically-driven sports in North America is driving the technology into progressively less expensive equipment.

If all technological advances stay at the high end, growth of these games will stagnate and the gear manufacturers will fight over the people who are willing and able to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest. Some people would argue that's where we are today in all of these sports.

I was really impressed with what Frank Thomas had to say in this interview. The column mentions two places where we can hear more from him:

• His website called Frankly Golf
• His book called Just Hit It: Our Equipment and Our Game

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Stuff We Like: The Dave Laptop Stand on Lifehacker: "The Dave (oh Ikea, you and your names!) features adjustable height and angle, and can double as a TV tray or simple end table when you're not computing. If you've been looking for a better way to surf the internet from the comfort of your couch, the $25 Dave might be just the ticket."
• Optimizing File Sharing on Your Home Wi-Fi Network on Web Worker Daily: "A lot of people who have successfully put in a Wi-Fi network neglect to optimize the way files are shared between computers in a home or workgroup. You can choose ways to organize shared files, and ensure that files are shared securely or not visible to other users on your Wi-Fi network very easily...." Good instructions on how to do this whether you have Windows or Macs
• StrechCordz Short Resistance Training Belt on Cool Tools: "The StrechCordz resistance training belt makes expensive, complex, "endless" pools obsolete. At one end of a 4-foot, black rubber tube is a nylon belt with a simple plastic snap-clip that slips around my waist. On the other end is a loop I attach to the deep-end ladder of our modest home pool. That's it... just tether up and start swimming. Swim as hard and fast as you like yet stay in place."
• Cycling Photography Tips: Shooting Head On on Spare Cycles: "Shooting head on is both difficult and easy: difficult in that the rider is moving at you very fast so your margin for error is very little, but easy in that you don't have to move your camera very much at all."
• Easter's early this year. Deal with it. on God Plays Dice: "...the cycle of Easter dates repeat themselves every 5,700,000 years. The cycle of epacts (which encode the date of the full moon) in the Julian calendar repeat every nineteen years. There are two corrections made to the epact, each of which depend only on the century; one repeats (modulo 30, which is what matters) every 120 centuries, the other every 375 centuries, so the air of them repeat every 300,000 years. The days of the week are on a 400-year cycle, which doesn't matter because that's a factor of 300,000. So the Easter cycle has length the least common multiple of 19 and 300,000, which is 5,700,000." [ via Slashdot ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Mac Automation: listen to a text document on TUAW: "Don't have time to read that Word, Pages, or TextEdit document at your desk? Why not listen to it on your iPod instead? In this Automator how-to, I am going to show you how to create an audio file using text that you have in an open document, then sync that using iTunes to your iPod or iPhone." This is similar to a how-to published in Macworld last month.
• Reliance Digital to Open 60 iStores Across India on Tech2.com: "Reliance Digital... plans to open 150 digital stores and 60 iStores or Apple stores across {India}. While {typical Reliance Digital} stores offer a wide range of consumer durables, iStores are exclusively for Apple's products for professional and consumer segments."
• Time Machine Now Works with Airport Extreme USB Drives on MacRumors.com: "After the release of today's Time Machine and Airport update, several readers report that Time Machine now supports backups to USB drives connected to your Airport Extreme basestation. This configuration essentially reproduces the functionality of Apple's Time Capsule product."
• Shimano buys clothing company Pearl Izumi from Nautilus on VeloNews: "Bringing premium sports apparel and footwear to its offering of industry-leading cycling and fishing products, Shimano has completed its purchase of DashAmerica, Inc. (dba Pearl Izumi USA, Inc.) from Nautilus, Inc." This actually happened a month ago, but I just noticed it.
• The Feedzone with Monique Ryan: Protect your heart this season on VeloNews: This is a great article which focuses on eating the right kind of fats and other smart food choices as part of an athletic lifestyle.
• When to Stay With Windows in Mossberg's Mailbox on AllThingsD: Walt Mossberg talks about when it's OK to stay with Windows when upgrading home computers. A couple in their 70s asked if they should upgrade to a Mac although no family members have Macs, so family support wouldn't be available to them. He points out that it's OK to stay with Windows now, but the question will need to be re-evaluated sometime this sommer, when Microsoft stops selling Windows XP to OEMs for installation on new machines.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Amgen Tour of California began on Sunday with a Prologue time trial in Palo Alto.

One of the more intriguing developments is the return of veteran sprinter Mario Cipollini to the ranks of active professional cyclists after a three year retirement. Cipollini retired on May 7, 2005 after a ceremonial 1.1km time trial at the Giro d'Italia. He has now joined the upstart U.S. team called Rock Racing.

BikeRadar.com reports that Cipo's bike is not standard team issue and speculates on its componentry. They have a number of good photos of the bike. When I have covered pro cycling races in the past for Operation Gadget, I've always gone looking for the most unusual bikes, and this one certainly is.

I think the return of athletes like Mario Cipollini bodes well for the sport of pro cycling. It certainly needs some good news and some developments that take the focus away from the controversies surrounding testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Top 7 Web Applications for Sending Large Files on Geekpreneur: "If you’ve ever had to send a large file to someone, you know the hardships that arise. Email services keep strict limits on attachment sizes. What’s more is that it’s often hard to send more than one attachment at a time. This kind of disservice has made email quite unpopular for sharing files- and thus, we have entered the age of hybrid email. The premise is simple: cut out the bulk, and just give us an easy way to send files over the internet!"

• Torvalds: Leopard file system "utter crap" on MacNN: "Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently blasted Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for having a file system that is 'complete and utter crap' at a Linux conference in Melbourne."

  The Leopard file system, technically known as HFS+, has been around in some form since the last time I was a Mac developer-- 1992. Of course Apple would like to move to something more robust. They've been building up to switch to ZFS, or some other sophisticated file system, for some time now.



• Turn Your Nokia Phone into a Wi-Fi Hotspot with JoikuSpot on Lifehacker: Who needs tethering when you can make your Series 60 phone into an ad hoc WiFi base station for your laptop? Wow.


• How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! on A Whole Lotta Nothing: "A lot of people ask me how I do the MetaFilter Podcast.... I know they ... mean... 'what software and hardware does it take to make a decent sounding podcast?' After almost a year of regular podcasts and trying out different software and equipment, I’ve gotten the workflow down cold and I wanted to share the my way of making a good sounding podcast on the cheap. This works perfectly well for me being in Oregon and talking to my friend Jessamyn in Vermont over Skype, recording at both ends, then tossing it all into Garageband to complete the podcast." [ via 43Folders ]


• Nike SPARQ Parachute Makes You Run Faster, Eventually on Gizmodo: "The Nike SPARQ Parachute is designed to create drag 'to force athletes to push themselves harder to achieve speed' and look like a moron in Central Park." Can I use this thing on the ice sometime?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I never met Sheldon Brown, but I learned a great deal from him.

Sheldon developed a website, SheldonBrown.com, that had an incredible amount of technical information about bicycles and cycling. If I Googled for some information about one of my bikes, I often ended up consulting his site.

Sheldon passed away on Sunday, February 3, 2008, reportedly of a massive heart attack. May he rest in peace. [ via spare cycles and BikeRadar.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• RPI Plays Princeton tonight in the 31st Annual Big Red Freakout. RPI needs the win. In other news, the White beat the Red in the Alumni Game 9-8.
• Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks on Instructables: "Here are 5 easy and cheap tricks for anyone who uses a camcorder. Total cost for all 5 is under $10!" [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Devices and Applications on the Wi-Fi Front on Web Worker Daily: "While many Mac-based users already have next-generation, draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology in their homes (because they use Apple’s Airport Extreme routers) lots of other folks still use slower 802.11g Wi-Fi. This year is when official certification of 802.11n Wi-Fi is supposed to arrive, and the month of January brought some product announcements that point to what the widespread arrival of 802.11n technology might mean...."
• Review of the Nike Amp+ iPod Control Watch: "... the Amp+ isn't designed to be an all-around running or fitness watch. It's specifically designed for runners who already have the Nike + iPod kit. Similar to the Timex iControl we recently reviewed, the Nike Amp+ is a remote control for your iPod Nano, however unlike the Timex, the Nike Amp+ uses the existing Nike + iPod gadget that plugs into your iPod, so you're actually adding the iPod remote control to the Nike iPod system." [ via TUAW ]
• Crazy Apple Rumors on Hiatus on TUAW: CrazyAppleRumors.com is a site I just found out about recently. It's articles are what you might read in The Onion if they covered Apple more aggressively. Sorry to see it go dark.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday's New York Times had a terrific article about fighting a weight loss battle while working a full time job which resonates with me. What was most interesting was the fact that two of the three people profiled work at very athletically-oriented companies.

• Steve Madden, the editor of Bicycling and Mountain Bike magazines is 44 years old, 5-feet 10-inches tall, and weighs 198 pounds. In other words he's almost exactly my size.

  The shocker in this story is that Madden rode his bike 4,451 miles in 2007. No question that he could have journaled it all using a heart rate monitor like the one I use. How can you ride 85 miles per week, year round and not lose weight? I know. You eat what you want and never commit to a serious eating plan.

  There's no question that Madden is both fit and overweight, as I am at the moment. He demonstrates how far you can take this lifestyle as an amateur athlete.




• Marcello Aller, National Athletics Account Manager at Polar USA is 34 years old, 5-feet 8-inches tall, and weighs 218 pounds. He says:

  My colleagues think I look fine, but it’s become more of a challenge to become lean.... I’m not an endurance athlete, like a small cyclist or a runner. I have a typical, square football-player build. Sometimes it’s more difficult to regain a hard body; my metabolism has changed with age.

  Aller is an inch shorter than I am and weighs over 20 pounds more than I do. I weighed this much when I worked on Wall Street. He needs to realize that he'll have to both change his diet and work out in order to achieve the results he wants.

  I think a warning sign in his behavior is that he thinks his metabolism has changed at age 34. This may be the case to a small extent, but he'll do a lot better if he admits that the quantity and type of food he eats is a substantial part of the problem.

These two men work at athletic lifestyle companies where it should be easy for people to lose weight, keep the weight off, and stay in shape. Yet, it's obvious that doing the right things is not as easy as it should be. Most overweight people cannot lose weight by exercise alone. They have to watch what they eat and control the size of their meals and snacks. That's the key to achieving significant fitness and appearance goals.

I can completely relate to their situations. I can be an even better athlete if I have an eating plan. I made the commitment to plan what I eat again a couple of weeks ago. It's a struggle, but I hope to see the benefits by the end of the hockey season.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MacRumors reports that Garmin released a new beta version of their Bobcat GPS management tool for MacOS X. This beta of version 2.0 of the software includes the following features:

• transfer waypoints, tracks, and routes between a Mac and Garmin GPS device,
• manage maps and DRM keys for transfer to a Garmin GPS, and
• search for points of interest on the Mac and transfer the locations to your Garmin GPS.

It wasn't too long ago that Mac users would have to keep a PC around the house or spin up a PC emulator or virtual machine to take advantage of Garmin software. Bobcat looks like a serious product that can help you get the most out of your GPS or heart-rate monitor.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Gmail IMAP Change in 1.13 - Apple Phone Show on Apple Phone Show Blog: "The 1.13 upgrade to the iPhone automatically changes POP configured Gmail to IMAP...." I saw the change in folder arrangement on my iPhone after I updated the firmware, but I didn't realize the implications of it until I read about the switch to IMAP online.
• The new Favicons: Making Webclip icons for iPhone on SixApart ProNet: The professional developer website for Movable Type and TypePad posted the first explanation of how to make a custom icon for a website that will appear on the home screen of an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I already made a Webclip icon for RinkAtlas, a site whose logo lends itself to doing so.

• Forty years since Masterton's death on the Globe on Hockey Blog: "Masterton, 29 at the time, was checked by Larry Cahan and Ron Harris of the Oakland Seals, and hit his head on the ice after falling backwards. The game took place Jan. 13, 1968, in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Masterton died in hospital two days later due to a brain injury."

  "His death led to the lobbying of more widespread use of helmets, and a mandatory helmet rule was passed in the summer of 1979." Anyone playing ice hockey should pause for a moment and remember Bill Masterton. His unfortunate death began a series of rule changes and other protective measures that have made our sport much safer.



• Mini-Review: Amazon Kindle vs. Sony Reader on 37signals Signal vs Noise: "There are plenty of comprehensive reviews of the Kindle floating around so I don’t think we need another one. Instead, I’ll focus on comparing it with the Sony Reader."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nike Amp+ Sport Remote Control has finally made it to the market, and iLounge has done a comprehensive review of it. Jeremy Horowitz writes:

It would be an understatement to call Nike’s Amp+ iPod nano Remote ($79) the coolest and most misunderstood iPod accessory introduced in the past year. The bracelet, which is sold in four colors—blue, green with orange, black with red, or black with graphite—is a watch, an iPod remote control, and a fashion statement. Give it a quick glance from a distance and you’d think it’s just an extra-wide Lance Armstrong LiveStrong wristband, but get up close and you begin to realize that Nike has crafted an understated and underpromoted work of design genius....

I think the Amp+ looks incredible. It's the kind of watch that I could see wearing once or twice a week, the same way I tend to wear my Polar S625x to work on days when I'm officiating hockey. I'd like to see the reaction from people in my office when they saw this watch on my wrist.

I wish that Apple and Nike would expand the availability of the Nike+ product stack to iPods other than the nano. How hard could it be to make that happen?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My father-in-law George Kuykendall pointed out an interesting article in The New York Times called The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin. It talks about the types of cyclists that go on European cycling trips that follow the route of The Tour de France and how older and/or heavier riders often turn out to be more successful than most people might expect. The article says:

... cycling is a lot more forgiving of body type and age than running. The best cyclists going up hills are those with the best weight-to-strength ratio, which generally means being thin and strong. But heavier cyclists go faster downhill. And being light does not help much on flat roads.

The article goes on to say that Dr. James Hagberg, a kinesiology professor at the University of Maryland, thinks that cycling is not as physically demanding as running. Anyone who uses a heart-rate monitor in their training can easily see this. There is a significant difference in average heart rate and estimated calories burned between running and cycling for 30 minutes.

This is a popular article in my office, where the all of the cyclists can more easily identify with Thor Hushovd than they can Michael Rasmussen, at least in terms of BMI .

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm three weeks into a new full time job. In order to get to work on-time, I need to leave the house by 7:45am. My son (who is about to celebrate his first birthday) goes to bed between 7:00 and 8:00pm, so the best time for me to exercise is before work.

I started running on weekdays beginning at 6:15am. I managed to get out on five days of each of the first two weeks, but I'm afraid of injury if I keep up this frequency.

I vastly prefer biking on a daily basis. The problem was that I had been keeping my Trek 1500 in the basement of my house, and my wife was dead set against me moving my bike in and out of the house before 7:00am.

The solution was for me to get a multi-bike stand for my garage. I chose the Delta Design Boticelli, a sturdy, free-standing rack with room for four bikes on it. The Boticelli was delivered by UPS yesterday, I assembled it in my garage last night, and I was out riding at 6:00am this morning.

This rack is seven feet (2.1 meters) tall when fully assembled. The stand has a two by three foot base (23 x 29" or 58 x 73 cm to be exact), which leads me to believe that it will never tip over, even though the stand will only normally hold three bikes when it's in our garage.

I think that the build quality of the Boticelli stand is very good. The stand came unassembled, but the installation instructions were very clear. Assembly was simple. All I had to do was put the powder coated pipes together and screw them together with eight hex screws. The package included the hex key that I needed, so assembly was an Ikea-like experience, although the instructions were clearer.

The Delta Boticelli is very compelling combination of space efficiency and clean design. It looks great in my garage. I'll probably bring it into my basement during the hockey season when we don't do much riding. The great thing about this rack is that it would also look fine in the living room of an apartment, if you were inclined to keep it there to show off your bikes.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My sister Julie Howson pointed out that Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James purchased a minority stake in bike manufacturer Cannondale, according to a report in The Cleveland Plain Dealer. James reportedly said, "Cannondale is one of the premier cycling companies in the industry.... Biking is an extremely important part of my training routine, and I like to invest in what I know."

LeBron James hosts King for Kids Bike-a-thon each year in Akron, a small city near Cleveland. Last year he rode a custom-made Cannondale in this event, and now uses that bike in his off-season training.

A photo gallery of the 2006 King for Kids Bike-a-thon is on the Cleveland Cavaliers' website. Most of the bikes ridden by NBA stars appear to be city bikes and hybrids rather than road bikes.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you live in an upper middle class or an even more exclusive area, you probably have neighbors who have a Toyota Prius or other types of hybrid automobiles. Most people know that these vehicles can run entirely on battery power under certain conditions, and in that situation, are extremely quiet.

An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled Blind Pedestrians Say Quiet Hybrids Pose Safety Threat got me thinking about my own safety when riding my road bike in this area. How am I supposed to know that a hybrid isn't overtaking me on a two-lane road if it's running on battery?

According to the article in The Wall Street Journal, the noise level of a Toyota Prius when accelerating under electric power is 53 decibels, while a conversation at home is about 50, and an operating vacuum cleaner is 70. If there's a cross or a head wind while I'm riding, it often limits my ability to hear vehicles behind me anyway. Think of the difficulty of hearing a hybrid approaching from behind you in those conditions.

Since people without subscriptions to the Journal will have difficulty reading this story, I'll quote the real-life scenario that begins the article, so you can see the real threat that is posed to blind people:

... Michael Osborn, a blind marketing consultant from Laguna Beach, Calif., and his guide dog, Hastings, were in the middle of an intersection one morning last April when the yellow Lab stopped short. Mr. Osborn took the cue and halted -- just in time to feel the breeze from a car passing right in front of them.

"Half an inch and it would have hit us ... it wasn't making any noise," says Mr. Osborn, 50, who has been blind for 12 years. Witnesses say the car was a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle....

My conclusion after reading this article and thinking about the implications for cyclists, runners and in-line skaters wearing their iPods, and for children playing near residential streets, is that the auto manufacturing and insurance industries and public safety agencies need to study the points made by the advocacy organizations representing blind people. I think they are on to something that will be a bigger concern to the general public in the future.

If you are a cyclist, are you concerned about hybrid vehicles passing you when you are riding alone? How are you protecting yourself? Does this concern affect group rides as well? [ Subscription usually required to read articles in The Wall Street Journal ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

One of the more interesting articles I read this week was about The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team's use of custom orthotics with all of its riders. They are using custom fit technologies from eSoles Custom Footbeds, a technology that has existed previously and has been used by a few elite pro cyclists. Discovery is apparently the first ProTour team to employ this technology for all of its riders.

eSoles uses laser digitization as part of their orthotics fit process. As a result, the company can reproduce orthotics multiple times. This is a major advantage over other orthotics production techniques such as plaster casting. eSoles also maintains a database of shoe patterns, so that they can build orthotics for multiple shoe types from one fitting.

It's hard to say exactly why DCPCT management elected to fit all of its riders with eSoles orthotics. The article claims that custom orthotics improve biomechanical efficiency and reduce fatigue. What we don't know from this article is whether all of the team members also have custom-made cycling shoes.

Hockey players have benefitted from custom-made skates for a long time. I had custom-made skates at RPI and those skates were significantly more comfortable and less fatiguing than the off-the-rack skates that I have worn in recent years. Do elite cyclists get the same performance boost from custom-made shoes as hockey players do? If the Discovery riders are all wearing custom-made shoes, what percentage of the enhanced efficiency and comfort come from the shoes, and what percentage would come from custom orthotics?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just found out that Giro is planning to produce an authorized Livestrong Special Edition Atmos Cycling Helmet again for its 2007 model year. I love my Rudy Project Ayron Helmet, but the Livestrong Special Edition Atmos Helmet is one I'd wear in its place.

Giro will donate 5 percent of its proceeds from sale of these helmets to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

I already added this to my Wishlist at Amazon.com, so many people in my family will see it even if they don't buy it for me. The Giro ® Atmos Livestrong Edition Helmet is also available at the Discovery Channel Store and all sizes are in stock at this writing.

Technorati Tags: Livestrong, Giro Atmos, bike gear, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reports that quite a few Nintendo Wii owners are developing aches and pains as a result of playing Wii Sports (included with the Wii console), Rayman Raving Rabbids and other games that require a bit of physical exertion.

One of the more interesting aspects of the article is a link that the author posted to the Wii Experience Page, a collection of videos that show how volunteers reacted when confronted with playing Wii games for the first time.

I'd love to give some of these games a try, if only to see what a relatively well-conditioned person would experience after playing some of the movement-oriented games for a couple of hours. The big problem of course is, how do you get a Wii console for anything close to the list price?

I think the Wii is going to be a hit and will change the video game business because it's going to force competitors to include more movement in game play. Every movement-oriented game I've ever tried in arcades has been interesting. A few have been a real blast to play. I hope that we see more of these games in the future.

Technorati Tags: Wii, Nintendo Wii, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Step2Play is a game controller for the Sony PlayStation
that requires a young gamer to exercise while playing.
[ Photo: Oceana Trading ]

The BBC reported over the weekend that a British company called Oceana Trading has released a line of video game accessories that can be used to require exercise from kids who want to play video games. The Step2Play is an accessory for the Sony PlayStation that replaces a standard game controlller with a combination stepper and game controller.

The Step2Play is designed for people who weigh less than 150 pounds (68 kg), so it's clearly aimed at the kid segment of the gaming market. It appears to be sturdily designed. The unit itself weighs 19.5 pounds (8.9 kg).

I did a quick search around the Internet today to see if I could locate a retailer who is selling the Step2Play in America. So far I haven't found one. The company (that uses the tradename GymKids for this product line) appears to be marketing Step2Play and other exercise-oriented video game controllers direct to customers in the UK via the Internet. I'm not certain whether they will ship these products to the USA or not.

I've seen comments around the Internet about the Step2Play to the effect that products like it are a regrettable reflection on the sedentary nature of our society. I think video game accessories that require a level of physical activity are a fine idea, particularly if kids are not participating in organized athletics or spending a lot of time outdoors.

On the other hand, if you are a parent and haven't found an athletic activity that your child likes, you should keep looking and trying new things. Don't use gadgets like the Step2Play as a crutch.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reported today that prices of high end bicycles were likely to increase in cost from 5% to 25% this Fall as a result of increases in the price of aircraft-grade alumnium, titanium, and carbon fiber. The pressure is coming from increased demand for these materials in the aerospace and defense industries.

According to the article, some manufacturers are trying to hold the cost of these materials down to their largest customers, while passing a disproportionately large part of the increased costs on to sporting goods manufacturers. Bicycle manufacturers are being hit hard, as are golf club, hockey, and lacrosse stick manufacturers, and recreational boat builders.

Bike manufacturer Serotta Competition Bicycles has reportedly increased the price of its bikes by 12% in calendar year 2006, mainly due to increase in materials costs. [ Subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal ]

Technorati Tags: Serotta bikes, road bikes, mountain bikes, fitness gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know if this is true for you, but I always get more motivated to ride my bike during the Tour de France. I also worry a bit more about getting a flat or breaking my chain on the road because I don't have a team car following me.

BBC Sport published a nice review of basic bike maintenance that should be done on the compnents regularly. It's broken down into six categories:

• Cleaner (cleaning products to be used)
• Seat
• Handlebars
• Pedal
• Chain
• Wheel

I noticed that my rear wheel of my Trek 1500 was rubbing against the brake on my last ride, so I was worried that my wheel was getting out-of-true. This morning I checked it, found that the break assembly was pulled slightly to one side. This is easier to fix than it would be to true the wheel.

I gave my 1500 a long-overdue cleaning and lubed the chain, so I'm ready to ride today and over the weekend, if the opportunity presents itself. [ via LifeHacker ]

Technorati Tags: fitness gadgets, bike maintenance, Trek 1500.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a fitness gadget maniac, I'm not supposed to admit this, but... I occasionally make mistakes when it comes to handling my gear. My latest mistake was damaging the battery cover on the Polar Wearlink Transmitter that I use with my Polar S-725 Heart Rate Monitor. This occurred for two reasons:

1. I failed to follow the care and maintenance instructions for the Wearlink Transmitter. In particular, I didn't "Wash and dry your transmitter after use," as directed by Polar. This resulted in a build up of crud around the battery cover which made opening the cover extremely difficult.
2. I attempted to force the battery cover to turn and stripped the threads that should allow the battery cover to turn like a screw.

If I had followed the first direction, I'm sure I wouldn't have stripped the threads.

There's no reason why I couldn't have gotten a second year out of the Wearlink Transmitter other than my laziness. The battery is easily serviceable, whether you do it yourself or send it back to Polar for them to perform the service. I wanted to do the service myself this time, since I sent my Polar S-710 and T-61 Transmitter back for Polar Service last time and wanted to see if doing the work myself resulted in a less satisfying experience. Doing the battery replacement myself on the Polar Wearlink Transmitter has certainly been less satisfying so far.

I think the key to not having this happen in the future is to make sure that the back of the transmitter is cleaned at least once a week. The battery cover is a good place to use an old toothbrush and some soapy water and do a little light scrubbing to keep that dried sweat from building up and making that cover impossible to turn.

Another thing I'd recommend to do it yourselfers is find a coin that fits the Wearlink Transmitter battery cover when the unit is new. I tried a U.S. quarter, a screw driver head, and several other implements in a fruitless attempt to open the cover. I think I needed something thicker and larger than a quarter. Maybe an old 50-cent piece or a Canadian One Dollar or Two Dollar Coin. Your milage may vary.

Technorati Tags: Polar S-725, Polar Wearlink, fitness gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike and Apple team up to create
a running computer that consists of
a pair of shoes, a motion sensor, and
an iPod nano.
[ Photo: Apple Computer, Inc. ]

On my son's birthday, Nike and Apple announced a collaboration that will initially allow a pair of Nike running shoes to talk wirelessly to an iPod nano. Over the long run they hope to expand the product line to include more products that bring fitness and entertainment together.

I would have loved to be there for this announcement because it was held in New York and because Lance Armstrong and elite marathoner Paula Radcliffe participated. I wondered how long it would take for Lance Armstrong's involvement in the New York Marathon to result in a marketing opportunity for one of his long-time sponsors. I guess this is the first.

What's cool about the Nike+iPod Sport Kit is that it will only cost $29. Nike and Apple both have other high margin products to sell you if you like the idea of using your iPod as a running computer.

Converting the nano into a running computer is a radical departure from the approach that Polar and Adidas are taking to equipment integration, and a lot of pretty serious runners could be swayed by it.

Technorati Tags: iPod nano, Nike iPod, running computer, fitness gadgets, Lance Armstrong.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Our friends at Cool Tools pointed out the Xtracycle FreeRadical rear wheel extender kit. This is a well-designed conversion for old, well built mountain bikes and hybrids that can help you haul lots of heavy and bulky gear with it.

The FreeRadical is available in 26-inch and 700cc versions, depending on the size of your bike's wheels.

The manufacturers feel that the FreeRadical can make a bicycle a viable alternative to a car for many errands around town. I think this would work for me if I was really focused on saving money. I work out of a home office and the town I live in-- Newtown, PA-- is very compact. There are two supermarkets, a Staples, a Bed Bath and Beyond, and an old-fashioned hardware store within a mile and a half.

I think 75 percent of our household errands could be accomplished on a bike with a FreeRadical attachment on it. It would be interesting to give this a try sometime. I could easily make the modifications to my trusty old Marin Bear Valley SE. It would give the bike a new purpose in its semi-retirement.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brad Feld's Treadputer: Venture capitalist
Brad Feld added a 3.2-GHz IBM ThinkCentre
to his Vision Fitness T9450HRT Treadmill.
This lets him get his runs in while he's on
conference calls. [ Photo: Brad Feld ].

Brad Feld is a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital based in Boulder, Colorado. He challenges himself by running marathons, and has set a goal of running a marathon in every state in the nation within the next 10 years.

Around the beginning of the year he and his coworkers built a "treadputer", a fitness club-quality treadmill with a big, fast Windows PC, and three 19-inch LCD displays.

The amazing aspect of Brad's story is that he finds he can use his PC while walking and running on this treadmill. According to the article:

It turns out that the Treadputer is highly functional when I’m running, which enables me to do some of my longer runs during the day while I’m on a call rather than having to get up at 5am to get them in before the day starts....

When we first assembled the Treadputer, {a co-worker} was skeptical that I would be able to read the screen while walking and assumed that reading while running would be impossible. While the three monitor setup helps a lot, it was surprisingly easy to read while walking or running. We’re running all three monitors at their standard 1280x1024 resolution and haven’t juiced up the font sizes.

Brad's article includes more details about his treadputer's configuration, and what he's learned about typing and mouse / trackball use. I found it quite interesting.

At least one other person bent on improving his life has built a treadputer. Walking Guy has begun a blog discussing his experiences building and using his treadputer. He says he began this quest because he needed to take off at least 40 pounds but was stuck in front of a computer 80 to 100 hours a week. He has his treadputer setup and has already gotten himself mentioned in the Lifehacker Coolest Workspace Contest.

I wonder how many more treadputer setups already exist, and how many will be built now that these articles have appeared on the Internet? I'll have to start looking for "bikeputer" articles as well.

Technorati Tags: fitness gadgets, treadputer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever since I got my Trek 1500 at Christmas, I've been looking for a bike rack that supports more than two bikes and can handle a lot of biking-related gear as well. Until then, Kathleen and I were a two-bike family: I rode a rock-solid Marin Bear Valley SE that probably had 25,000 miles on it, and she has a late model Trek mountain bike that was also a great investment.

We still have these bikes and all of the gear that goes with them. Now I'm adding appropriate road biking accessories, and there's a lot of gear spread out in the garage and the basement.

The bike rack I have my eye on is the Delta Cezanne Bike Gear Rack. It's a free-standing rack that can hold as many as six bikes, but more realistically would hold four. This would leave the center free for equipment stored in the baskets and jerseys and clothing hung from the center.

The reason I would strongly consider putting the Delta Cezanne Bike Gear Rack in the basement is because it could be used for clothes storage. I don't like to run my biking jerseys and shorts through the dryer. It would be easy for me to take them out of the washer and hang them on hangers from the center of the rack. This would also mean that I could store all of the bikes near the work bench in the basement, which is also the most logical place to locate my repair stand.

An arrangement like this would improve the organization of the garage and the basement, giving me more room to store other things and one less excuse to ask my wife, "Where did I leave my Polar Wearlink transmitter last night?"

Technorati Tags: fitness gadgets, Delta Cezanne Bike Rack, Trek 1500, Marin Bear Valley SE, Polar HRM.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Ward asked:

Do you have any ideas on listening to the "Radio Tour" Channel, 450.8875 MHz at the Ford Tour de Georgia? I am going to try a NASCAR type scanner from Radio Shack. The scanner I have will also decode the CTCSS quiet code so that I can listen in to the team chat when the peleton gets close. My only concern is that they may {use} digital and not analog.

Race radio is the frequency on which race officials broadcast the current race conditions, including leaders, injuries, accidents, and mechanical problems. The media listens to race radio in cars and at the media center near the finish line of each stage of the race. Web sites where you can read updated race status, such as the VeloNews Tour de Georgia Event Ticker, transcribe information from race radio.

Kevin is correct that the race organizers have chosen 450.8875 MHz for their race announcements.

Kevin, I'm sure you'll be fine with the radio you are using. I've looked into this, and the radios recommended for this type of listening are scanners like the Uniden BC92XLT Bearcat Handheld Scanner. This scanner has 200-channel storage capacity, which would be ideal for NASCAR races where every team uses a different two-way radio channel and the Nextel Cup and Busch Series are racing in the same, confined location.

You will need a lot fewer channels to listen to the Tour de Georgia race radio and the chatter between riders and their team cars. Each team will probably choose a separate frequency for communication, so there will probably be less than 30 channels in use.

A couple of years ago, I mentioned that the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team (now the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team) used Alinco DJ-C5T two-way radios at the Tour de France. These are credit-card-sized radios that have transmit and receive capability. You can be sure that the riders are using similar radios to the DJ-C5T in the Tour de Georgia (maybe the DJ-C6E), but they will be tuned to frequencies that are legal for two-way communication in the United States.

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, race radio, NASCAR, Nextel Cup, Busch Series.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hincapie's Trek in Pieces: The bike was built up
from a Trek 5200, with carefully-selected
components designed to make riding
over cobblestones easier. [ Photo: AFP via
VeloNews ]

TDFblog.com has an excellent report on Sunday's Paris-Roubaix Cycling Race. This race, often referred to by the nickname "Hell of the North", was exactly that for Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team rider George Hincapie. He crashed twice during the race, including a spectacular crash when the handle bars on his bike broke away from the front fork.

Frank Steele of TDFblog did some good research. He found a CyclingNews.com interview with Scott Daubert of Trek that discussed the bike Hincapie used in Paris-Roubaix. The bike was built up from a Trek 5200 with a number of special components. The steerer that broke was an anodized alumnium Bontrager model similar to the steerer on my new Trek 1500. The fork was an OCLV carbon fork similar to those Trek uses on high-end commuter bikes, but with "dimensions that are appropriate for Roubaix".

Trek issued a statement through ThePaceline.com announcing that it would investigate Hincapie's two Paris-Roubaix crashes by "bringing the fork and the bike back to the United States where they will receive a thorough evaluation."

After seeing the second crash on OLN, I can't believe that Trek feels that they need to reassure the cycling community about the integrity of their products. In non-race conditions, anytime a bike hits the pavement, it should be completely inspected for hidden damage. The accident which ended George Hincapie's 2006 Paris-Roubaix was almost certainly the result of damage from his first crash that could have been identified if he had stopped and changed to a backup bike.

I can certainly understand that Hincapie wanted to stay with the leaders after his first crash, and couldn't have known that his bike was as damaged as it was prior to the second crash. It's unfortunate that Trek has to defend itself this strenuously when one of its bikes is pushed beyond its limits. [ Free registration required to read articles on ThePaceline.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For years I've been a big Polar heart rate monitor fan. My Polar S-725x rides on the handlebars of my Trek 1500 everyday. But, recently, I've been looking at the Garmin Edge 305HR+ and I really think that it has a lot of potential as an alternative to pure cycling computers like the Polar CS200cad.

The Garmin Edge 305 is a feature-packed device with a large display. It includes a high sensitivity GPS receiver that's supposed to be a huge improvement over the early Garmin Forerunner fitness gadgets, a chest strap-based heart rate monitor, and speed and cadence sensors that you mount on your bike frame.

Garmin Training Center Software, which is their training journal product continues to improve. It's looking more and more like Polar Precision Performance Software plus basic GPS routing. My Garmin fitness gadget is a Forerunner 201, so I didn't get this version of Garmin Training Center with it, but I think I'm going to upgrade so I can do a head-to-head comparison of it with PPP.

I prefer wrist-mountable fitness gadgets because I participate in duathlons and officiate a lot of hockey, but if I were a bike-only athlete, I'd absolutely compare the Garmin Edge products to the Polar CS cycling computers.

Product Options: The Edge 305 is also available in an HRM-only model, the Garmin Edge 305HR, and a speed and cadence-only model, the Garmin Edge 305CAD.

Technorati Tags: Garmin Edge 305, Polar CS200, Garmin Training Center, Polar Precision Performance, fitness gadgets, cycling computers

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Janus Sandsgaard of Machine Culture emailed me on Friday to point out that Polar Precision Performance Software has been updated to add the following new features:

• Double-clicking on day row opens the Diary to Daily details page.
• Week count extended to max. 20 (Calendar Properties – General – Number of Weeks)
• Entire day note text shown if there are no exercises for the day.
• Team name added to Quick user switch member name list. (Shown only if Coach login is on.)
• Sending data from one day is now possible.
• Plus a number of fixes for bugs that popped up in previous version.

Polar Precision Performance Software has been my favorite training log software for a long time. (To find out why, read Why Training Log Software is One of The Most Important Features of a Fitness Gadget from December 2003.) I think PPP has remained relevant over the last three years because Polar keeps enhancing it. I strongly recommend that all Polar AXN and S-Series HRM users upgrade as soon as possible. [ Thanks Janus! ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Genuine Innovations Deluxe Tire Repair &
Inflation Wallet: A handy set of bike tire repair
tools if you need a CO2 pump.
[ Image: Amazon.com ]

Cool Tools pointed out a neat set of bike tire repair tools called the Genuine Innovations Deluxe Tire Repair & Inflation Wallet. For about 25 bucks, you get:

• an Ultraflate Plus CO2 cartridge-based bike tire inflator,
• three 16g non threaded CO2 refill cartridges,
• a small bike tire patch kit,
• a 3.5 x 4.5" nylon bag with a zipper

All of this fits in your bike seat bag. The Ultraflate works with Schrader or Presta-valved tires.

Genuine Innovations has a broad line of tire repair kits for cycling as well as Motorcross and ATV that's available directly through their website. Their products are also available at dealers throughout North America.

I think these kits represent a good value if you're buying accessories for a friend or relative getting a new bike. Most people don't realize that they're going to need all of these tools when they first purchase their bikes. It only takes one flat to make you realize that you need a complete set of tools with you on every ride and you need to know how to use them.

Technorati Tags: Ultraflate, CO2 bike tire inflator

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Richard Pestes reviewed the VDO MC 1.0 + Altimeter, a bike computer that includes an altimeter and thermometer. This is a high end bike computer which includes altimeter and thermometer features, but doesn't include a heart rate monitor or PC connectivity.

VDO MC 1.0 + Altimeter With everything from actual gradient to total altitude for all trips, this computer is designed to give you a complete topographical look at all your rides, as well as all the pertinent speed and trip data. See Performancebike.com for a complete list of functions and features. Wireless. 70cm range.

I personally prefer bike computers like the Polar CS200 or the Polar S725x. These Polar models have built-in heart rate monitors and infared PC connectivity. This means that they can be used with fitness tracking applications like Polar Precision Peformance Software or data can be sent to a coach via email for analysis.

Lots of people don't need or want this much analytical capability. They want to know how fast they are going, how far they've ridden, how steep the climb is that they're on at the moment. The VDO MC1.0+ is perfect for this.

I thought Richard Pestes review of the MC1.0+ was very good. He clearly likes this computer, since it's the one he has ridden with daily for the last two years. According to the review, he used it on his ride of the Stelvio in Italy in May 2005.

I think the VDO MC1.0+ is a well-built, compact bike computer that makes a lot of sense if you want to see all of the important trip related data during your ride. It's not going to satisfy real data junkies, or people who want HRM or GPS capability, but there are many other choices if you want those capabilities.

Technorati Tags: VDO MC1.0, Polar S725x, Polar CS200, gadgets, fitness gadgets, bike computers, heart rate monitors, GPS

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jackson Proflex Skate Boot: A first step
toward better figure skating biomechanics?
[ Photo: Jackson Ultima Skates ]

I was really surprised at Peter Waldman's page one article in today's Wall Street Journal called Figure Skaters Blame Boot Design for Injury Plague. The article points out the number of severe orthopedic injuries that have occurred since the International Skating Union removed compulsory figures from major competitions in 1990.

Many elite-level participants in figure skating blame the lack of innovation in the design of figure skates for the increase in chronic injuries. They say that equipment improvements have failed to keep pace with the increasingly acrobatic nature of the sport. The article says, "The force generated from a typical skating jump equals eight to 10 times the skater's body weight.... Because figure skates allow minimal ankle flex, skaters land on the ice on their heels, absorbing the impact in their knees, hips and spine."

Designs that allow figure stakers to flex their ankles forward and backward have existed since at least 1995, but only one manufacturer has adopted them, Jackson Ultima Skates. Ultima ProFlex Boots have been used by Alissa Czisny, Amanda Evora, and Mark Ladwig in international competitions.

Waldman goes on to allege that Nike passed on the opportunity to invest in safer skate technology for figure skating, citing the small market for figure skating gear. Representatives of Jackson Ultima Skates say that the U.S. Olympic Committee passed on an opportunity to fund research because none of the manufacturers in the industry would agree to limit distribution of skate technology resulting from their investment to American athletes.

I'm most involved in ice hockey, mountain biking, and road cycling. I believe that the national and international organizing bodies of those sports are committed to athlete safety. I'm amazed that the organizations that play similar roles in the sport of figure skating have not acted in the same way. Figure skating may need the attention it gets on television from the acrobatic jumps that elite athletes can do. However, too many elite figure skaters are paying a price in terms of chronic orthopedic injuries for the issue to be ignored.

Thank you to The Wall Street Journal for bringing this to the attention of sports fans around the world. [ Subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Garmin is about to release the Garmin Forerunner 305, one of it's third-generation GPS-enabled fitness computers. The 305 differs from the Garmin Forerunner 205 in that the 305 includes heart rate monitor functions.

I haven't recommended the Forerunner 300 series in the past because I thought the Forerunner 301 (the predecessor to the 305) was less functional than fitness computers like the Polar S625x which can be used as a running or cycling computer with the proper accessories. The Polar S625x doesn't have GPS capabilities, but it does have a footpod for running speed and distance, and can use speed, cadence, and power sensors attached to a bicycle.

The major new feature of the Forerunner 305 is, in my opinion, the ability to interface with the Garmin GSC 10 wireless cycling speed and cadence sensor. This brings the Forerunner 305 into the same league as many of the Polar S-Series Heart Rate Monitors. Now the Forerunner 305 is a viable alternative to these Polar computers, if you do not already own a heart rate monitor.

Improvements in the 305 in comparison to the Forerunner 301 are the same as those discussed in the Forerunner 205 preview article on Operation Gadget:

• More compact, watch-like design,
• More sensitive GPS receiver,
• USB interface,
• Customizable screens.

The big issue with the 305 in my opinion is the current price. Is it worth a list price of $376 (which is already discounted somewhat by Amazon.com and others)? I can't be sure until I use one. I want to use it the way I use my Polar S625x, and log my workouts into Garmin's Training Center Software. Until I see how it stacks up against my favorite fitness gadget, the jury is still out.

Technorati Tags: Garmin Forerunner 305, Garmin Forerunner 301, Polar S625x, gadgets, fitness gadgets, heart rate monitors, GPS

[ via Machine Culture ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Garmin is about to release the Garmin Forerunner 205, part of the third generation of its GPS-enabled fitness computers. I've owned a Garmin Forerunner 201 for a long time and I love it. It's part of my cycling dashboard and I used it to map the course of the 2004 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride, so I'm definitely going to recommend that you check it out.

The key features of the Forerunner 205 that are huge improvements over the 201 are:

• More compact, watch-like design,
• More sensitive GPS receiver,
• USB interface,
• Customizable screens.

I prefer the Forerunner 200-series (GPS-enabled fitness gadgets without heart rate monitor capabilities) because I also swear by my Polar S625x Heart Rate Monitor. As I said in the article Why Training Log Software is One of The Most Important Features of a Fitness Gadget, Polar Precision Performance software is just outstanding. Polar Electro keeps upgrading it and adding features. The Garmin software called Training Center has also improved a lot, but has not yet passed Precision Performance in my opinion. That's why the Polar S625x and the Garmin Forerunner 201 often ride together on my handle bars.

Technorati Tags: Garmin Forerunner 205, Garmin Forerunner 201, Polar S625x, gadgets, fitness gadgets, heart rate monitors, GPS

[ via Machine Culture ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Janus Sandsgaard of Machine Culture pointed out that Adidas and Polar have released another video touting the forthcoming Fusion line of performance apparel and fitness gadgets. They include:

• Adidas adiStar Fusion Apparel which provides built-in fasteners for a Polar WearLink Transmitter.
• Adidas adiStar Fusion Running Shoe which accepts a Polar S3 Stride Sensor into its Torsion Midfoot structure.
• Polar RS800 Running Computer which looks like a hybrid of the Polar S625x and one of their adventure sports models, like the Polar AXN 500. The RS800 looks like the slimmest Polar running computer to date.

These produces have been under development for a long time. Polar and Adidas published press releases introducing the Fusion line in August 2005. I don't know when we will see these products in the USA, but I hope that they will start appearing during the 2006 running season.

Technorati Tags: Project Fusion, Polar, Adidas, gadgets, fitness gadgets, heart rate monitors

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Expresso Fitness Spark: Where do I sign up to use
one of these stationary bikes during my upcoming
physical therapy? [ Image: Expresso Fitness ]

Walter Mossberg and Katherine Boehret of The Wall Street Journal take on a stationary bike review in Test-Riding a $5,000 Indoor Bike in the latest The Mossberg Solution column. The bike they reviewed for this article is the Expresso Fitness Spark, a new stationary bike designed for the kind of workload that it would experience in a high end health club. The Spark also incorporates some really sophisticated multimedia training courses, which can be updated remotely by Expresso Fitness through the built-in wireless Internet router.

I would normally take reviews like this with a grain of salt, but I was particularly drawn to this article by the following passage:

Most of its courses would be far too difficult and strenuous, and highly discouraging, for the average, out-of-shape users who need it the most. The Spark seems to have been designed by and for athletic bicycling enthusiasts who we assume would rather be outside on real bikes most of the year.

OK, I'd love to try it now. Too bad I have a broken leg.

The Expresso Fitness Spark has a lot of features that I would want if I were buying a high end stationary bike:

• 17-inch LCD display,
• Intel Pentium P4-based computer system with premium video card and built-in TV tuner,
• Polar WearLink compatibility,
• multiple resistance gears,
• water resistant membrane keyboard separate from the LCD display

I think the Expresso Spark is ready-made for use by serious athletes who take advantage of remote coaching from organizations like Carmichael Training Systems because it includes features like uploading workout results to Expresso. When you combine this feature with the Spark's TiVo-like firmware update mechanism, you can bet that Expresso will offer remote coaching interfaces at some point in the future.

Regarding the courses they could build for the Expresso Spark in the future, my mind goes wild. They would sell more than one of these bikes to every high end fitness club in Europe if they included an Alpe d'Huez tour. For the less fit riders, how about a tour that replicates the end of the last stage of the Tour de France from The Eiffel Tour to the Champs-Elysees?

I agree with Walter Mossberg that I'd rather be riding my Trek 1500 most of the time-- particularly this winter because of how mild it has been. But if had the money and I was committed to doing an Ironman, especially if I was paying for remote coaching, or if I ran a sports medicine facility or a high end fitness center, I'd definitely be in the market for an Expresso Spark.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I picked up my Trek 1500 a week ago and so far I've ridden it 71.2 miles (115 km). That's a lot of riding when you consider that I live in the Northeastern United States and it's the last week of December.

I love the way the Trek 1500 rides. It's a lot easier to get moving than any other bike I've ridden. It's also very maneuverable and feels rock solid underneath me. It's hard to believe I'm riding 700x25 tires.

I rode 48.3 miles in the last two days on two of my favorite routes: the 23-mile Newtown-New Hope Route that I spoke about in an article about pre-Tour of Hope training back in October and The East Windsor-Millstone Route that I used to prepare for the 2004 Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope. These are great routes but they are hard to ride in windy conditions, and it's been pretty windy around here in the last few days.

I've been looking for noticeable time differences between the rides on the Trek 1500 and rides over the same routes on my Marin Bear Valley SE. I haven't seen anything significant so far. There are probably two reasons for this:

1. I haven't been riding much since the ice hockey regular season started. I've officiated 58 games since Labor Day and I haven't ridden much as a result. (I think my officiating last season also complemented my cycling more than it has this year, mainly because the role of referee requires more endurance and continuous motion than does my current role as an assistant referee / linesman.)
2. I hardly ever ride in such windy conditions during the main cycling season. On December 27, I experienced northwest winds of 22 miles per hour with gusts up to 30. Yesterday there was less wind: it was from the south at 13 miles per hour with gusts up to 16.

Right before Christmas I got a call from Cecil Ledesma, my friend who rode with me in the 2004 Tour of Hope. He wanted to know how I felt about riding the Trek 1500 and at the time, I had only ridden about 7 miles on it. Now that I've ridden over 70, I think that this bike is fantastic. It will help me to get to the next level in terms of my cycling training.

I'm planning to go back to Jay's Cycles next week for a more exact bike fitting. I also want to make sure that the bike is properly adjusted, particularly in terms of the brakes, shifters, and derailleurs.

Technorati Tags: Trek 1500, road bike, Tour of Hope, cycling, Trek, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Trek 1500 Road Bike: Members of my
family contributed to a fund so I could
get this bike for a combined birthday
and Christmas gift. [ Photo: Trek Bicycle
Corporation ]

One reason that you haven't heard much from me in the last few days is that I've been shopping for a new road bike to ride in the 2006 cycling season. If you've read Operation Gadget for a while, you probably know that I like to participate in endurance cycling events and occasional duathlons, and I trained extensively for the 2005 Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope Washington DC Fundraising Ride.

As the events I've trained for involve more mileage, it's become increasingly clear that I needed to switch from a mountain bike to a road bike. My wife Kathleen decided that this year was the best opportunity we would have for some time to get a good road bike for me, so she told my friends and family that she was starting Dave's Road Bike Fund and invited them to contribute to it for my birthday and Christmas.

I didn't know anything about this, so I was loading up my wishlist at Amazon.com with a Video iPod and accessories for it.

When the surprise was sprung on me three weeks ago, my initial reaction was: Oh boy, now I can get an iPod and a road bike. Reality set in when I looked at how much money I would need to buy both without making significant compromises in iPod capacity or road bike performance.

I decided to buy a Trek 1500, the top-of-the line model in their Alpha Aluminum line. The suggested retail price of this bike is $1150 and I paid somewhat less than that at the dealer I chose, Jay's Cycles in Princeton, NJ. Trek makes a lot more expensive bikes, but, I felt that the 1500 was a good combination of price and performance for someone making the transition from mountain to road biking at my skill and training level.

I also want to say that my decision to purchase a Trek was heavily influenced by my experience covering the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team during 2005. My friend Bruce Turner from AMD put me in touch with some people at Trek like Michael Sagan who really believe in the products they make. I was able to learn a bit about Trek's design approach for pro-caliber bikes, embodied in the F-One partnership with other Discovery Team sponsors, and how that's improved Trek's bikes that I can afford. I felt that the 1500 was the right bike for me at this point in my life-- the full carbon fiber bikes will have to wait.

I'm planning to pick up my new bike tomorrow and I hope to be able to post some up-close photos of it within a few days. I rode it for about 10 minutes before I bought it, but I'm hoping for good weather, strong sun, and light winds one day before Christmas so I can get a longer ride in and post an article about the experience.

Technorati Tags: Trek 1500, Video iPod, road bike, Tour of Hope, cycling, Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, Trek, AMD, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Toy Wishes Magazine has released its ever-popular Hot Dozen Toys for 2005. This list is intended to forecast which toys will be the most popular during the 2005 holidays. We can safely assume that if the magazine is correct, many of them will also become hard to find in stores at some point in the near future.

Dora's Talking Kitchen: One of my
favorites on the Toy Wishes Hot
Dozen Holiday List. Product photos
courtesy of Amazon.com.

The Hot Dozen List includes (in alphabetical order):

• Black Belts Karate Home Studio DVD: an inexpensive active play set with a video component.
• Dora's Talking Kitchen; My wife Kathleen says that the kitchen play set at her pediatrics office is the most popular toy in the waiting room.
• Fly Wheels Assortment; Couldn't figure out which toy this was, so I'm recommending the Fly Wheels Rapid Fire Launcher for the moment.
• Furby: an electronic friend that comes in multiple color combinations.
• iDog: an electronic dog that dances to music that's being played in the room. Accessories are also available.
• iZ: an interesting combination of cartoon character, speaker for music playback, and music mixing tool. You change the beat of the music by twisting iZ's ears and pressing on his belly.
• Leapster L-Max Learning System: portable version of Leapster learning system. Requires new games, available separately. Works in conjunction with TV, if connected.
• The Magnetix MagnaWorld Series: lead by Magnetix MagnaWorld City. MagnaWorld Clock Tower, MagnaWorld Magna Central, Rescue Center, and Airport also available.
• Pixel Chix: including Pixel Chix Cottage House, Beverly Hills House, and Miami Loft. Interesting electronic house simulators. Kids interact with a Pixel Chix Pal, paying attention to the Pal in order to keep advancing in the game; Ignore and Pixel Chix Pal moves out.
• Shell Shocker Radio Controlled Toy: a toy with a "bio-mechanical design" that can shift from a rolling bowling-ball type shape to a reptillian-looking robot and back. Requires a Tyco Pro Flexpak Battery and Charger and a 9-volt battery, which adds to the cost.
• VCam Now: digital camera / video camera designed for kids. Holds 480 pictures or 7 minutes of video.
• V-Smile Pocket: portable version of V Smile-- a 2004 favorite. Uses the same cartridges as the bigger unit, potentially a big savings.

VTech V-Smile Pocket:
Little brother of the V-Smile Learning
System, which was a big hit in 2004.

If the 2004 Hot Dozen list was heavy with electronics, the list is overloaded in 2005. There are only two toys on this list that don't have a big electronic component: Black Belts Karate Home Studio DVD (also available in VHS) and the Magnetics MagnaWorld Series. I bought a set of Magnetix building toys for my nephew, Ben, a year or two ago, and I really wish they had been around when I was a kid, because they're fun to build with.

Last year, Operation Gadget readers bought a lot of VTech V-Smile, a video game-based learning system for preschoolers. In my opinion, this either means that V-Smile Pocket will be a similar hit, or it will be a dud. VTech has a strong lineup of add-on cartridges compatible with both devices based on Winnie the Pooh, Mickey and Friends, and the Little Mermaid. If these cartridges are entertaining as well as educational, I'm sure parents and grandparents will buy them, and many hours of fun will be had by all.

I'm concerned that the mix of electronic and non-electronic products in the Hot Dozen has tilted too far toward the electronics this year. Will there be hits in the non-electronic genre this year, in spite of the lack of attention? What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Hot Dozen, Toy Wishes Magazine, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

I started researching sound isolating earphones that are placed in the ear canal because so many of my friends are dissatisfied with the earphones that came with their iPods and wanted to know more about the earphones that are considered better. Through this investigation, I found that aftermarket earphones are available at a wide-variety of prices. There's also some serious disagreement about which models are the best available today.

I want to start out by reporting that CNET awarded the Shure E4c it's Editors' Choice in the category. They said:

The Shure E4c headphones represent an evolutionary advance in Shure's popular in-ear E series. They feature a new Tuned Port Technology, which enhances the tiny earphones' bass response by improving airflow around the driver. The E series' earpluglike designs block background noise so that you can listen at lower volumes in noisy trains, buses, and planes. And unlike noise-canceling headphones, the E4cs don't rely on batteries to power their hushing abilities.

The Tuned Port Technology is why I would pick the Shure E4c Earphones over the Shure E3c Earphones that were recently touted by Russell Beattie. If you read his comments, you'll see he's using them as a concentration aid when he's in the office:

I *am* a professional office worker, and I'll tell you right now, these are *the* headphones to have in that sort of environment where there's any sort of constant noise and interuptions. I pop them in, and bam, I’m in a cone of silence, perfect for concentrating and thinking (which is what knowledge workers are supposed to do, right?).... Three people can literally be having a loud conversation in front of you, and you hear nothing except your Vivaldi played at a comfortable low volume. It's like having a virtual office that you can take with you anywhere: Put the headphones on, and bam, perfect silence and privacy.

These aren't the earphones I'd want for daily use. I use earphones with Kathleen's iPod in a home office environment and I need to hear background noise. The Shure E4c and E3c are definitely not appropriate for outdoor exercise of any kind because of that "cone of silence". Whether these earphones can be safely used when doing yard work or operating walk-behind machinery is your call.

If sound isolating earphones make sense for your uses, you should check out CNET's Shure E4c review and Russell's E3c review to help you decide which sound isolating earphones to purchase. Also note that Shure makes an even more professional version, the Shure E5c.

Technorati Tags: Shure E4c, Shure E3c, Shure E5c, iPod

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Chris Brewer wrote an article on The Paceline about following the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope National Team during Day 7 of their ride across the United States. The most interesting part of this article for Operation Gadget readers is Chris' description of the communications technology that Trek Travel has implemented to keep the Tour of Hope in contact with itself and the rest of the world:

It was a unique experience to witness the behind-the-scenes action from the CentCom {Tour of Hope command vehicle} perspective. Trek Travel makes sure that a fresh driver is piloting every vehicle each stage, and then several Trek Travel / Carmichael Training Systems managers take alternate shifts coordinating each stage's transition and execution. For the CentCom staff it's all about communication involving 2 cell phones, 1 satellite phone, 2 close-range radios, a GPS messaging system, and a laptop computer with a GPS mapping system. Add in numerous documents, route guides, maps, etc. and the Centcom staff is in-touch and in constant operational management mode around the clock.

Carmichael Training Systems also deserves a lot of credit for how smoothly the Tour of Hope National Ride has gone so far.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen hasn't been feeling too good in the past few days, but on the way home from our weekend trip to visit friends in Boston, she planned my week leading up to Saturday's Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope Baltimore to DC Fundraising Ride. She told me, "You have to ref on Wednesday night, so you need to do your long route on Tuesday and Thursday this week in order to be ready for Saturday."

This was going to be a challenge for the following reasons:

1. At work, Weblog Improvement, I'm very close to finishing a major new weblog for Chris Nolan, a journalist based in San Francisco, and her co-bloggers.
2. On the bike, I've had equipment problems lately {flat tire, chain problems} that the folks at Newtown Bicycle and Fitness have been helping me work out.
3. Due to a combination of a lot of things, I haven't ridden my 23-mile route since August 14. Instead I've been riding mainly 10 to 15 mile routes right around Newtown.

All along my route today, I was worried about making the cutoff time for the 50-mile ride on Saturday. Over the 50-mile course, we have to maintain a speed of 14 miles per hour. I finished my 23-mile ride today in 1 hour 32 minutes 46 seconds at an average speed of 15.4 miles per hour.

Performance Forte Team MTB Pedal Mud-shedding alloy body, dual-sided entry, dual-force retention spring with adjustable entry/release tension. 4 degrees float. Compatible with Shimano SPD cleats. Wt: 370g/pr.

What I found most interesting about my ride today was that I shaved 10 minutes off my best time this Summer and I haven't been riding this distance as often as I should. The best explanation I can come up with for this success is my vastly improved equipment. I believe we're seeing the first indication of how much Performance Forte Team MTB Clipless Pedals and Perl Izumi Vagabond II MTB Shoes improve my riding. That 10 minute savings is between 10 and 11 percent of my previous ride time. That's pretty huge when you consider that the cost of that improvement was only about $80.

Read on for some information about my 23-mile training route and why it's probably more intense than either half of the Baltimore to DC Fundraising Ride that I'm doing on Saturday.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Continue reading "23-Mile Pre-Tour of Hope Ride Proves the Value of Inexpensive Bike Upgrades" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Qualcomm has contributed its OmniTRACS fleet location network technology to the 2005 Tour of Hope National Ride. Here's an example of the kind of up-to-date progress map you can get to follow the National Team:

Tour of Hope National Ride Current Location Map: Uses Qualcomm OmniTRACS Fleet Location Network and Google Maps to display the current location of the Tour of Hope National Team. This image is was current on September 30, 2005 in the early afternoon, when the team was southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. [ Image: Tour of Hope ]

That's a really cool use of GPS technology!

If you're interested in keeping an eye on the National Team's progress across the country, visit http://tourofhope.org/ride/2005_national_route/current_location_map.htm.

When you visit that page, use the controls on the map to zoom out at least two or three zoom levels. I did this before I took the screen shot of the map showing Greater Phoenix. I doubt that most people will be able to identify the location of the National Team at the default zoom level.

I was shocked when I saw this map, because it looks so similar to the map I produced of the 50-mile Baltimore-DC Fundraising Ride Course a few weeks ago. I'm glad to see that we're employing state of the art technology.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I took advantage of a great sale and bought a pair of Peformance Forte Team Mountain Bike Pedals and Pearl Izumi Vagabond Mountain II cleated shoes from Performance Bike. Up to now, I've been riding with pedals that have toe clips on them, which I knew was taking away from my biomechanical efficiency.

Performance Forte Team MTB Pedal Mud-shedding alloy body, dual-sided entry, dual-force retention spring with adjustable entry/release tension. 4 degrees float. Compatible with Shimano SPD cleats. Wt: 370g/pr.

I've wanted to make the switch for a long time, but I've always been concerned about the process of acclimating myself to clicking my shoes into pedals that act very much like ski bindings. When I use toe clips, it's easy to pull my feet off the pedals. The clipless pedals, however, require you to turn your foot at the heel so that the cleat on the bottom of the shoe rotates and clicks out of the binding mechanism. You have to do this at a point in the pedal rotation where you have little or no weight on the pedal you are trying to detach from. You can fall if you fail to detach your foot properly.

I installed the pedals yesterday, put on the shoes, and rode around on the grass in my back yard, trying to master the process of clicking my shoes in and out of the pedals. I only fell once.

Today I went on my first long ride with the shoes and pedals. I rode 15.6 miles in 1 hour 6 minutes 7 seconds. I don't think I've been this nervous on a bike since I was a kid. The sensation of having my feet locked to the pedals didn't feel too weird while I was riding at a normal speed, but at times when I was braking and I needed to put my foot on the ground I felt a momentary sense of panic. This happened two or three times on the ride-- but I didn't crash.

I now realize why so many road bikers break collarbones while riding. They get themselves locked into their pedals and have difficulty getting out of them in emergency situations that call for deft bike handling.

I need to do much more riding over the next two weeks. If I'm able to do it, I'm sure I'll lose the nervousness I feel before I ride in The Tour of Hope Washington DC Fundraising Ride.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Runner's World Magazine published a guide to picking an MP3 player written by Gizmodo editor John Biggs. Conspicuous in its absense from this guide is the iPod nano, but not a surprise due to the fact that the review was written for a "dead trees" publication. Of real surprise, however, is the number of MP3 players that disappeared from the market before the story was printed.

Among the other products mentioned:

• Flash-based players:
  • Apple iPod Shuffle 512MB, everyone's bargain choice unless you want the extra capacity of the iPod Shuffle 1G model.
  • Oregon Scientific MP120, includes an FM tuner.
• Hard disk-based players:
  • Mio 269, a mobile 96MB GPS system with MP3 player built in. Super expensive at well over $500 no matter where you get it, but really cool looking and possibly useful.
  • Rio Karma. Gone. The Rio player line was folded back in late August by its owner D&M Holdings. My advice is not to buy it.
  • iPod mini. Gone. Replaced by the iPod nano. I wouldn't buy an iPod mini now. The iPod nano is clearly a better device IMHO, even if it's slightly smaller in capacity.

The article also provides tips that I figured out on my own:

1. When rain is a possibility, put your portable electronics in a Ziplock bag before riding or running.
2. Don't hold a hard disk based MP3 player in your hand. This must be a tip for people that have never even borrowed an MP3 player from a friend to try it out during exercise.

I had hoped for better when I saw it was written by John Biggs, but he's a slave to the publication's lead time, so the lack of timeliness that plagues this guide is really not his fault.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Richard Pestes of PezCycling News published an article about his experience riding the Time Trial course at the Tour of Germany (DeutscheTour) through a program called Giant Tour. Giant Bicycles apparently has a huge presence in Germany, in part because it is the bicycle sponsor of the T-Mobile Professional Cycling Team. Pestes said:

The coolest part of the Giant Tour is that regular Joe’s can sign up to ride a stage race, on closed roads – the same routes used by the DeutschTour - with police escorts, electronic timing, hot showers, hot food, roadside fans, and the feel of what it’s like to be a real pro racer. The stages run on the second half of each day’s DeutschTour route, and if you’re too slow – there’s a broom wagon to sweep you up.

Media covering the DeutscheTour who were up for a challenge got to ride team-issue bikes. Pestes' was the same Time Trial bike as the T-Mobile team raced in the 2004 Tour de France.

Check out the article. It has a lot of good photos of the bike he rode. I'm jealous.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Mabe has published a couple of articles on compiling race maps by taking GPS tracklogs, processing them, and running the resulting data file through the Google Maps API. The articles are:

• Automated Running Logs using Google Maps
• Course Map using the Google Maps API

Looks like he's getting a lot of ideas from the Mapping Hacks book published by O'Reilly. I saw this book in a local Barnes & Noble the other day and I definitely want a copy. I just don't have time to work through all the interesting recipies in it right now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloACE: An Open Source Bike
Computer System for PalmOS.
For when you absolutely
want to have your bike
speedometer be a PDA.
[ Image: Mark Hammerling ]

Sammy and the other folks over at PalmAddict don't normally scoop us on fitness gadget news, but you'll see why they did in a moment. One of their readers tipped them off to VeloACE, an open source bike computer software project for the PalmOS.

I think this is an interesting proof of concept, but I honestly have no idea what would motivate a cyclist to use this program unless he or she was also the biggest Palm geek in the world. I can't imagine mounting a Palm IIIx or Palm IIIxe to my bike handle bars as suggested, then installing a wired wheel sensor. The late model Palm's aren't water-resistant by any stretch of the imagination.

I think it's amazing that someone wrote a bike computer PalmOS application. It certainly illustrates the bredth of third-party software offerings for Palm handhelds, but a solution like this belongs in Make.

I realize that a program like this is going to intrigue some people. If you're interested in comparing VeloACE's feature set to the kind of technology available in gadgets designed from the outset to be used as bike computers, check out these devices:

• Polar S625x: more of a running computer than a bike computer. Includes a heart rate monitor wrist receiver and chest transmitter, training log software for a PC, and a weather-resistant foot pod for measuring running distances. Add a Polar Cycling Speed Sensor and a Polar Bike Mount Kit and you've got a computer suitable for running or biking.
• Garmin Forerunner 301: a GPS-based biking or running computer that includes a heart rate monitor. Great for creating maps of training runs and rides. Also includes training log software. Get the Garmin Forerunner 201 if you don't need/want the HRM.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Velo'v Grand Lyon is a bike rental network in Lyon, France. Wired News published a great little article about the system works and how technology is being used to try to ensure that it stays solvent.

To use Velo'v in Lyon, you have to make a €150 deposit via check or credit card. This allows you to go to one of the stations and borrow a bike. If you don't return the bike to a station within 24 hours, the deposit is forfeited. The bikes themselves are loaded with sensors that help make the system as automatic as possible.

The owners of this system are JCDecaux, a French company that is primarily in the advertising business in the USA. They are most prominent in a business they refer to as Street Furniture: everything from signs on city streets displaying information to bus shelters.

I have no illusions of this type of bike rental system working in most cities in the United States, but the design of this system seems unique and is certainly worth reading about. [ via Engadget ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Heart Rate Chart from Training Log: Here is the heart
rate chart for a game I refereed in the Chicago
Showcase. Click on the chart to see a larger view.
[ Image: Polar Precision Performance Software ]

See more Chicago Showcase exercise data in the
Operation Gadget Photo Gallery.

Regular readers of Operation Gadget know that I was on the ice officiating hockey this weekend for the first time since April. Just like any athlete in the preseason, I saw how far below my end of season peak fitness level I am now.

The hockey season will begin after Labor Day, with the intensity of competition increasing steadily over the month of September. Most competitive leagues in this area will begin their regular seasons between September 15 and November 15. As a hockey official, I need to increase my training effort now to be ready for the intensity of regular season games.

I went out for a 10-mile bike ride on Monday night into the Tyler State Park in Newtown Township, PA. I rode as hard as I could for much of the ride and got my heart rate up to an average of 145 beats per minute. That's at the lower end of the average heart rate range that I need to achieve.

I'm able to make judgements like these because I use a Polar S625x Heart Rate Monitor and I upload all of the performance data into Polar Precision Performance Software. As a result, I have performance data from most of the physical training I've done over the last few years, including the hockey games I've officiated.

This allows me to carefully tune my mountain biking workouts to simulate the kind of aerobic effort I'll need to be able to maintain to successfully officiate high level hockey games. In this article, I'll walk through my approach to planning workouts, and show how I determine whether a workout is helping me reach my training goals.

Continue reading "Developing a Workout Plan to Simulate the Effort of Other Athletic Performances" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm definitely pleased with the set of Mavic Crossland mountain bike wheels I put on my mountain bike last July. I bought the wheels because the set that came with my Marin Bear Valley SE years ago were falling apart due to metal fatigue, and I kept breaking spokes.

Mavic® Crossland Silver Front New from Mavic®, this entry-level priced wheel is anything but entry-level when it comes to technology, with many of the same features you'd find on higher-priced wheels. SUP welded rims with UB machined braking surface and disc compatible hubs allow you to easily make the upgrade to disc brakes. 24 stainless spokes laced 2-cross for added strength and weight savings. Includes skewer and rim tape. Wt.: 970g.

Mavic® Crossland Silver Rear Includes skewer and rim tape. Shimano® 8/9 spd compatible. Wt.: 1100g.

I just looked at my training log and figured out that I've ridden these wheels 1,535 miles with two tire changes but no problems with spoke breakage. That makes the investment worth it to me.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ten days ago I reported that I was replacing the tires on my mountain bike with Performance Topo FasTrac MTB Tires, a semi-slick tire that I found on sale at Performance Bicycle:

Performance Topo® FasTrac MTB Tire (Folding) Introducing the new Topo® FasTrac ATB Tire Even faster and lighter than our SemiSlick+! Features cornering knobs strategically made shorter and spaced more closely together for super-smooth transitions into corners, and center grooves that add serious traction. Highest quality 120 tpi casing. Folding. Blackwall. 26x1.90. Wt: 495g.

The Topo FasTrac Mountain Bike Tire reminds me a lot of the Ritchey Speedmax tires that are installed on my wife Kathleen's mountain bike. The biggest difference is that the tires are only 1.9-inches wide rather than 2.1.

I thought the Topo FasTracs were easier to work with than many other semi-slicks I had installed before. They were flexible enough to go on my Mavic CrossLand wheels pretty easily. I rode up and down the street a couple of times to make sure the tires were properly installed and inflated, but I didn't have much of a chance to see how well they performed. I'll try to write a follow up article on that issue after a week or two of riding.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've got about 90 days of riding weather left in Newtown, PA, and I need new mountain bike tires. The old, reliable Continental Double Fighter on the rear wheel of my bike has started to develop holes in the center of the tread. I'm bound to start getting flats long before I do the Tour of Hope Fundraising Ride in Washington, DC in October.

Continental doesn't make the Double Fighter anymore, otherwise I might buy two new ones. Performance Bicycle has a new semi-slick tire that looks a lot like the Double Fighter that I decided to try. They're called Performance Topo FasTrac MTB Tires:

Performance Topo® FasTrac MTB Tire (Folding) Introducing the new Topo® FasTrac ATB Tire Even faster and lighter than our SemiSlick+! Features cornering knobs strategically made shorter and spaced more closely together for super-smooth transitions into corners, and center grooves that add serious traction. Highest quality 120 tpi casing. Folding. Blackwall. 26x1.90. Wt: 495g.

The Topo FasTrac Mountain Bike Tire is on sale at Performance right now for under $20. I'll put two of them on my bike and see how they ride. If you need replacement semi-slicks now, it's going to be hard to beat this price.

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Janus Sandsgaard pointed out that Polar Electro is teaming up with Adidas to produce a line of fitness clothing and running shoes that will have embedded transmitters for heart rate and running speed and distance. According to a Polar press release, the products will collectively be called Project Fusion, and will include:

• AdiStar Fusion apparel: t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, bras, and women’s tops,
• Adidas adiStar Fusion shoe,
• Polar s3 Stride Sensor,
• Polar WearLink transmitter {already available}, and
• Polar RS800 Running Computer.

These products will be available in Spring 2006.

Janus also found and published photos of the Polar S3 and the RS800 Running Computer. He notes:

Unlike the RS2000 it looks as if Polar remembered the IrDA port this time, and reading the press release you get the impression that the product will work with {Polar Precision Performance Software}. The new S3 {running computer footpod} does not look a lot smaller than the S1, but indeed slimmer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just noticed that Performance Bicycle is running good on-line sales in their electronics, clothing, and tires/tubes/wheels departments. All of these departments stock things that I desperately need at the moment.

The prices are good. They have a good deal on the Ciclosport HAC4 if you need one of those right now. They also have Performance Elite (8-panel) shorts on sale for 33% off.

I'm in the market for some semi-slick MTB tires, but I don't see anything like that on sale at the moment.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Velonews just published some early information about Campagnolo's new cycling gear for 2006. Looks like they'll be featuring:

• a new road wheel set,
• compact drive cranksets across their gruppos, and
• an ultra narrow chain that is supposed to improve performance if the derailleur is not adjusted correctly.

These things should be featured in September at Interbike and Eurobike, the two big bicycle industry trade shows.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today my friend Maria Norton sent me the following message:

Hi Dave,

Hope you're getting settled into the new place.

Just wondering, have you heard about the Gmaps Pedometer? It's a pretty good to map out routes and mileage.

Also, on the Google maps website {http://www.google.com/help/faq_maps.html}... you will find the ability to create custom Google maps on your website (you must register and get an API key to do this).

For other Google maps hacks, see: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

Take care, and good luck with the training.

I've been thinking about training route mapping since I moved to Newtown and started scouting for cycling and running routes. I checked out the Google Maps API and it looks like I can definitely use it to make maps of my training routes for the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope Fundraising Ride in Washington DC.

I'll let you know when I start experimenting with the API. [Thanks Maria!]

Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polar Precision Performance Software: A
new update has been released which includes
new screen themes like this.
[ Image: Polar Electro ]

I recently received word that Polar Electro has released a free update to its Polar Precision Performance Software for that comes with its high end Heart Rate Monitors like the Polar S625x. The following features are included:

• Synchronize function enabling quick transfer of new exercises. The default sport settings are used for quick transfer. (Tools > Synchronize)
• Easy merging of two exercise files. (Edit > Merge Exercises)
• Delete data from a selected area in the curve view. (Edit > Delete Selection)
• Sport-specific pace unit. (Options > Person Properties > Sports > Edit > Pace)
• Polar OwnOptimizer test value with explanation added to Day Information.
• Calendar theme selection added with a package of 8 ready themes available in the Themes folder. (Calendar Properties > Theme)

All of the other features are more important, but I want to call attention to the screenshot that's posted in this article. This is the new default theme for the software and it's a major improvement from the color scheme that Polar Precision Performance had in previous versions. (See the screen shot in Why Training Log Software is One of The Most Important Features of a Fitness Gadget from December 2003 for comparison.)

As is the case with every Polar Precision Performance update, I'm going to have to look carefully at the application to see what the new features do. If I see anything worth reporting in more detail I'll let you know.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lance Armstrong clinched a seventh victory in the Tour de France today by decisively winning the Stage 20 Time Trial. I was not surprised that Lance won or that Jan Ullrich finished a close second. What did surprise me, however, was the relatively poor performance of Ivan Basso and the incredibly bad luck and nervousness of Mickael Rasmussen.

When I talked with Phil Liggett a few days ago, he confirmed that Stage 20 was very hilly and technical. This is how it appeared when I looked at the course using Google Earth. If this was clear to me, you'd think it would be clear to the Director Sportifs and other personnel of the leading teams.

One of the things I noticed was that the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team chose spoked wheels during Stage 20. Most of the other leading teams opted for rear disk wheels. Rear disk wheels are better suited to less technical courses. They tend to reduce the maneuverability of a time trial bike rather significantly.

The race was pretty significantly affected by these choices. Mickael Rasmussen fell while trying to get around a traffic circle near the beginning of the stage. He had equipment problems, was unsteady on his bike for the rest of the race, and lost 7 minutes 47 seconds overall. Ivan Basso rode strongly at the very beginning of his time trial, but looked very tentative in the middle. OLN analysts later suggested he had gone out too quickly at the beginning of his ride, but that doesn't explain the way he handled his bike in the middle third of the course.

Santiago Botero of Phonak, who also rode a rear disk missed a turn and rode into the crowd early on in the OLN broadcast. The worst handling problem that befell Discovery was Paolo Salvodelli at the first traffic circle, but he was not riding a rear disk. He was able to keep the bike under control and didn't crash.

In spite of these issues, I thought that this was one of the most exciting time trials I'd seen in a long time. The course was really challenging. The television crews from OLN and France Television did a fantastic job in terms of getting the right pictures on the screen at the right times. About the only thing to complain about from a TV-watching standpoint was the chyron graphics that OLN made itself. In some cases, they were poorly timed or not up to date. This is not the only time this has happened to OLN during the 2005 Tour, but Liggett and Sherwen did a good job of correcting information that was put on-screen that wasn't correct.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Mickael Rasmussen, Santiago Botero, Paolo Salvodelli

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonathan Maus told us that Inveneo has developed a bicycle-powered, Linux-based VoIP phone system for use in developing countries. No kidding.

I found an explanation of a Pedal and Solar Powered PC and Communications System on the Inveneo web site. This article does not discuss the inclusion of the Asterisk open source PBX system, so this may be an elaboration on the design.

This reminds me a bit of the ad for ESPN SportsCenter that starred Lance Armstrong that was aired in 2001 and 2002. I wonder if the folks at Inveneo were in some small way inspired by it? [ via Engadget ]

Technorati Tags: Lance Armstrong

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the questions I asked in the recent article Heart Rate Monitor Data Integrated into OLN Broadcasts was how is heart rate monitor data transmitted beyond the receiver on rider's bikes? The standard transmitters for most heart rate monitors have a range of about 2 meters (6 feet).

The other day Lennard Zinn of VeloNews answered this question for both SRM Training Systems and Polar Electro. Zinn was asked what Jens Voigt carried in his seat bag during Stage 9, and he responded:

That is the transmitter that sends telemetric data live from Voigt's SRM. And yes, some of the other Tour riders are doing the same thing. Voigt, Matthias Kessler (T-Mobile), Gerrit Glomser (Lampre) and Sebastian Lang (Gerolsteiner) all have been wired for live SRM data on various stages.

Zinn says that data from SRM power meters is being shown on the ARD television network in Germany and the T-Mobile Team website.

He goes on to say that the Polar auxiliary transmitter is smaller than those being used by SRM. Polar's transmitters relay their data for use on OLN.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polar Electro has gotten a lot of airtime in the first week of the Tour de France by providing live data from their heart rate monitors in use by many riders. Data from their heart rate monitors appears in rider identification graphics, with the rider's current heart rate, maximum heart rate, and current speed and elevation above sea level.

I've used three different Polar HRMs myself over the past year:

• Polar S710 bike computer: my old reliable bike computer that I've used for most of my training since 2001. I use it to track my heart rate, bike speed, and pedaling cadence. The S710 is still pretty close to the state-of-the-art; it produces all of the data that Polar is providing to OLN.
• Polar S625x speed and distance computer: this is my favorite HRM at the moment. It's a computer that's most appropriate for running, although it can also use the speed and cadence sensor that I already use with my S710. I used the Polar S625x at The Chicago Showcase hockey tournament to measure my performance while officiating nine games.

• Polar AXN 500 outdoor computer: This is an interesting new exercise computer that's aimed at adventure racing participants. Of the three Polar HRMs I've used recently, it's the most stylish. I wore the AXN 500 daily for several weeks and still think it's as nice looking as my Tag Heuer diving watch that I bought back in the early 1990s.

  The feature set of the Polar AXN series is a bit different from the S series. The AXN series emphasizes the altimeter and thermometer instead of bike speed, running speed, cadence, or power. The AXN series also displays its data in trend graphs on the face of the watch.

  Austin Murphy from Sports Illustrated, an amateur adventure racer himself, told me he's got an AXN 300. This is the least expensive version of this watch, which also comes in an AXN 700 version. I think any of the three AXN series will be quite a lot of fun to wear and use over the long term.
  

All of these watches but the AXN 300 are compatible with Polar Precision Performance Software, a powerful training diary that I've used for a long time. I discuss the value of Polar Precision Performance Software in the article Why Training Log Software is One of The Most Important Features of a Fitness Gadget.

One thing I'm wondering when I watch the Tour de France on OLN is how the heart rate monitor data is transmitted beyond the receiver on the rider's bike. My Polar heart rate transmitter straps only transmit about 2 meters (6 feet)-- far enough for the data to be picked up by the wrist unit which is normally mounted on my bike's handlebars. I'll see if I can find out how the heart rate monitors used during the Tour are configured by talking to my contacts at Polar USA.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't been doing as much reading as I normally do during the run up to the Tour de France. Most of you who read Operation Gadget regularly know that we moved last week and we're still unpacking.

In spite of my preoccupation, I saw the news about Lance Armstrong's training crash on his time trial bike. Velonews reported that Armstrong, "lost control on his time-trial bike and sailed over the handlebars, his helmet splitting in two on impact." Most people who wrote about the crash focused on the black eye and road rash that Lance supposedly got as a result of the accident.

The thing I want to focus on is the UCI's improved time trial helmet standards which went into effect at last year's Tour de France. Lennard Zinn of Velonews discussed the new standard in an article during last year's Tour, calling the time trial helmets used prior to 2004 "little more than thin plastic fairings with straps."

Armstrong probably would have been much more seriously injured in this crash if he had been wearing an old style time trial helmet. An injury that caused him problems at the beginning of the Tour would have disappointed his American fans and undermined the plans of his major sponsors. I can't even imagine what would have taken place if this "silly crash" had resulted in a head injury serious enough to cause Lance to abandon his last Tour title defense.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fred Rodriguez's Bike photographed
after the Wachovia Cycling Series- Lancaster
Race.
See more in the 2005 Wachovia Cycling Series
Photo Gallery.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

While everyone else at the Wachovia Cycling Series- Lancaster race was asking questions about race tactics, I was taking photos of Davitamon-Lotto rider Fred Rodriguez's bike. It's not every day that I get to look at:

• a Ridley Damocles "Fast Freddie" Frame and Fork,
• a Cateye Micro Wireless computer,
• Campagnolo Bora carbon wheels,
• a Campagnolo Record gruppo, and
• Crank Brothers Quattro Pedals

...for as long as I want.

It would be a big loss for the cycling world if Fred didn't defend his U.S. Pro Championship this weekend in Philadelphia: this bike really sweet bike would become an endangered species.

This is one bike I would consider riding as an alternative to a Trek Madone if price (and talent) was no object. How could you say no to the Stars-and-Stripes? This is a bike that Mario Cipollini could love.

There are 19 big photos of his bike. I identified everything I could. The rest is up to you.

Technorati Tags: Wachovia Cycling Series

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An Altitrainer appears to be
a training device used in conjunction
with a stationary bike or treadmill.
Is this the device that was seized
by Italian police?
[ Photo: SMTEC, S.A. ].

Robbie McEwen of Davitamon-Lotto edged Fassa Bortolo rider Alessandro Petacchi in the Stage 10 finishing sprint into Rossato Veneto. Petacchi was set up perfectly for the sprint, but later said that he misjudged the sprint and started sprinting too early.

The big story of the last stage before the Dolomites, however, was the police investigation that took place Wednesday, where Italian national police reportedly sought and confiscated a device called an Altitrainer. Early Italian wire reports and the stage summary on Velonews indicate that it's a tent that simulates the composition of air at high altitude, although the information I found on the Internet leads me to believe an Altitrainer is better described as a training device used in conjunction with a stationary bike or a treadmill. Devices like an Altitrainer apparently are not considered illegal by either the International Cycling Union (UCI) or the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), but they are illegal in Italy.

The UCI issued a press release that questions the efficacy of the raid, beyond illustrating the difference between Italian law and professional cycling rules.

Although there were a couple of other items seized, the Altitrainer appears to have been the original target of the search. As such, this is the first time in my memory that a police investigation has been launched at a professional cycling race over what could be called a fitness gadget.

I'm aware of the fact that the Altitrainer that I'm showing in this article is not a hypobaric tent, and this conflicts with several accounts of the investigation. I suspect that the Altitrainer in question is not a tent because I doubt that there would be two different altitude training devices called "Altitrainer", and there is a fair amount of information (both on the Swiss manufacturer's website and in sports medicine journals) about the Altitrainer product shown in the photo.

I suspect that the confusion over the true nature of an Altitrainer stems from the fact that the Italian police have described but have not shown the Altitrainer to the media covering the Giro. Perhaps the reporter who first heard about the Altitrainer and its hypobaric properties assumed it was a tent and several subsequent reports repeated that information as if it were a fact.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

SV iP4G Waterproof Case and Headset
provides a way to use your
4th Generation iPod in the pool.
[ Photo: H2O Audio ].

Moments after I wrote the SwiMP3 Underwater MP3 Player article, I leaned that a company called H2O Audio started shipping the SV iP4G waterproof case and headset for the fourth-generation iPod. This announcement just happened yesterday, so I don't feel out of touch with the market.

The price of the case and headset package is $150. You still have to come up with a way to attach the iPod inside the SV-iP4G case to your body, but that could be done in a number of ways.

The SV iP4G looks like a lot better solution for protecting an iPod than any homemade solution that you could develop using off-the-shelf waterproof components. It's obvious from looking at the design of the case that it's made to fit the 4th Generation iPod perfectly and that other models of audio player would require a different design. As you can imagine, H2O Audio also has waterproof packages for:

• The iRiver iFP-700 series MP3 players, called the SV i700,
• The iPod mini 4-Gigabyte and 6-Gigabyte players, called the SV iMini, and
• The 3rd Generation iPod, called the SV iP3G.

I still think that the SwiMP3 player is an optimized solution for lap swimming, but I believe that the SV series of waterproof cases from H2O Audio can keep your iPod or iRiver music players dry while you use them in the pool. [ via Gizmodo and Mac News Network ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SwiMP3 Underwater MP3 Player may be just the
thing you need for training for your next Half Ironman.
[ Photo: Finis ].

One of the more unusual fitness gadgets I've stumbled on recently is the SwiMP3 Underwater MP3 Player from Finis. This is an MP3 player meant to be worn on the back of your head and used while swimming. I could see using this during lap swimming or while training for a triathlon.

The unit has 128 megabytes of memory. The manufacturer estimates that it can store 30 songs and can be used continuously for about four hours. It's priced at about $250 and includes goggles (although you can substitute your own), a carrying case, and a USB cable.

I tried to think of a way to do this that involved an Aquapac waterproof electronics case, a regular portable audio player such as an iPod, and a set of waterproof headphones, but I couldn't find a combination that I could recommend in good faith for swim training. There are a couple of other solutions including the Oregon Scientific MP120 512 MB Waterproof MP3 Player and the SV waterproof case series from H2O Audio, but these struck me as either less reliable solutions or ones that aren't truly adapted to the task of lap swimming.

I'm pretty committed to the duathlon until I have the time to take swimming lessons, otherwise I'd try to get a SwiMP3 for review. It looks like a really interesting product, and I'd love to know if any readers Operation Gadget readers have used one.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A fellow fitness gadget fan pointed me to an interview that Scott Daubert of Trek did with Will Swetnam of ThePaceline.com. They discussed the new frameset modifications that were used by the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team for the first time at Paris-Roubaix, new aero bars that will debut at the Dauphine Libere, and recent design process improvements that have been made possible through Trek's collaboration with AMD.

This is a very good interview and it helps me understand how long the Discovery Channel Team can wait before deciding whether to incorporate newly-developed bike technology at the Tour de France. It surprises me that they are still trying out gear at races like the Dauphine, but it's better to do that than to ride an untested configuration in the Tour, as David Millar did in the 2003 Tour de France Prologue. [ Registration required to view articles on ThePaceline.com. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the coverage of Stage 1 of the Giro d'Italia on the Outdoor Life Network earlier today, the video feed from Italian broadcaster RAI showed Liquigas-Bianchi rider Marco Milesi nearing the top of a Category 3 climb which counted toward the King of the Mountains prize. While the camera was on Milesi, RAI put up a graphic that said the following:

190 92% 175 157 Marco Milesi

Sorry I don't have a video capture card so I can show the video frame that I'm talking about.

The Outdoor Life Network commentators had the following dialog:

Paul Sherwin: ... {Here is} Marco Milesi. Bob, just explain that graphic to me.

Bob Roll: {laughs}

Phil Liggett: I can't wait Bob. What does it mean?

Bob Roll: We have been trying to work out exactly what that means and... uh... we think that 92 percent of the field of the group where he's in {sic} is behind his rear wheel based on the GPS marker which has a transponder on the chainstay of the bicycle down by the rear wheel. And, we think it's a marker in his relation to the riders in front of him and the riders behind.

Phil Liggett: Well, that's the most useless piece of information that I think we'd ever require on a stage of the Tour of Italy.

When a similar graphic was displayed later in the broadcast, the OLN team requested that viewers write in if they knew what the graphic meant. The graphic shown on the screen was providing the following information, from left to right:

• Rider's maximum heart rate
• Percentage of rider's maximum heart rate
• Rider's current heart rate
• Rider's race number
• Rider's name

I guess I spend too much time looking at data from my Polar S625x Heart Rate Monitor to miss the relationship between 190, 92 percent, and 175. A ballpark estimate of a person's maximum heart rate is 220 minus age in years. Marco Milesi is actually 34 or 35 (born in 1970), so he has a slightly higher than typical maximum heart rate. My maximum heart rate is higher than typical for my age also. At the Chicago Showcase Hockey Tournament, my highest recorded heart rate was 187 beats per minute, while my maximum heart rate ought to be 182 by the formula.

I don't know how the heart rate monitor telemetry is being transmitted from the rider to the broadcaster. A heart rate transmitter like the Polar WearLink Coded Transmitter is only capable of transmitting to a receiver about three feet (one meter) from itself. Are they using a special transmitter, or some sort of repeater on the bicycle?

This style of graphic was used occasionally during the Prologue as well. I meant to mention that I saw it in my Prologue summary article, but I forgot.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I ran in the 13th Annual Joe Vastano Memorial 5k in Hamilton, NJ tonight and finished in 26 minutes 43.3 seconds. Not bad considering that I've run twice since January.

If you read Operation Gadget regularly, you know that I do four to six hours of aerobic exercise per week. At this time of year it's mainly cycling.

This race was a small 5 kilometer (3.1 mile) race organized by a suburban Roman Catholic Church that benefits the church pre-school. I'd been thinking about running in it for about a month, but I only decided to do it this afternoon. Conditions were good in that the sky was overcast with an occasional sprinkle of rain. The temperature was about 49 degrees Fahrenheit at the 7:00pm start. I'd call that unseasonably cool.

My splits were as follows:

• 1 mile: 8:12 (measured at 0.959 miles by Polar S625x)
• 2 miles: 16:36 (measured at 1.951 miles)
• 3.1 miles: 26:43.3 (measured at 3.09 miles)

I ran in today's race with the Polar S625x Running Computer that I've been evaluating. The distance measured was quite accurate, perhaps 0.3 percent off (3.090 miles measured, 3.1 actual). Marshalls were offering split times at the 1 and 2-mile marks, however the measurements to those points appear to have been slightly short in both cases. I hit the "Lap" button on the watch when I was even with each race marshall.

I found the Polar S625x very helpful during a race. I don't have to guess where I am on the course, the size of the watch/wrist unit is better than other running computers I've used like the Garmin Forerunner 201, and I didn't notice the foot pod attached to the laces of my right shoe.

This race was a good test for me. It means that I'm doing well in my transition from hockey officiating back to off-season training. Although I couldn't maintain the pace I was running in the last mile of the race, I probably wouldn't embarass myself if I entered a duathlon in the next few weeks.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I probably went overboard in my criticism of Engadget in my earlier article called Engadget Repeatedly Disses Athletes. My wife Kathleen pointed out that Operation Gadget normally has a positive tone even when I disagree with something said on another website. I agree that my comments were uncharacteristic of the rest of this site.

I'd like to recommend a report about the Nokia 5140i mobile phone announcement published by MobileBurn.com. This article emphasizes the features of the 5140i that might appeal to fitness gadget fans. Here's an excerpt:

Nokia recently announced the latest in their 'rugged' range of handsets, the 5140i. Targeted at fitness fanatics, athletes, and outdoorsy types, the 5140i includes much of the same features seen in the original 5140, including Push To Talk (PTT) and EDGE data. The 5140i now packs a 65k colour screen, though - a real improvement over the 4096 colour display in the 5140. The new model is also slightly bulkier all around....

The 5140i also features Fitness Coach, an interesting personal trainer program (originally seen in the 5140) that helps with general training by creating, tracking, and customizing fitness plans. Data from Fitness Coach can now be transferred to compatible wrist computers and heart monitors (produced by Polar Electro) as well as be sent to other mobiles via SMS.

If Engadget had reported on the Nokia 5140i announcement the way MobileBurn did, I would have linked to Engadget and praised them for pointing out the key differentiators between this handset and others already on the market.

You have to admit that the 5140i and its predecessor are unique products. I believe that U.S. mobile phone carriers will not be quick to carry either of these models in local stores, but they'll never even consider stocking them unless there is some grassroots demand. A good feature summary from a big site like Engadget could help to build that demand.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I keep telling friends and Operation Gadget readers that you shouldn't look at the major gadget sites like Engadget for credible discussion of fitness gadgets and sports technology. The editors of that site have adopted a sneering point of view toward the stuff that we're interested in.

There's no better example of this attitude than the article Nokia intros 5140i fitness phone. For illustrative purposes, I'll quote from it and place emphasis where I think the tone is most negative:

All right, fitness geeks, Nokia's got sumthin' for you. The 5140i is a tri-band handset designed for "active-minded consumers" (as opposed to the rest of us sluggishly-minded folk) that offers dust and splash resistance and "durability," which is apparently not a feature found in other phones. The deal with this mobile is it pairs up with special fitness-related software on Polar wrist computers (yeah, that means they're watches) to download training data to your phone after a workout. The software keeps track of stats you fitness-types need to know, like heartrate and other various sundries (we wouldn't have any idea-- they never let us out of Engadget HQ)....

I won't get personal with the author of this piece because I'm pretty sure that the tone is an affectation that they've decided impresses some segment of their audience. What hipster sub-demographic likes this attitude?

You know, this reminds me of life in my high school. There was a large group of people back then who wanted to be good at the sports they participated in, they just wanted others to think that they did it effortlessly. When they thought nobody was looking they practiced as hard or harder than the serious athletes, but if you pointed this out they'd say, "Nah, I'm just out here to have fun," and they'd slow down to a jog.

Most of us young suburbanites grew out of such tendencies years ago. Isn't it time for Engadget to grow up too?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Heart Rate Chart from Training Log: Here is the heart
rate chart for game CSH5, Florida vs. Team Soutwest.
Click on the chart to see a larger view.
[ Image: Polar Precision Performance Software ]

See more Chicago Showcase exercise data in the
Operation Gadget Photo Gallery.

Two weeks ago I was in Chicago at the Chicago Showcase Hockey Tournament where I officiated nine hockey games in five days. I wore a Polar S625x during each game. The S625x measured my heart rate and calculated the estimated number of calories burned. When I got home from the tournament, I uploaded the exercise data to my computer, and found that I had burned 15,645 calories in 16 hours and 31 minutes of intense exercise. As I said in the article where I guessed at the effort that Tom Danielson expended at the Tour de Georgia, 15,645 calories is the most calories burned I've recorded in any one week in the three years I've been journaling my exercise with Polar Precision Performance Software.

I decided to publish all nine of the charts from the games I worked at the Chicago Showcase because I thought that a number of my fellow officials at the event and regular readers of Operation Gadget would find them interesting.

These charts represent the most basic data you can collect with a Polar S-Series heart rate monitor. The S625x collects heart rate and derives calories burned based on data previously obtained from the Polar Fitness Test. I've turned off the curves that would normally appear for elevation, speed (on the bike or on foot), and cycling cadence. None of these data points are relevant to indoor ice skating.

In order to be able to officiate at high level hockey events like the Chicago Showcase, I need to stay on a fairly intense training program and watch my diet. I think that these heart rate data charts clearly illustrate this. I would have had a great deal of difficulty finishing strongly in the games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday if I hadn't arrived in Chicago in very good physical condition.

I hope the heart rate data charts also illustrate how useful Polar Precision Software is to an athlete who is involved in a serious training program. Runners, cyclists, and multi-sport athletes will get even more out of using a Polar S-Series monitor with Polar Precision Software than I do as a hockey official.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I picked up my bike from the bike shop after its annual tune up and I hit the road for the first time. I get my bike serviced at Knapp's Cyclery in Lawrenceville, NJ, one of the best bike shops in the area. I started using them about four years ago, after my wife and I moved to Central Jersey.

My bike needed the following parts at this tune up:

• A front derailer, and
• a rear brake cable.

I told the mechanics that my front derailer needed replacement, it was badly corroded. I didn't tell them about the rear brake cable (which had been an issue late last Summer and during the Fall), but they found the problem in their review of the bike anyway. I take this to mean that the tune up included a serious review of the major systems on my late model mountain bike.

I only rode about 10 kilometers today (6.2 miles) because I was pressed for time, but it was good to get back out on the road for a bit of a workout. I am going to need to do some serious miles over the next few weeks so I can stay as close to mid-season form for hockey officiating as possible. I will be working some high level games in April. More on this in a few days.

My advice to those of you who are blowing the dust off a bike after not riding during the winter months is: spend a few dollars and a few days having your bike tuned up for the season. Unless you are a competent bike mechanic yourself, now is an excellent time to get your machine the once-over. I'd rather do it now than rush out on the first nice day and have a mechanical problem.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gizmodo reports that Siemens demonstrated an application called Runster that varies the tempo of music played on a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone based on how quickly the user moves. The idea is to allow the user to listen to songs that are appropriate to the intensity of his or her exercise. The application was demonstrated on a prototype Siemens SX2 mobile phone at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany.

I've created playlists for my wife's iPod to correspond with running and cycling workouts that I do in the hockey offseason. These playlists have different tempos that I think are appropriate for the pace of my exercise. I think I will be using applications like Runster in the future during training and I hope that a feature like this comes out for the iPod platform some day.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Inside Ride Super Trainer: a $40,000
custom-built bicycle treadmill
for when you can't make it to Alpe d'Huez.
[ Photo: BCI Manufacturing ]

Earlier today Gizmodo pointed out a Super Trainer bicycle treadmill that one of their readers claimed was "twelve feet long, three feet wide, and something like twenty-five hundred pounds".

Sometimes I wonder why folks submit stories like that to sites that don't get fitness gadgets.

I did a little research and found that the Inside Ride Super Trainer has 80 precision aluminum rollers that can handle a rider travelling at 30 miles per hour. The manufacturer has also built enough computer power into it to have a dynamic speed control mechanism that adjusts the speed of the treadmill to the speed of the cyclist.

Update: I forgot to mention that all of us gadget blogs are late on this story. VeloNews reported on the first Super Trainer when it was installed at the University of Colorado Human Performance Lab. Kudos to VeloNews, they wrote about this back in June 2004.

The neatest part of reading about the Inside Ride Super Trainer was realizing that we could use the programmable slope and course profiles feature to simulate some of the legendary ascents of the UCI Pro Cycling Tour such as Alpe d'Huez.

Regular readers of Operation Gadget probably already know that Kathleen and I visited Alpe d'Huez for Stage 10 of the 2001 Tour de France. According to LanceArmstrong.com, Alpe d'Huez is 14 kilometers long with an average gradient of 8 percent and a maximum of 14 percent. This is well within the limits of the Super Trainer.

I'd love to try riding a bike on a Super Trainer. Maybe they'll get one of them at the Cadence Performance Cycling Center in Philadelphia.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Sutter of Intransix found Operation Gadget and sent the following email to me:

I came across your site Operation Gadget while I was surfing the web. I thought you might be interested in a new GPS cell phone application called WorkoutGPS. WorkoutGPS currently is available for Nextel phones. It uses GPS to track how far, how fast, and for how long the user runs, cycles, and walks. And it automatically uploads this data to a personal training log on the web, complete with maps of where you went and a speed and elevation profile.

Please check out out website www.workoutgps.com to learn about more features.

And, you might find it interesting, one of the riders in the Tour of Hope last year, Ted Yang, took a WorkoutGPS-equipped phone with him on his ride across the country. You can see this at www.workoutgps.com/events/toh2004/toh.aspx.

I featured the fitness aspects of Glofun Raygun, another Location-Based Services application, in my review of that game back at the beginning of February. However, WorkoutGPS is unique because it is the first LBS application I've seen that is exclusively written for fitness purposes.

WorkoutGPS turns a Motorola i710 or i730 into a fitness computer similar in features to the Garmin Forerunner 201. This means that the phones will provide a breadcrumb trail for a workout and record stats like location, elevation, and speed, but will not do things like record heart rate or cycling cadence.

The WorkoutGPS site provides many of the features that good fitness journaling software typically provides. The site is provided for a $5.99 monthly fee per user, which includes application updates, use of the training log, and unlimited workout data upload and storage.

Considering that they have already demonstrated integration betwen their site and Keyhole, it seems like Intransix has pushed the envelope of LBS fitness applications just about as far as currently possible. If you have one of these LBS-phones and you are an athlete, you really should give WorkoutGPS a try.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Stuart Tevendale reports that iSMARTtrain Version 2.0 is now available. This $40.00 program is a fitness training log for the Apple Macintosh platform, with versions coming soon for Windows and Linux. iSMARTtrain interfaces with the Polar S610, S625x, S710, S720, S725, S810, Xtrainer, or Accurex II heart rate monitors. Pre-existing data can be imported from PCCoach, Polar Precision Performance Software, or other training logs that use ".hrm" files.

iSMARTtrain also helps athletes interact with a coach by making it easy to email preformance data from training sessions and races. This would be helpful to athletes who use coaching services like Carmichael Training Systems.

A limited version of iSMARTtrain is available for free. It allows 20 entries to be placed in the log, which sounds like enough to decide whether the program is right for you.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glofun RayGun: a Java-based,
GPS-enabled game coming soon
for the Motorola i710 and i730.
[ Graphic: GloVentures LLC ]

I finally got the opportunity to put a new mobile phone game called Glofun RayGun to the test, and I was pretty surprised at the workout I got. Glofun RayGun is advertised as the first "high-intensity" location game for cell phones. You play it on a J2ME and GPS-enabled phone like the Motorola i710 and i730 for the Nextel network. Nextel is currently the only mobile carrier in the USA with GPS enabled to the handset.

Glofun RayGun is one of the only GPS applications available in the U.S. that is not aimed at business logistics. This country is far behind Japan in this regard. In Japan carriers deployed GPS gear on their infrastructures a while ago and location-based mobile phone services are really hot now.

Pointing the gun: You point
your ray gun by running or
walking in the direction of a
ghost.
[ Graphic: GloVentures LLC ]

The game is played by walking or running around an open space while facing in a direction that will allow you to intercept ghosts that appear on the screen of your mobile phone. You as the player are always in the center of the screen, so the RayGun game screen has a similar appearance to a RADAR screen.

In the the first screen shot, there is a ghost approaching (green blob) that is due north of your present location. You can attack it by running to the north and pressing the "OK" button on your mobile phone once the ghost is inside of your "energy cone" (the yellow pie slice-shaped area on the screen).

The further you move in a single direction (according to the GPS), the bigger your energy cone gets. This allows you to target and kill multiple ghosts at one time, if they are approaching from the same general direction.

In order for the game to recognize your motion, you must move at least 3 meters (10 feet) and keep moving in that same direction in order to remain oriented long enough to fire your ray gun. Ideally you move 10 feet in about one second in order to maximize the number of firing opportunites.

Moving in for the kill: The
ghost is in your sights.
Hit the "OK" button on the phone
to shoot your ray gun.
[ Graphic: GloVentures LLC ]

This is where the physical effort akin to a good workout comes in. Using my Polar S720i Heart Rate Monitor I was able to burn about 800 kilo calories per hour playing the game. That's pretty close to the effort per hour I'd expend biking, officiating a youth hockey game of moderate intensity, or in-line skating.

The surprising part of playing Glofun RayGun for me was that I realized this is a good cross-training activity. There's only so much running, biking, and in-line skating that I can do during the ice hockey off-season without getting a bit bored of the routine. A game like Glofun RayGun would be a fun alternative. It's also a bit of a different type of movement from those other training activities, which I think helps improve fitness and strength by emphasizing different muscle groups.

The biggest drawback I saw to the game was how much space is needed for a trained athlete to play it. In order to test out the game I went to Cranbury-Millstone Park in Cranbury, NJ on a Tuesday afternoon when I expected no one to be around. This park is a rectangle of open space about 0.2 miles by 0.1 miles (320 x 160 meters). That's about a 13 acre space-- big enough to contain a large soccer field, a baseball field, and a parking lot for 30 or 40 cars.

I was able to traverse most of this park's length and width several times during half an hour of play. Maybe other people who don't run as hard while playing a game like Glofun RayGun would not cover as much ground, but I had to stop running a few times in order to avoid crossing busy Old Trenton Road while looking at the display on my Motorola i710 mobile phone.

I think Glofun RayGun is an impressive first effort at Location Based Services gaming in the United States. If I owned a GPS-enabled phone, I'd keep a copy of this game and play it regularly. It's definitely good cross-training for athletes looking for a change of pace that helps maintain a high level of cardiovascular fitness.

I've collected a number of photos, as well screenshots from the game and from my Polar Precision Performance training diary in a Playing Glofun RayGun photo album. I hope they help you to get a feel for what it's like to play this fun and interesting new game.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been testing the Polar S625X Running Computer that includes a heart rate monitior and a Polar S1 Foot Pod that measures the speed and distance that you run. In my first test, I ran 5 kilometers as measured by my Garmin Forerunner 201, an GPS-based outdoor exercise computer that's also useful for running.

At the end of the run, the distance displayed by the Forerunner 201 was 3.16 miles while the Polar S625X showed 3.57 miles [ see the photo ]. I've run and cycled enough with the Forerunner 201 to know that I'm satisfied with the accuracy of the distances it measures, so I decided to calibrate the Polar S625X using the "manual calibration" method discussed in the Polar S625X user manual on page B38.

The manual calibration method is probably the best way to calibrate the Polar S625X in the middle of the winter, since the "calibration by running method" requires you to run a measured course of at least a quarter of a mile (about 400 meters) and many outdoor tracks in this part of the United States are buried under a foot or more of snow this week.

All I needed to do to perform a manual calibration was enter the ratio between the "actual" distance run and the distance measured by the Polar S625X. That ratio is 3160 / 3570 x 1000 or 885. I entered "885" on the Polar S625X display in the field for the calibration factor.

In my next test, I will probably repeat the 5 kilometer run with both the Polar S625X and the Garmin Forerunner 201 to see if the calibrated S625X measures the distance run almost exactly as the Forerunner 201 does.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was the first day in about a week in Central New Jersey where we had clear skies and temperatures above 30 degrees Fahrenheit. I thought it was a good day to unpack, setup, and try out the Polar S625X Running Computer that my friends at Polar USA sent me.

Polar S625X Running Computer
and all the extras that you get with it.
Take a look at the other photos of the
Polar S625X in the Operation Gadget
Photo Gallery. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

I decided that I would that a good test would be to run 5 kilometers or 3.1 miles with the Polar S625X collecting data. I brought along a Garmin Forerunner 201 to independently record the run distance. After I was done, I planned to compare the distance measured by the uncalibrated Polar S625X with the Garmin Forerunner's GPS-measured distance. I'd use that information to manually calibrate the S625X.

I took a bunch of pictures of the Polar S625X, including the traditional box unpacking shots. I went beyond those shots, however, by fully disassembling the Polar S1 Foot Pod which measures the speed and distance run and sends that data wirelessly to the S625X watch and receiver.

I'm going to take a few more runs with the S625X in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, check out the Polar S625X Photo Album and let me know what you think of the photos I've taken so far.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Engadget just posted their review of the Oakley Thump, eyewear with a built-in MP3 player. Operation Gadget first mentioned the Oakley Thump during the 2004 Tour de France when the prototype was shown to Lance Armstrong. They are an interesting product that might appeal to some hardcore bikers, runners, and multisport people in our audience.

It seems to me that these sunglasses are aimed at people who would wear Oakleys or similar brands (i.e. athletes), which makes you wonder why the Oakley PR folks sent them to Engadget (mainly trendy city-types) in the first place. Maybe Oakley thought the co-marketing deal with rapper Lil Jon would provide more street cred with the NYC gadget people than it actually did.

Here's a key quote from the Engadget review:

We’ll just come out and say it: we really didn’t like wearing these in public. We’d criticize Oakley for the Thump’s styling (or lack thereof), but to be honest we haven’t really liked any of Oakley’s sunglasses since were 11, so we’ll concede that the styling thing is a matter of personal preference. We have no doubt there are plenty of people out there who like the looks of the Thump—Lil Jon seems to be enjoying his—so we’re not exactly the final arbiter on these things. You can argue all you want about the importance of aesthetics when it comes to MP3 players, but sunglasses are first and foremost fashion accessories, which means no matter how awesomely amazing the sound quality or massive the storage capacity, the design matters a lot. We wouldn’t wear these if we were regular sunglasses, so glomming an MP3 player on there isn’t going to make much of a difference.

I beg to differ with Peter Rojas on this. If you are an athlete and an Oakley fan, have a playlist for each different workout, find the Oakley Thump frames comfortable, and like one of the limited set of lens options, the Thump may be right for you.

I could argue that the Thump makes even more sense now that Apple has released the iPod Shuffle. I went out on a limb two weeks ago, suggesting that the iPod Shuffle would be a hit with athletes. If that turns out to be the case, the Thump will probably sell reasonably well to athletes also.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I talked to my brother, Scott Aiello, today who told me he put his name on the list for one of the $99 iPod Shuffles at the local Best Buy near his house. He later learned that the store has no idea when he will receive his iPod Shuffle, so he'll probably order it from Amazon.com or The Apple Store instead.

I asked him why he wants the smaller iPod Shuffle and not the $149 1-Gigabyte model? He said that he thought 120 songs was enough for him, especially when he's working out.

This reinforced my original thought about the iPod Shuffle: it's going to be hot with athletes for use in training and during warmups for events. Now that the iPod product line has flash-memory based units, you are going to see even more of them in use before professional, high school, and college sports events.

Back in July, I wrote about using an iPod while cycling and pointed out that Lance Armstrong was seen listening to his iPod while on training rides in the television mini-series The Lance Chronicles. I have to say that the iPod Shuffle is probably a more appropriate player for cycling than an iPod or an iPod mini, chiefly because it would be much less likely to be damaged if it happened to be dropped on the road.

I have a playlist of rock music from the 80s and 90s that I listen to when I exercise. It currently has 99 songs and runs for 6 hours and 48 minutes, end-to-end. This playlist fits on either model of the iPod Shuffle, and I'd be happy to have an iPod Shuffle to play it. Seven to eight hours of music should be enough for even Lance Armstrong's most intense training rides.

If you go to a National Football League game, you will see a lot of players using iPods during the warmup period that takes place an hour or so before kickoff. I'm sure iPods play a role in batting practice at Major League Baseball games as well. iPods and iPod minis are probably harder to keep attached to you in these cases than the iPod Shuffle would be.

There's another scenario where I see iPod Shuffles being used-- in warmups for figure skating short and long programs. If you've ever been to one of these events and seen the warmup, a group of figure skaters enters the ice for a short period of time and simultaneously run through parts of their programs. Most of the time, the skaters have to practice by counting the beats to their music in their head. Now skaters can carry their music with them, listen to clips from it while warming up, and not have bulky or heavy devices attached to themselves.

I'm sure we will see more athletes try to use music players before events now that the iPod Shuffle has reached the market than ever before. If you can think of more places where athletes might use a music players now where they haven't before, let me know.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peet Shoe Dryer: The
shoe dryer did the job
on my skates.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

The Peet Shoe Dryer did quite a good job on my ice skates the other day. The boots of the skates were dried gently and suffered no damage. The dryer worked in complete silence, so it could be placed in a lot of different locations in our house.

The instructions that came with the Peet Shoe Dryer warned that the dryer should not be placed near a second heat source, like a heating register. They also say that you should keep the vents at the rear bottom of the unit free of blockages. I think it's reasonable to add that the shoe dryer should be placed on a hard floor (basement, kitchen, foyer, etc.), not on a carpeted surface, but that's my conclusion based on seeing it work in person.

I can see a lot of uses for the Peet Shoe Dryer coming up in the next couple of months. It's only a matter of time before Kathleen or I come into the house with soaking wet shoes. Any of situation like that will be a prime opportunity to use the shoe dryer. You can see lots more photos of the shoe dryer in action in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I only mentioned this in passing before Christmas, but I lost my Polar T-31 heart rate monitor transmitter. I wore it during a hockey game that I officiated back on October 14 and I haven't seen it since. I keep hoping that it will turn up in the pile of debris next to my desk in the Home Office, but it's probably gone.

Heart rate monitors are useless if you don't wear them or you can't collect data because your transmitter strap is missing or broken. I procrastinated for weeks, then a few words in Joel McNamara's Polar AXN Series Review got me focused again:

The AXN 700 comes with the WearLink chest strap, which in my opinion is one of the biggest breakthroughs in HRM technology in a long time. Unlike the common hard plastic electrode HRM chest straps, the WearLink has the electrodes woven into soft fabric. The WearLink is more comfortable, fits better, and offers better conductivity since moisture doesn't dry out as quickly as on a typical plastic electrode strap (key features during dry, cold days or if you don't sweat very much). The other killer feature is you can replace the battery by yourself. (Other Polar straps are sealed and you need to purchase a new transmitter when the battery finally gives up.) You can buy WearLink straps separately, which I'd recommend once the battery goes bye-bye on your T-31 strap

[ Note: The emphasis in the quoted passage is mine. I realize I repeated that quote in different articles, but it's part of this story too. ]

I just ordered my new Polar WearLink and I'm hoping to receive it early next week. I've got three hockey games on next week's calendar already, so I should be able to test the Polar WearLink out quickly once I get it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today an Operation Gadget reader named Matt posted a comment on a fitness gadget-related article:

I was doing some research on the accuracy of the triax elite foot pod, and the technology that Nike uses is from a company called Dynastream Innovations. They have some really good information about how it calculates speed and distance (the white paper found there looks promising).

Further review of the Dynastream site reveals that its technology is behind:

• Nike Triax Elite HRM/SDM,
• Nike Triax CV10,
• Nike Triax V10,
• Nike sdm[tailwind], and
• Polar S-625X.

It was pretty clear to me when I looked at these products that they were using the same or very similar technology for their respective foot pods. It's great that Matt found this info and passed it on to us.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peet Shoe Dryer: My
first opportunity to dry
my skates using
the Christmas gift from my wife.
See more photos in the photo
gallery. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

I talked about the Peet Shoe Dryer back in mid-December. In that article, I urged my wife to get me one as a gift for this Christmas. She took the hint.

Tonight was the first hockey game that I officiated since Christmas (a New Jersey interscholastic game in Sewell, NJ). The inside of the boots of my skates were still damp when I got home from the rink and unpacked my bag. Rather than let them air dry, I assembled the Peet Shoe Dryer and took some photos of the shoe dryer in action.

The Shoe Dryer works by convection, thanks to heating elements in each of the two tubes that project vertically above the base. The manufacturer warned that the tops of boots should not touch the base when the boots are mounted on top of the footpieces. As you can see in the photo, the extensions on top of the base provide plenty of clearance.

There are lots more photos of the shoe dryer in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery. I will report on the condition of the skates after they sit on the Peet Shoe Dryer overnight.

In case you are wondering, I set up the shoe dryer in my kitchen in order to have a convenient place to photograph the dryer in action. I don't anticipate drying my skates on my kitchen counter again, but YMMV.

If you want your own, you can buy a Peet Shoe Dryer at Amazon.com and other fine retailers.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polar AXN 300:
One of the AXN-series Heart Rate
Monitors reviewed by Joel McNamara.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]

Joel McNamara wrote in yesterday to point out an excellent review of Polar AXN-series heart rate montors that he wrote. The review includes a number of photos of the three AXN watches (numbered 300, 500, and 700), feature comparisons, and an explanation of the differences between the Polar WearLink and T-31 chest straps.

Joel is the author of several books related to GPS devices and computer espionage, including Geocaching for Dummies, GPS for Dummies, and Secrets of Computer Espionage: Tactics & Countermeasures. He's working on a book about heart rate monitors.

I'm particularly interested in his thoughts on the Polar WearLink. He says:

The AXN 700 comes with the WearLink chest strap, which in my opinion is one of the biggest breakthroughs in HRM technology in a long time. Unlike the common hard plastic electrode HRM chest straps, the WearLink has the electrodes woven into soft fabric. The WearLink is more comfortable, fits better, and offers better conductivity since moisture doesn't dry out as quickly as on a typical plastic electrode strap (key features during dry, cold days or if you don't sweat very much). The other killer feature is you can replace the battery by yourself.

I'm in the market for a new chest strap since I apparently lost my T-31 at a recent hockey game that I officiated.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glofun RayGun: a Java-based,
GPS-enabled game coming soon
for the Nextel i710 and i730.
[ Graphic: GloVentures LLC ]

GloVentures sent me a Nextel i710 mobile phone with a Java-based, GPS-enabled game called Glofun RayGun installed on it. Glofun Raygun is expected to be available early in 2005, initially for Nextel i710 and i730 handsets.

This game allows you to track ghosts that are coming at you from all directions and "ionize" them before they ionize you. Running in the direction of the ghosts increases the range of your weapon. In the case of a GPS-enabled game like this "running" really means running. It looks like this game is best played at a park or in a backyard.

I'm hoping that Glofun Raygun is a good change-of-pace way to get some exercise outdoors. I plan to review it on that basis, in addition to how much fun it is to play.

I have to find a couple of good weather days when I don't have hockey games to officiate to put Glofun Raygun through its paces. The i710 arrived yesterday when the high temperature was about 12 degrees Fahrenheit. That wasn't a good day to try out the game. Maybe later in the week will be better, when the temperature is expected to moderate to the 40s and 50s.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peet Shoe Dryer: Makes
it easier to put those boots
or skates back on your feet
by drying them faster than
they'd dry by themselves.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]

Some of you know that I officiate high school and college ice hockey in my spare time, when I'm not writing for Operation Gadget or maintaining a website for one of my consulting clients. December, January, and February are the peak period for hockey-- there are games going on seven days a week.

One of the problems I run into on weekends is that the insides of the boots of my skates often don't dry between games. This is not a problem if I don't take the skates off, but if I do, it's hard to get the skates back on my feet. Sometimes when I put them on and I haven't adjusted them carefully, I get blisters on my heels.

The solution for this is to use a device like the Peet Shoe Dryer. These shoe dryers use convection to remove sweat and other moisture from the inside of the shoes, boots, or skates that you put on the end of the feet that extend above the base. The base takes air in and heats it. The warm air rises into the shoes and dries them faster than they would dry by themselves.

I first saw a shoe dryer in use in an NHL team's locker room about 10 years ago. At the time I thought this was a neat idea, but I didn't think to ask whether you could buy an appliance like this or whether it was homemade.

When I was in college, my team's equipment manager would just turn the heat up in the locker room overnight to 90 or 100 degrees Fahrenheit to dry out the equipment. This worked, but it isn't an option for me at my house since I pay the utility bill.

I saw a Peet Shoe Dryer in a catalog today, ripped out the page, turned to my wife and said, "I need one of these." She reads Operation Gadget, so this will serve as a bit of a reminder to her.

At $30 to $40, a shoe dryer makes an inexpensive gift for someone who plays hockey, snomobiles, works outside, or has kids who play in the snow. I should have gotten one years ago.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few companies have tried to make clothing and accessories gadget-friendly. The results have been mixed, particularly when the item actually includes electronics. Butron is trying its hand with the Headphone Beanie, a winter hat with embeded headphones.

The Gadgeteer published a surprisingly favorable review of the Headphone Beanie, saying:

Sound through the Burton Headphone Beanie is surprisingly awesome! There is a definite difference between the sound you get from earbuds and in-ear headsets versus an around-ear headset or actual speakers sitting on top of your ears. Volume levels would be excellent in any type of noisy environment and the slim line of the speakers would keep the wearer from looking like they were walking around with an obvious head-set on.

I think that this beanie might be a good accessory for use at a ski area. The wearer would probably be able to hear voices and sounds in the immediate vicinity better than if he or she were wearing in-ear headphones. Someone should try to come up with a design similar to this for biking helmets. [ via Engadget ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dan Washburn of ShanghaiDiaries.com visited 18 Chinese provinces on a single trip recently. Now he's reported on how each of his electronic gadgets fared during the trip. Included in his report are evaluations of the:

• 40-Gigabyte iPod from Apple,
• Media Reader for iPod from Belkin,
• Backup Battery Pack for iPod from Belkin,
• iTalk iPod Voice Recorder from Griffin Technology,
• iPAQ h2215 Pocket PC from Hewlett-Packard,
• PM828C Compact Flash GPRS Mobile Internet Card from Panda,
• Foldable keyboard for iPAQ from HP,
• eTrex from Garmin,
• PowerShot S30 from Canon, and
• PowerShot A80 from Canon.

I particularly liked what Dan had to say about the PowerShot A80:

... this little camera saved my ass, and it does everything my PowerShot S30 did … and more.

With the S30, I was often forced to take more vertical shots than I would like to due to the way the camera focuses. The A80 fixed that issue, by adding focus hot spots throughout the field of view. The S30 only had three hot spots, left to right across a horizontal shot. The A80 has nine hot spots, located everywhere. So now, horizontal landscape shots can now have the sky and the land in focus and colored properly. What a concept.

The A80 also boasts a pull-out LCD monitor that swivels, rotates and turns. So the photographer doesn’t necessarily need to be pointed at the same thing the camera is. This is perfect for taking candid shots of people who think you’re busy looking at something else. Finally, the A80 uses four AA-batteries, not the Canon-only rechargables the S30 did. So, if you happen to be in a remote area, unable to access electricty, all you need to do is pack some extra batteries or buy some at a store.

The Powershot A80 is very similar to the Powershot A95 that I discussed yesterday. His findings sort of confirm my suspicions about why you might want an A95 if you were purchasing today, instead of an A75 or A85 (neither of which have the "Variangle" LCD (pull-out LCD monitor that swivels).

Kathleen and I visited Guilin, Yangshuo, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in 1996, and our experience with use of technology was similar to Dan's. If you venture outside of major cities take your ruggedest, most flexible gear, otherwise you may be disappointed. I'm surprised that he tried to bring a Mac-formatted iPod with him. That seems unlikely to be useful, even eight years after my visit to China.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Serotta Ottrott ST: The bike that John
Kerry rode during the early days of his
presidential campaign was reviewed favorably
by PezCyclingNews.com. [ Photo: Serotta ]

PezCyclingNews has published an extensive review of the Serotta Ottrott ST that highlights the differences between it-- a custom-fit bike-- and more "stock" high end bikes like the Trek Madone 5.9. In order to get an Ottrott ST, you have to go to an authorized dealer who must interview you and fit you for the bike. According to the article:

What you get from the extra effort is not simply a slightly adjusted seat angle or head angle, but a true custom frame where every single weld angle and tube length are specified (they also have a variety of tube choices for all sizes). In fact, they use an order spread sheet that has twice the number of data entry points as was the case for the other 3 custom bikes I have had. And it’s hell and gone from shops that think a custom bike is an off the peg frame where you specify parts (and some still don’t fit you!)… Hell, choosing the latest component without fit consideration is the most frequent mistake people make.

There are a number of very good photos of the bike that Serotta made for the PezCyclingNews review, the Serotta factory in Saratoga Springs, NY, and the Serotta bike production team.

Because of the custom nature of the Serotta Ottrott ST, it's pretty difficult to compare it with other high end bikes, at least on price. The frame alone costs $5,295 before tax. Operation Gadget published an article comparing President Bush and John Kerry's riding styles in August that was based on a New York Times article on their bike choices. The Times article estimated that Senator Kerry's bike cost $8,000. So, my guess is that the average cost of finishing an Ottrott ST is $2,700 above the cost of the frame.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Trek Madone 5.9: The bike that Lance
Armstrong rode during the 2003 Tour de France
was reviewed favorably by CyclingNews.com
[ Photo: Trek ]

John Stevenson of CyclingNews.com evaluated a Trek Madone 5.9 by riding it 1,500 kilometers (930 miles). [ Where do I sign up for that job? ] He really liked it, in that it performed in a solid and understated fashion while making him competitive with riders who had been able to drop him when he was riding less sophisticated bikes:

Like any race bike, the Madone is a tool for winning races. Its job is provide the rider with a platform for turning training into trophies. It shouldn't be in any way distracting or irritating to ride, and it needs to be as comfortable at the end of a long ride as it is at the beginning. That characteristic Trek neutrality, which could be interpreted as a lack of excitement, is a virtue in a race bike.

The Madone's handling, then, is unobtrusive. It complies evenly and smoothly when you point it into a turn and holds its line confidently round curves even at high speed. It responds willingly to rider input, but without that feeling of puppy-dog enthusiasm that characterises some very light bikes. Nevertheless, I found myself climbing in higher gears than on my regular rig and keeping up with riders who usually leave me behind.

This bike has an estimated price of $6,300.00 as tested, so most of us won't be buying one anytime soon. It's even a little much for me to put on my Amazon.com Wishlist. But, as a fan of pro cycling and the technology behind it, I want to understand the differences between what the pros ride and what I ride. This review does a great job illustrating that.

If you can afford to buy one of these with your own money, let me know. I'd love to do an Operation Gagdet article on even more specific features than this review discusses.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The lockout of professional ice hockey players by the National Hockey League is having a profound effect on the sport. One example of this is how little attention was paid to 'Reebok's acquisition of The Hockey Company, that took place in June.

As Terri Frei pointed out on ESPN.com, Reebok and Nike are now facing off in hockey for the first time, with Nike in control of the Bauer, Nike, and Cooper brands, and Reebok owning CCM, Jofa, and Koho.

Is such a rollup of brand names into two companies a good thing? Here's what I said to my friend and fellow hockey official, Bill Bredin:

I am more interested in whether this acquisition is good for the entire sport. Most of the equipment I buy and use is significantly better than its equivalent of four or five years ago, but I don't know if what the manufacturers are charging for things like sticks is justified.

After finally buying a new helmet at the beginning of this season, I'd say that hockey players and officials don't have enough choice in this area, especially if you have a larger than average head. When you compare our choices to those of the serious amateur cyclist, I feel like we are significantly behind.

Anyone care to offer an opinion about whether Reebok will bring more useful innovation to the hockey equipment market, or will they make the same mistakes that Nike did and set back improvement of their protective equipment and skate lines by offering ground-breaking but flawed designs?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Polar Precision Performance Software: comes with Polar hear rate
monitors like the Polar S-720i. Click on the chart to see more detail.

Earlier this week, I received an email from Polar Electro that announced the latest upgrade to their Polar Precision Performance Software (Version 4.02.035). The features included in this update include:

• Tools Connection
  • OwnIndex and HRmax-p values read and saved to Diary automatically.
• Reports
  • Relative bars selection added to time and exertion in HR zones.
• View Curve Cursor values
  • Pace added.
  • Descent added.
• Options Person Properties Measurement Units
  • Pace unit s/500m added for rowing.

This update is for users of Microsoft Windows 98, 98SE, Millenium Edition, 2000, and XP. It's one of the few pieces of software that is causing me to keep a Windows PC in my office.

What I love about Polar's training log software is how well it works with my Polar S-710, its robust USB-infared interface, and how often the software itself is updated. Looking back at my mail cache, Polar's software was updated in 2004 on October 6, August 24, and May 11. That's a pretty relentless update schedule.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally got to officiate a few ice hockey games over the weekend. This is an activity that I really enjoy and frequently participate in, at least from September to March or April.

Officiating cuts down on my opportunities to ride my mountain bike, but it requires a similar amount of aerobic and anaerobic effort. This is why I do a lot of mountain biking in the off-season. A good example of the similar effort requirements is a comparison of a ride I did on Thursday in preparation for The Tour of Hope DC Fund-raising Ride and a hockey game that I officiated on Sunday.

Mountain biking: Effort expended
during a 26-mile ride on September 23.
Click on the graph for a larger image.

On Thursday, September 23, I rode my East Windsor - Millstone Loop that brings me out into the country east of the New Jersey Turnpike. I was doing this ride at comfortable pace in order to build up my conditioning.

I've been looking for opportunities to ride this route for the last two weeks, both because it is very close to the length of the Tour of Hope DC Fund-raising Ride and because it takes me about as long to ride it as it does to officiate most of the hockey games that I officiate. When I do too many workouts of less than 90 minutes, I sometimes find that I run out of gas in the third period of tough hockey games.

During the course of the ride, I burned an estimated 1,832 calories over one hour 39 minutes of exercise. My heart rate peaked at 175 beats per minute and averaged 157.

In case you are wondering how I produced this data, I wear a Polar S-710 heart rate monitor when I exercise. It's similar to the Polar S-720i that you can find at many cycling or fitness products dealers. The Polar S-Series heart rate monitors come with Polar Precision Performance Software, which I use as my primary training diary.

Continue reading "Comparing Effort Expended in Cycling Training to Officiating an Ice Hockey Game" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nike Triax Elite is an example
of the Nike Timing System discussed
in the new NikeTiming Yahoo! Group.

Operation Gadget reader Bob reports that a brand new Yahoo! Group for user-to-user support of Nike Timing Systems with Heart Rate Monitor or Speed Distance Monitor capabilities has been set up at http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/niketiming/.

I know from reading the postings on Operation Gadget about the Nike Triax Elite that there is a steady stream of "anyone else have this issue" and "how do I use this feature" questions. This Yahoo! Group might be a good place to find network and find answers.

FYI, Nike Timing products with HRM and/or SDM features include:

• Triax Elite HRM/SDM,
• Imara HRM,
• Triax CV10,
• Triax C10,
• Triax C8,
• Triax C6,
• Triax C5, and
• Triax C3.

I hadn't realized how many different models Nike had come out with until I started doing some research. I've been seeing a lot of them around, and each one seems to look a little different from the last one I saw. Now I know why. [ Thanks, Bob. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bauer 4000 Hockey Helmet:
photo courtesy of Amazon.com

I've written a lot about cycling on Operation Gadget recently, but I am also heavily involved in amateur ice hockey as an on-ice official. I have been an official for about 20 years, and I currently officiate in the Atlantic Hockey League, the New Jersey Youth Hockey League, and the high school hockey leagues sanctioned by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.

Last week, my wife and I went shopping for a new hockey helmet for me. I chose the Bauer 4000 Hockey Helmet over many other models because of its fit and the good protection it provides. The Bauer 4000 is available in a wider variety of sizes than many other helmets. It's large and extra large sizes are bigger than those of most helmets.

The Bauer 4000 is also a "low profile" helmet. My last helmet, a CCM HT500 is visibly larger. I measured the two helmets with a tape measure and found that the circumference of the Bauer 4000 at the forehead is more than 2-inches smaller than the HT500. That's a huge difference.

I've often said that the CCM HT500 makes me look like Marvin the Martian out on the ice. The Bauer 4000 has thinner, denser padding than the HT500, but is still approved by the Hockey Equipment Certification Council. Anyone participating in any form of ice hockey should be wearing a helmet that is approved by the HECC or the Canadian Standards Association.

I'll be on the ice this weekend officiating my first games of the 2004-2005 season. If you see me out there, let me know what you think of the new lid.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave's Cycling Dashboard: Click on
photo to see full-size, labeled image

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Hamilton-Scott asked me to show how I mounted my Garmin Forerunner 201 on my bike. Apparently, he is a Forerunner owner who had not purchased a Garmin Forerunner Bike Mount and was trying to use the wrist strap to hold the Forerunner in place on his bike's handlebars.

I decided to show off my fully assembled cycling dashboard, including my Garmin Forerunner 201 and my Polar S-710 Heart Rate Monitor (if you want one like it, you can get a Polar S-720i). Each one has a bike mount that makes the gadgets fit the handlebars of my Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike perfectly. (The Polar Bike Mount must be purchased separately as well.)

The beauty of this setup is that I can configure the displays of these devices to get a number of key ride statistics at a glance with minimal duplication. The stats I typically display are:

• Garmin Forerunner 201
  • ride time,
  • speed, and
  • distance.
• Polar S-710
  • speed,
  • cadence (requires Polar Cadence Sensor sold separately), and
  • heart rate.

The photo shown here was taken after my wife and I got back from a quick 10k ride.

I love this setup because I can use the Forerunner 201 as a sort of a scoreboard, so I can see how far I've ridden and how long I've been riding. When I ride my 26-mile training route, I can quickly see whether I am on pace.

After I'm done with the ride, I can download the ride data from my Forerunner and create maps and charts from it, using GPS Visualizer or USAPhotoMaps. (Those links point to articles on Operation Gadget that talk about using those geographic visualization services, not to the services themselves.)

I use my Polar S-710 to compile my training log. It's really helpful in gauging my level of physical effort, because it accurately measures and integrates heart rate, speed, and cadence, and estimates caloric consumption. You'll get a good idea of how Polar displays data for each exercise session by looking at my article about Polar Precision Performance Software.

I'm using Dave's Cycling Dashboard extensively in my preparation for the Tour of Hope (you can donate here). I'm hoping to post some details about my training, including the routes I'm riding later this week.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

On October 9, I'm going to join the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope by participating in the Washington DC fundraising bike ride and I would appreciate your support. One hundred percent of the funds raised during the Tour of Hope ride will benefit cancer research through the Lance Armstrong Foundation. To learn more, visit www.tourofhope.org.

Riding in Memory of Peter Frank

Peter Frank, Dave Aiello, and Dieter Frank in May 2003.

I'm participating in the Tour of Hope this year to remember one of my closest friends, Peter Andreas Frank. Peter died of brain cancer in August 2003 after a 10-year struggle with a series of brain tumors. He and his family fought this illness in a courageous and amazing manner, and I've been looking for a way to pay tribute to all of them on the first anniversary of Peter's death.

Peter participated in a clinical trial of the drug Gleevec, a drug that is normally prescribed for gastrointestinal tumors and leukemia, under the care of Dr. Roger Stupp of the University Hospital Multidisciplinary Oncology Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. He did this to prolong his life, improve his quality of life, and to help future brain cancer patients.

The Tour of Hope raises money for cancer clinical trials. So, I'm sure that Peter would support this program wholeheartedly.

Each rider must commit to raising a minimum of $500 for cancer research in order to participate in the Tour of Hope Washington, DC ride. I can't give that much myself this year. If you'd like to help me support cancer research, please click on the Help Dave ride the Tour of Hope button to make a tax deductible contribution with your credit card. The pledge you make is a fixed amount, and isn't based on how far I ride.

If you need instructions on how to donate by check or you need an address for Peter Frank's family so that a memorial card can be sent to them, please email me at daiello@operationgadget.com.

Thanks for your help. I plan to talk about the Tour of Hope Washington, DC fund-raising ride here on Operation Gadget. So, I hope you'll come back and check out our progress.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

About a year ago, I replaced a set of Continental Double Fighter semi-slick mountain bike tires with Michelin Wildgripper Sprints. The reason I replaced the Double Fighters was because I wore the rubber down in the center of the rear tire on my bike to the point that I could see the inner tube. I could have kept using the front tire, but I decided to go with a new set so that I wouldn't have to replace the front tire at the beginning of the season.

The Wildgripper mounted on the rear wheel started having problems back in July. It developed a pretty large nail hole on July 14, and I booted it several times to get more milage out of it. Finally this week, I decided that I would never get more than a few rides out of the tire again without puncturing.

Rather than go out and buy a new semi-slick, I pulled the good Continental Double Fighter off the hook on my garage wall and mounted it on the rear wheel. I'm sure it'll be good for several hundred more miles, and just as smooth riding as the Wildgripper it replaced.

Saving the better of two old bicycle tires or wheels is always a good idea. You can never tell when they will come in handy. The color of the tires doesn't match, but they're both fast with very low rolling resistance. When you are riding a 10-year old bike as I am, you mustn't be too worried about fashion. I ride for fun and to train for hockey officiating, not for show.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most ambitious retail cycling stores in the United States was launched in Philadelphia in April 2004. Cadence Performance Cycling, which calls itself "The Cultural Capital of the Cycling World," was recently profiled in Pez Cycling News. Richard Pestes, the founder and publisher of Pez Cycling, wrote the article which includes a number of photos that were in June during the US Pro Cycling Championships.

Cadence Performance Cycling includes an on-site Carmichael Training Systems franchise, where many physiological tests can be performed. They also sell a wide variety of performance-oriented road bikes and accessories, including products from Time, BMC, Wilier Trestina, Argon 18, and Cyfac. It looks like an incredible store.

Everytime I read something about Cadence Performance Cycling, I say to myself, "Oh yea...." Then I feel guilty for a while because this place is practically in my neighborhood, but I've yet to take a trip down there myself. Kudos to Pez Cycling for telling the cycling community more about this unique resource.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally took the time to sit down and figure out how best to create overlay maps for runs and rides that I take with my Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS Personal Training Device. The impetus for doing it was a 50-kilometer bike ride that I did on Sunday in Lancaster, PA with my father-in-law, George Kuykendall. I wanted to be able to discuss the ride with friends and family, but I find that difficult to do without showing them maps or pictures so that they can get a better feel for the course and the level of effort.

Here's a map I generated of the Lancaster 50k ride. Click on the image to see a larger version:

[ Produced with GPS Visualizer, background map courtesy of Geographic Data Technologies ]

Here's the set of tools that I used to produce this image:

• Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS Personal Training Device,
• Garmin Forerunner Bike Mount,
• Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 for Windows,
• GPS Visualizer, a web-based visualization tool that I first mentioned on Operation Gadget back in May,
• Forerunner Logbook splitter, a tool that takes an XML file containing multiple workouts, splits it into separate workout files, and repackages the data into a ZIP file,
• Microsoft Internet Explorer, not my favorite browser but the one that works best with Adobe's SVG viewer,
• Adobe Scalable Vector Graphics Viewer 3.0

In order to collect the data, I rode 50 kilometers (31 miles) with the Garmin Forerunner 201 mounted on my bike's handlebars. When I got home, I uploaded the GPS data to a PC in my office, and split the uploaded file into separate workouts. I downloaded the ZIP file back to my PC and unzipped it.

From there, I used GPS Visualizer's Forerunner-optimized map form. The resulting map was produced through trial-and-error experimentation. The GPS Visualizer has a ton of options, but I found the following options to be critical to producing a meaningful map:

• General map parameters:
  • Border: produces a box around the resulting map,
  • Title: provides a convenient explanatory label for the map,
  • Background map: Europe & US: political map (street level), this particular map is owned by Geographic Data Technologies.
• Track options:
  • Colorize by: Altitiude/elevation, my choice, but I didn't think people would care as much about my speed.

GPS Visualizer lets generates an SVG file (Scalable Vector Graphics), which can be displayed in-line on a web page using Internet Explorer and the Adobe SVG Viewer. One neat feature of the combination of GPS Visualizer, IE, and Adobe SVG is that I was able to move the GPS Visualizer-generated labels around before I put the map into Paint Shop Pro. I used the Paint Shop Pro screen capture tool to grab the resulting map. Then, I added a couple of additional text labels, like Start / Finish.

Once this was all done, I saved the resulting image to a JPEG file and uploaded it to Operation Gadget. The entire process, including experimentation, production, and this writeup, took less than two hours. In other words, it took less time to produce the graphic and write about it than it did to complete the ride.

The technology that the Garmin Forerunner 201 puts on your bike's handlebars or on your wrist is amazing. You probably have most of the other PC software that is needed to complete this project. Kudos to Adam Schneider, the developer of GPS Visualizer for making it relatively easy to integrate all of the data necessary to produce informative maps like this.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Leyden pointed out an article in The New York Times yesterday that compared and contrasted George W. Bush and John F. Kerry's bicycles, trying to infer something about their personalities. The author of the Times piece, Charles McGrath, is pretty clearly not a cyclist of any kind, since he dutifully recites statistics and reports comments from people like the executive director of IMBA without analyzing them too much.

I dug a little deeper into stories that have been printed recently about the candidates' biking habits, and found some more interesting stuff for Operation Gadget readers.

If you only read the headline and the first paragraph of the Associated Press article on Bush's mountain biking in Crawford, Texas, Bush shrugs off crash, you might think this is another article that's designed to be fodder for Jay Leno and David Letterman. There is a lot of interesting information in the article if you read it in its entirety. The President said that he burned 1,200 calories on an 18-mile off-road ride across his ranch that took place last Monday. I can compare that to a 21-mile ride I did on the road last Thursday, where I rode for 1 hour, 16 minutes and burned 1,312 calories.

Keep in mind that President Bush is more than 20 years older than I am. If he's burning 1,200 calories in 1 hour, 20 minutes of riding over any terrain, he's hitting it hard. If I got the opportunity to ride with him, I would be somewhat concerned about being dropped.

President Bush rides a Trek Fuel 98, a nearly top-of-the-line carbon fiber mountain bike. This is considerably lighter and more appropriate for his ride than my 10-year-old Marin Bear Valley SE was for mine. I looked at a photo of President Bush on his bike that was credited to Eric Draper of Agence France Press, and it looks like Bush has gotten some good advice on customization. He's replaced the factory Shimano 520 clipless pedals with a set that have toeclips. Given the technical nature of some of the trails on his ranch, I would probably be more comfortable with toeclips, at least initially,

I was a little bit surprised that the President didn't go for the disk brake option on his Fuel 98, but maybe he'd choose differently if he had to buy another bike today. It looks like he went for the top-of-the-line helmet, the Giro Atmos '04, definitely the Limited Edition Lonestar version (note the large white patch on the rear of the helmet). I wonder if Lance Armstrong gave him that one or if he bought it.

There is also a fair amount of information on the Internet about John Kerry and his customized Serotta Ottrott road bike. Bikebiz.co.uk reports that Senator Kerry rides with Modolo KX Carbon handlebars that were replaced shortly after his early May crash. According to information and photos on the Serotta bikes user forum, Kerry's Serotta is also equipped with a Campangnolo gruppo, which puts him in the traditionalist camp of road cycling.

I don't have a lot to go on for the Junior Senator from Massachusetts' typical bike workout, although he looks like he's in pretty good shape. A front page article in The Washington Post from a couple of weeks ago, John Kerry: Restlessly On the Road paints a slightly troubling picture about the candidates recent ability to carve out time in his schedule for serious riding:

A zealous athlete and outdoorsman who rides an $8,000 custom Serotta Ottrott bicycle and thinks nothing of wind surfing, Kerry, 60, has found precious little time to stretch his legs. No longer can he wander off solo for a 30-mile bike ride. He has repeatedly asked that time be built into the schedule to allow him to exercise outside -- but the time, aides say, simply evaporates.

Since I ventured a guess on George W. Bush's level of cycling fitness, I'll do the same with John Kerry; Based on what I've read, I think I could stay with the Senator on a training ride, assuming that I was riding a decent road bike myself. (Remember, he's over 20 years older than me, and has a much more intense work schedule.) If I were spending $8,000 to get the ultimate road bike, however, I think I'd have to take a serious look at the Limited Edition Lance Armstrong Trek Madone 5.9. I don't know if I'd go for it, considering the audacious paint job, but it has to be a great bike.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been riding my mountain bike 21 miles a day this week. On Wednesday, I noticed that I was laboring to maintain a pace that had been easy for me last week. After I got home, I checked out my bike and saw that the chain was extremely dirty and had almost no lubricant left on it. If you ride your bike hard, as I do, you quickly discover that a bicycle needs maintenance just like a car. Here's how to keep your bike's drivetrain in working order:

• Get a chain cleaning tool.

  I have a Nashbar Chain Cleaner, like the one shown in the picture. Gadgets like these are available on-line or at any local bike shop.

• Fill it with degreaser.

  The chain cleaner has to be filled with a degreaser like Nashbar Big Blue Degreaser.

• Roll the chain through the chain cleaner a number of times.

  I use my hand to turn the pedals on my bike in reverse. This rolls the chain through the cleaning chamber without causing the wheels to turn. I keep turning the pedals until all of the gunk is off the chain and inside the cleaning chamber.

• Apply chain lubricant.

  Finally, I apply Pedros Ice Wax, a "dry" lubricant, by putting drops of it on the links of my bike's chain.

This entire process took 10 minutes before my next ride. I was able to ride at a slightly faster pace with less effort after I cleaned and lubed the chain.

I would recommend that every cyclist perform this maintenance on their bike after every 100 to 200 miles, depending on conditions. This generally needs to be done more often in wet conditions, and less often in dry conditions if you are riding on the road. Off-road cyclists may need to perform this maintenance more often than I have suggested.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday the Tour de France resumed action after its rest day. I've been trying ride my bike every day that the Tour has a stage, so I went out in the morning to try to ride from East Windsor to Allentown, NJ and back. You may remember that this was my intended route on Saturday as well, when I had such difficulty dealing with a rear wheel puncture.

I left my house at about 6:30am. After riding for less than 10 minutes, I had another rear wheel puncture. The air leaked very rapidly this time, and I heard the air rushing out. I got off the bike quickly, and started looking at the rear wheel to see if I could see a problem. I found a nail hole in the tire, in the middle of the tread, with air leaking through it. I realized that I needed to patch that hole somehow, or replace the tire.

This was not something I wanted to do on the road. Since I was only two miles from the house, I decided to walk back. I got back to my place about 45 minutes after I left.

The tires I ride, Michelin Wildgripper Sprints, aren't made anymore. The closest thing Michelin makes now is the Michelin Jet S, which is a tubeless tire. These things aren't cheap, $40 to $50 each, and I've gotten a bit less than a season out of the Wildgripper Sprints, so I want to patch the tire if I can.

I've come up with three ways to patch a nail hole in a mountain bike tire that seem reasonable:

1. Patch from the inside using a patch from a patch kit. This is the method I'm currently trying. After I put the patch on, put in a new tube, replaced the tire on the rim, and inflated the tire, I could see the patch through the hole in the tread. So, I'm not sure how well this solution will work.

2. Cut a piece of rubber from an old tube and glue it on the inside of the tire. This is known as making a "boot". Most bicycle repair books consider this a temporary method, but I did it once to my father-in-law's bike on a club ride we did together, and I think it lasted for quite a while after we got home.

3. Use Slime Tire Sealant. I've never used this stuff before, but it's an inexpensive way to patch a hole up to 1/8 of an inch in size. This is potentially a longer-term solution, as the manufacturer says that the compound can fill a hole for up to two years. I've heard that if you pump a lot of it into a tire, it can add weight. This is not a major consideration for me.

I'm going to try ride later today with the repaired tire. I probably won't comment on the usefulness of the repair until it fails or I get a few successful rides out of it. But, I will let you know how my choice works out.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

On Saturday, TDFblog reported that Lance Armstrong was photographed wearing a prototype Oakley product combining sunglasses with a portable audio player. Gizmodo reported on this photo as well, saying that Armstrong wore the prototype during the Prologue time trial, citing a SunSentinel.com article for attribution. These articles were pointed out to me in an email from Josh Gray.

Here's how I replied to Josh:

Josh:

I don't believe the Sun-Sentinel report that {Lance Armstrong} wore these Oakleys in the Prologue. Here's why:

1. He wore a radio. We know this because this is what he always does to communicate with {Johan Bruyneel}. We also know that Rudy Pevinage's critique of Jan Ullrich's Prologue performance included the fact that Jan did not wear a radio. This would not have been so widely reported if Lance hadn't either.

2. If you look closely at the glasses in the Gizmodo/TDFblog photo, and compare them to the photo on Graham Watson's site of Lance actually riding the Prologue, the frames are not the same:

   http://grahamwatson.com/gw/imagedocs.nsf/images/04tourPro/$file/11.jpg
   

Subsequent research indicates revealed that Oakley announced a new integrated eyewear/portable audio player today. The press release says the device will be called Oakley Thump. The sunglasses include 128 Megabyte and 256 Megabyte models, and will be priced at $395 and $495. The product will be initially sold at Circuit City and Oakley O Stores in the 2004 holiday period.

Comparing photographs of Lance Armstrong during the Tour de France Prologue to the Oakley eyewear catalog, it appears that Lance was actually wearing Oakley Zeros. Note that the Thump prototype has a frame piece above the lenses, while the eyewear Lance is wearing in the Prologue are frameless. [ not sure who to credit the photo to, it's been everywhere ]

Update: Frankie Andreu gave the OLN viewers a good look at the Oakley Thump in the Infinity Technology of the Tour segment. If you recorded the July 13th broadcast at 9:30am EDT, look for the segment at about 23 minutes into the program.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I set out on Saturday for my seventh consecutive day of cycling. I was planning on riding 20 miles from East Windsor to Allentown, NJ and back. This would be the longest ride I had done this season, had I made it.

I had my flat tire with my new wheel set about six miles from my house. Normally, I ride with a spare tube in my seat pack. But, my new wheel set requires Presta-valved tubes and I had always ridden Schrader. I didn't think of buying extra tubes when I was at the bike store, and when I realized the omission, I thought, "I have a patch kit. I'll buy a tube next time I pass the bike shop. I probably won't puncture since the tubes are new." Yeah, right.

My patch kit was one of those that has a little tube of glue to make the patches stick to the tube. The last time I opened the tube was about one year ago. When I opened it Saturday, the glue was a solid mass.

I couldn't contact anyone who could pick me up in a car, so I started walking back home. I walked about three miles along Old York Road toward Hightstown, the little town between Allentown and East Windsor. During my 45 minute walk, three passing vehicles stopped. The driver of the first vehicle asked me, "How do I get to Route 73?" That guy was really lost. I gave him directions and he roared off down the road. The second car stopped and the driver said, "Excuse me, can I get to the Turnpike this way?" I told him how to get there. Neither asked me if I needed any help.

I continued down the road. My Polar S710 said I was walking 4 miles an hour. I figured I was an hour from home at that rate.

Next thing I knew, a group of three cars with bikes on the roof started to pass me. One guy leaned out of the first car and said, "You need a tube?" The man got out of the vehicle, went into his hatch, pulled out a tube with a Presta valve, gave it to me, and said, "Are you OK?" I thanked him about five times, and the caravan drove off.

I sat down and changed the tube. I was home about 45 minutes later. I went to the bike store and bought some tubes for myself today.

The lessons I learned as a result of this ride are:

• Always carry a spare tube that fits your rim;
• Check your patch kit periodically to make sure that the glue in it is still viable; and
• When out in your car, take a look at the cyclists you pass, and offer help to anyone who looks like they need it.

Another thing you can do to avoid this problem is get a pre-glued patch kit. If I had this, I probably could have patched my tube and made it home, saving myself the three mile walk.

The entire story reminds me of The Parable of the Good Samaritan, which can be found in The Bible at Luke 10:25-37. Amazingly, when my wife and I attended church this morning, this passage was one of the Bible readings.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, I got back on the road to fitness. Over the last five days, I've done five hours of tempo riding on the open roads east of New Jersey Turnpike Exit 8A. For those of you who are not familiar with the area, I'm talking about roads in East Windsor, Washington Township, and Hightstown, New Jersey.

One of the things I've wanted to try for a while is listening to music on an iPod while tempo riding. I saw Lance Armstrong do this repeatedly on training rides that were filmed for the TV series the The Lance Chronicles. I couldn't attempt it myself because I needed to replace the wheels on my bike.

Before I discuss my findings, I want to offer this disclaimer: cycling while listening to a portable audio device is potentially dangerous. Do not attempt this unless you are a very experienced cyclist riding a familiar course with minimal traffic. Also, please note that riding a bicycle while wearing headphones is technically a moving violation in some jurisdictions.

I rode with my wife's iPod for an hour on Thursday and Friday morning. On Thursday, I listened to the entire Tour De France Soundtracks album by Kraftwerk. Not only is this album appropriate at this time of year, it's also 11 tracks of techno music with a relentless beat that's often helped me maintain my cadence.

On Friday, I decided to pick a very different set of songs: The Soundtrack from the Movie "Black Dog", which is a collection of country songs with several up-tempo and several somewhat slower songs. This did not work as well, because I had to concentrate during the slower songs in order to maintain my cycling cadence.

The iPod performed exceedingly well. Cycling on the road is not as physically jarring as running is, so I didn't expect any song skipping or play hesitation that sometimes occurs when using a full-sized iPod during intense exercise.

I had to set the volume level and begin playing the music before I put the iPod in my jersey pocket at the beginning of the ride. Trying to adjust the iPod or select music while moving on a bicycle is just too dangerous. This says nothing of the danger associated with dropping it on to the road surface-- probably a recipe for an early iPod death.

Now that I have ridden for a couple of hours while listening to an iPod, I'd like to ask Lance Armstrong a few questions:

• What's on the playlists that you listen to on your rides?
• Do you have playlists of different sorts of music corresponding to different types of training rides?
• Who builds your playlists, you or someone else?

I don't think that I will be cycling while listening to the iPod very much. Beyond the safety concern, one major reason is that I don't have use of this iPod all the time. Another slightly subtler issue is that I would want to build playlists with songs that have tempos that are compatible with each other, and that would help me maintain my cadence. Doing this is a matter of sitting down with iTunes and playing parts of songs to gauge their suitability.

Due to work and family demands, and my level of fitness, I would have to classify building new iPod playlists as a low priority activity for me at this time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As you know, the other day I got a set of Mavic CrossLand wheels for my late model mountain bike. The CrossLand wheels are designed for Presta-valved tubes (or tubeless tires). Up to now, I had more conventional American wheels on my bike, which meant I was using Schrader-valved tubes. (I found a page that shows photos of Presta and Schrader valves side-by-side, in case you don't know what I'm talking about.)

I guess the guys at Knapp's Cyclery think I'm very knowledgeable about cycling gear, because they didn't ask me if I knew how to put air in a tube with a Presta valve. I knew that my floor pump had a double-sided nozzle assembly for both Presta and Schrader, so off I went.

The first time I tried to check my tire pressure, I unscrewed the Presta valve cap on one of my tires, attached the Presta end of the pump's nozzle assembly, and tried to pump air. The air went nowhere. The gauge on my pump skyrocketed past 100 pounds per square inch. That wasn't right. I tried disassembling the nozzle. Nothing seemed wrong with it.

Finally, I studied the Presta valve itself. I noticed the locking nut, the function of which I did not know, and thought, "Maybe if I unscrew this, the pump will work." That did the trick.

Let this be a lesson to me. I didn't learn everything there was to know about bikes by watching OLN and maintaining two mid-range, American-made mountain bikes. I'm learning, slowly. But, this is why I've tried to build as much expertise in electronics, computers, and software as possible.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

If you watched the Tour de France Team Time Trial earlier today, you may have seen Bobby Julich, the American rider on Team CSC, wearing a Camelbak hydration system. This is the first time I ever saw a rider wearing a hydration pack during a Tour stage. But, it was obvious and unusual enough to be noted by Outdoor Life Network analyst Paul Sherwin who said:

....That's Bobby Julich on the front. You can see that straw just sticking in front of his skinsuit there. That's to a pack on his back, the Camelbak, which is filled with liquid. Keeps himself topped up throughout the course of the event.

Julich carried the Camelbak inside his skinsuit, which means that the suit had to be fitted with him wearing a full hydration pack. It did not look like the Camelbak affected Julich's aerodynamics, as I would have expected. It appeared that the bladder was positioned directly behind the point of his helmet when he is in riding position on his time trial bike.

I don't ride with a Camelbak myself, but I think it's something worth looking at again if a pro cyclist wears one in a Tour de France time trial. He probably thinks that the drag induced by reaching for a water bottle, bringing it to his mouth, drinking from it, and returning it to the bottle cage is more than the slight increase in drag associated with wearing the Camelbak.

It will be interesting to look carefully at other Tour riders to see if any more of them are using hydration systems.

Update: According to Camelbak, Bobby Julich and David Millar both wore Camelbak Race Vest hydration systems in the Stage 9 time trial from Lorient to Lanester in 2002. It's surprising then that the 2004 Tour de France TTT is the first time I've seen indications that a rider is wearing one.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Josh Gray of Jtri.com told us about Lennard Zinn's report for Bicycling Magazine about the alliance between the Saeco Cycling Team and SRM to allow Tour de France watchers to monitor heart rate, power, speed, and cadence data for some of Saeco's riders. The data is available during the running of each stage at 2peak.com.

Josh wrote:

Thought a fellow athlete and gadget freak would find this as cool as I do. Apparently the saeco team is broadcasting their live biostats on the web with SRM meters. now if they could only stay ON their bikes.

Wonder what the thinking is in doing this 'cos that hardware can't be light!

He's right, of course. 2Peak.com claims that SRM has integrated their powermeter into the Cannondale Hollowgram Si crankset so that the powermeter only adds 100 grams (2/10ths of a pound). But, Operation Gadget readers know from watching The Lance Chronicles that Lance Armstrong has worked with his technology providers to eliminate extraneous weight. We reported last week that Lance uses the Ciclosport HAC 4 Plus rather than the SRM during races. I think there is a reason, beyond the fact that agreements exist between SRM and Saeco, and SRM and T-Mobile.

On the other hand, the Cannondale Six13 is too light for UCI standards. So, the Saeco team is probably looking for ways to add weight.

Another fitness gadget provider that is making Tour de France rider performance data available is Polar Electro. You can find heart rate, speed, and altitude data for several riders at http://tdf.polar.fi/tourdefrance/heartrates.html.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been off of my Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike recently because my wheels were too brittle to keep riding. I'm fortunate that I have never tacoed a wheel badly enough to have to replace one. But, lately the wheels became so weak due to metal fatigue that I was putting the bike into the shop every other ride to replace spokes.

When you get to that point, you're only viable alternative is to replace the wheels. What's surprising is it took eight years of occasional riding and two years of pretty intense three-season riding to finish them.

I'm saving my money for two mid-priced road bikes, so I didn't want to spend too much on a new set of MTB wheels. I bought a pair of Mavic CrossLands, the least expensive Mavic mountain bike wheels, from my Knapp's Cyclery, one of the best local bike shops I've found in Mercer County, NJ.

The wheels cost me about $220 plus installation plus tax-- about the same as I would have paid for the wheels if I bought them from many mail order dealers. I went to a local dealer because this is the kind of purchase where I want technical support. I don't own a truing stand, so I would have had to bring any wheels I bought into a dealer to make sure they were straight anyway.

I am so happy to have the bike back on the road. It's too hot this time of year to run every day. So, I'll be splitting my exercise time between running and riding over the next few weeks.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, Jonathan Green pointed out that the July 2004 issue of Wired Magazine has a short article by Ben Hewitt about the gear that Lance Armstrong will use in his quest for a sixth consecutive Tour de France GC win.

I bought the magazine at the newsstand in Newark Liberty Airport this afternoon. A couple of interesting things were mentioned in this article. One is that Lance uses a Ciclosport HAC 4 Plus Cycling Computer, similar to this Ciclosport HAC 4 Titanium, during races. I'll have to look for that in my recording of The Lance Chronicles episodes about the Dodge Tour de Georgia. According to the article:

In training Armstrong relies on a heavy and expensive power meter that measure output via specially designed crank arms. For the big race, Armstrong slims down to this standard... cycling computer to record speed, heart rate, incline, cadence, altitude gain, and power output.

They're referring to a SRM Training System as the system he uses in training, but they don't actually say it.

I was a little bummed about this article, actually, because you'll probably end up with more information about these products here on Operation Gadget than you got in Wired. (Then again, I've got an unlimited amount of ink.) But Wired, what's with the Photoshopped picture of Lance at the beginning, wearing number 181? That's a photo from the 1999 Tour (his first ever victory). Isn't this article supposed to be about that gadgetry that will help him to win the sixth?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last October, Men's Journal did a cover story on Lance Armstrong that recapped his fifth Tour de France and his life at that time. A side bar to that article called The Innovator: The Winning Gear discussed many of the components that Armstrong and the U.S. Postal Service team used in the 2003 Tour. The article says that the team uses Alinco DJ-C5T two-way radios. These credit-card sized devices are more likely to be used by ham radio enthusiasts in the United States than by athletes.

eHam.net has user reviews of the Alinoco DJ-C5, which has the same size and appearance as the DJ-C5T.

Alinoco manufacturer maintains a website, but doesn't list the DJ-C5T. I'm not sure why that is.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the July 5 edition of Forbes , Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard talks about the Donik Sports Hit-N-Stick Training Aid. This is a tool that he used to help his 8-year-old son correct the mechanics of his baseball bat swing. Karlgaard describes the Hit-N-Stick as a stick that "was about 4-to-5 feet long and looked like a fishing pole with a yellow ball on the end of it". A coach or parent holds the handle end of the Hit-N-Stick and places the ball end in a position where the batter should try to hit the ball.

The key to the training element of the Hit-N-Stick is that it absorbs the impact of the bat with the ball, and reinforces correct bat swing technique by the sound that the bat makes when contacting the ball. When the ball is hit with a level swing, and with the correct follow through, the Hit-N-Stick makes a more pleasing sound than when the ball is hit in other ways.

The Hit-N-Stick is an improvement over batting tees and traditional batting practice in some ways, because the ball on the Hit-N-Stick never leaves the end of the stick. This means that a lot more practice hits can be done in a short period of time. The article recommends mixing use of the Hit-N-Stick with traditional batting practice.

The Hit-N-Stick is available in 41-inch, 53-inch, and 63-inch sizes. Each is appropriate for different sized baseball and softball players. It looks like fun for practice, and I'm hoping to see one in use around the Little League field near my home soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I went for a 10 K run through the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park in 90 degree weather. It was a struggle to get through it. This is the first extended period of heat and humidity in New Jersey this year-- 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity. When it happens, I usually skip running for a day or two and try to do something else. But, I can't do that for an entire week and no self-respecting athlete should unless they are injured.

I think we are making the transition to real summer conditions in the parts of the Northern Hemisphere that experience four seasons. I see people getting their hair cut short. That makes you marginally cooler, but athletes need to take more aggressive action. Now is the time to be focused on getting down to the lowest Body Mass Index (BMI) you can sustain.

I've let myself float back up to 29 from a low of 26 or 27 at the end of the summer last year. That's not acceptable. By putting 10 pounds back on, I've reduced my VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake in the bloodstream) and dramatically slowed my running pace. Getting rid of that weight again will help me to feel significantly better when I'm exercising in this weather.

The best approximation of VO2 max that I can find is the OwnIndex calculated through the Polar Fitness Test by most sophisticated Polar Heart Rate Monitors. I run and cycle with a Polar S-720 heart rate monitor. This is a really sophisticated unit designed to capture heart rate and cycling data (speed, altitude, cadence, power, etc.). It's a great heart rate monitor, but it's more sophisticated than many people need or want.

A good alternative is the Polar M52. This has many of the most important features for fitness and weight loss purposes (OwnIndex calculation through the Fitness Test, heart rate limits, and a coded transmitter), but doesn't have the cycling data capture options. As a result, it costs about half as much.

Heart monitors like the Polar M52 also provide an estimate of the number of calories burned for your exercise session. I find this estimate very useful when combining exercise with dieting.

There are less expensive heart rate monitors in the Polar line, but the M52 has the features that I find most useful for aerobic training purposes. If you're considering buying a less expensive HRM, make sure it has the features that you think you want. A lot of the less expensive ones only measure rudimentary things like instantaneous and average heart rate, time in a single target heart rate zone, and estimated calories burned. That's not enough for me, but it might be right for you.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While we were in Princeton on Wednesday evening, my wife and I stopped into the Princeton Running Company to browse and ask the store personnel about podiatrists that athletes in the area have seen. Inside we noticed a point-of-purchase display of LiveStrong yellow wristbands which are being sold to support a new $6 million fundraising drive by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The LAF's new LiveStrong initiative is aimed at helping cancer survivors improve their quality of life.

These yellow wrist bands are being sold for $1.00 each and all proceeds go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

My wife and I have a number of friends and relatives who have recently had cancer. My friend Peter Andreas Frank passed away last year from brain cancer after a long illness. We also have survivors of testicular, prostate, and breast cancer who are very close to us. It is in their honor that I will wear a LiveStrong wrist band this summer.

The display and packaging of the LiveStrong wristbands that we saw in Princeton strongly suggest that Nike is using its distribution clout to get them out to local sports stores around the country. (They deserve a lot of credit for participating, if this is the case.) Look for them next time you are at the store, and buy one to show your support. More information about this program is available at WearYellow.com.

More information on Operation Gadget:

• Readers Successfully Buying 10-Packs of LiveStrong Yellow Wristbands Directly from the Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Where to Buy a LiveStrong Yellow Wristband
• Nike and LAF Sell LiveStrong Wrist Bands at End of Each Tour de France Stage, Some European Media is Still Critical
• Why There is Some Confusion Over the LiveStrong Campaign Fund Raising Goal

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent most of the day yesterday celebrating Dr. Joyce Kuykendall's Ph.D. in Social Welfare. {She's my mother-in-law. Congratulations Mom!} It was conferred on her at the graduation ceremony for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University in Manhattan. My wife and I travelled up to New York with her parents, and her brothers and sister for the ceremony and a reception. We were on the go from 7:30am until about 4:30pm, including travel time.

The weather was clear and about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which was a lucky thing because the ceremony was in an auditorium that didn't seem to have an air conditioning system. The difficulty I ran into yesterday was that I became dehydrated and developed a terrible headache toward the end of the trip. This is something that seems to happen to me with more frequency recently than in the past. In spite of the fact that we attended a graduation reception, I wasn't able to take in enough fluids to avoid some pain.

I feel like it's easier to keep myself hydrated in the running races and duathlons that I participate in during the summer months. Most 5k and 10k races have water stops on the course that you have to run away from if you don't want to take in fluids. My bike has two bottle cages on it, and I always ride with at least one bottle filled, regardless of the distance of the ride.

I don't tend to have problems with dehydration when I'm working because the natural pace of my work allows me to think about food and drink periodically. I seem to have problems at big social events like weddings and graduations that take place on days of moderate temperatures.

My first thought whenever I run into a minor physical problem like this is, "Is there a technical solution?" A couple of weeks ago, I read about the Lance 4 Watch from Nike and learned that it has a built-in hydration timer. Even if this worked to remind me to drink something, it's an expensive way to deal with this problem, and it's unlikely that I'd take the time to set it properly before heading out of the house. I also could set an alarm on one of the devices that I carry with me everyday, chiefly a Nokia 6600 mobile phone, but even that requires advance planning based on the weather conditions I expect to encounter at the event later in the day.

For me, the best way to avoid this in the future is probably to drink more than I want first thing in the morning and to drink before I am thirsty throughout the day. My question is, does this happen to you, and is there anything else that I can do to avoid the problem?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, I saw the latest episode of The Lance Chronicles on the Outdoor Life Network. This episode focused on The Criterium International, training rides in Southern California, the Lance Armstrong Foundation Live to Ride Gala, and production of more Subaru ads.

Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's personal coach, talks in this episode about his forthcoming book Chris Carmichael's Food for Fitness which is coming out in July. One of the things he says, which I totally agree with, is:

You know I'll tell you, these low carb diets, they don't work for athletes. I mean, there's no way that a guy like Lance Armstrong could be doing what he's doing right now.

Most of us are closer to the weekend warrior category than we are to being one of the "Heads of State" of the Tour de France. But, if you want to perform well in running or cycling races, or any aerobic fitness activity for that matter, you have to eat a balanced diet. When combined with exercise, diets that are low in carbohydrates and high in protein can result in poor performance. I've always thought that diets that rely on ketogenesis would reduce muscle mass as well, but it seems that this is more of a problem with high protein diets when no exercise is done.

I'm looking forward to reading this book, despite the fact that I will have to wait until the Tour de France is over to do it. The book will include instructions on how to match food consumption to activity level, and menu plans for eating at home, snacking, and eating out. These are hard issues for most non-professional athletes to deal with.

Amazon.com is taking pre-orders for Chris Carmichael's Food for Fitness, so you can pre-order it or put it on your wish list. I'm doing it today so I don't forget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Carnoy reviews the prototype Philips Nike MP3Run, a 256-Megabyte flash memory-based MP3 player with a number of interesting extras. This MP3 player reportedly will incorporate a Bluetooth-enabled version of the speed and distance sensor used in products like the Nike Triax Elite, so that runners and walkers can gather statistics about their workouts. It will also include an FM radio and a strobe light to improve visibility during night runs.

I don't think Nike and Philips would be showing people from ZDnet a prototype like this one unless they really planned to put it into production. I think the combination of a Nike speed and distance transmitter with an MP3 player is unusual, and I'm not sure how well fitness gadget fans will like it.

I prefer devices that provide visual feedback. This is why I use things like the Garmin Forerunner 201 for outdoor running and Polar S-720i as a cycling computer and heart rate monitor. While the Philips Nike MP3Run clearly has a display, the device itself is meant to be strapped onto the arm or the waist. This means I won't be able to glance at it quickly.

The audible feedback discussed in the review may not help sell the product. This is the kind of thing that goes over well with friends and family when you are showing them the device for the first time. I can't say whether you will want to have your music stop to hear a disembodied voice say something like "1.4 miles at 8:50 per mile" more than a couple of dozen times. I probably won't. On the other hand, a device like MP3Run may be really helpful to visually impared people who use treadmills.

Will this MP3 player provide connectivity for a training log as well as a music library? That could make it more useful. Some people may want to run with only their music on their minds and passively collect performance data for future analysis. Nike has done excellent software for the Triax Elite, but it is both a heart rate monitor and a speed and distance monitor.

I'll keep an eye out for more news on the MP3Run, and I'll link to what I find on Operation Gadget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the biggest issues with the Nike Triax Elite Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Distance Monitor has been the difficulty owners had uploading exercise data from the watch to computers running the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system. A Macintosh user reports that a new release of the Triax Elite software dated April 19, 2004, addresses this problem.

To download the software, visit http://www.nike.com/timing/extranet/elite_software/.

[ Thanks, James. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Two weeks ago, I used USAPhotoMaps to map a 23.5-mile bike ride through Central New Jersey that I rode to test my new Garmin Forerunner 201. The idea for this ride came from the example set by Phillip Torreone in his howto article on Engadget.

Since I did this I've received emails from Operation Gadget readers asking if there is a platform-independent way to accomplish the same thing? I did some research and it looks like GPS Visualizer may be the answer. GPS Visualizer is "an on-line tool that creates SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) maps and profiles from GPS waypoints and tracks." It has dozens of options in terms of GPS units it supports, background maps, and other parameters. GPS Visualizer also lets you map routes outside the United States, where USAPhotoMaps is limited to routes in this country.

The biggest complicating factor is that you need to have the Adobe SVG browser plugin installed on your machine. This looks easy if you are running Windows or MacOS X, but I'm running Linux (Fedora Core 1) on my laptop, so the installation process is likely to be a bit more complicated for me.

When I get a chance to install the SVG plugin and generate the same ride map with GPS Visualizer that I did with USAPhotoMaps, I'll post the results and write about the experience.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A special supplement to this week's Time Magazine called Time Global Business profiled an athletic performance visualization company called Dartfish. Dartfish uses digital video technology to show athletes and coaches the mechanics of different activities performed in sporting events.

The key technologies that Dartfish offers are Simulcam which overlays two separate performances on each other, and StroMotion which merges multiple video frames together to highlight an athlete's position or trajectory. These can be used for entertainment or instructional purposes.

Dartfish has come up with applications in about 20 different sports. Their website has some really interesting information on it, including a number of illustrative still images and video. [ photo courtesy of Dartfish ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been TiVoing each episode of The Lance Chronicles on the Outdoor Life Network, looking for information about state-of-the-art fitness measurement devices. In the second episode, they showed Lance Armstrong and one of his trainers using a Lactate Pro, a handheld lactate threshold analyzer. This device reportedly costs about $300 with the consumables for each test costing about $2.

The first time I watched the segment where the Lactate Pro is used, I thought they were using a blood-glucose meter because the Lactate Pro looks a lot like the kind of thing that some diabetics use to test their blood. They also perform a lactate threshold analysis by first doing a finger stick with a lancet. Watching the footage again, I could read the words "Lactate Pro" on the face of the device.

Many articles I've read about lactate threshold analysis indicate that this sort of testing can only be done in a laboratory setting. I didn't know that there was a handheld device that could analyze lactate thresholds on the normal training site.

A lot of people that are fairly serious about aerobic training don't need this level of measurement. I can get enough data about my physical performance when running, cycling, or skating using my
Polar S-Series Heart Rate Monitor by focusing on measure like theoretical V02 max. But, if you are training for an Ironman triathlon or a similar professional-level activity, you might need something like the Lactate Pro.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the questions that I've been asked about the Garmin Forerunner 201 is how big is it? I took out my ruler and measured its dimensions, and I also took a few photographs of it next to a Polar S-710 heart rate monitor for comparison.

The GPS unit that you wear on your wrist is 3 1/4 inches wide x 1 3/4 inches high x 11/16 inch thick (8.25 cm x 4.45 cm x 1.75 cm). The wrist strap is 10 1/4 inches long x 1 1/4 inches wide (26.04 cm x 3.18 cm). It weighs 2.8 ounces (79.37 g) with the wrist strap attached.

By comparison, the Polar S-710 HRM receiver is 1 13/16 inches wide x 1 3/4 inches high x 9/16 inch thick (4.60 cm x 4.45 cm x 1.43 cm). When the receiver is attached, its wrist strap is approximately 10 1/2 inches long x 1 3/8 inch wide at its widest point (26.67 cm x 3.49 cm). The S-710 receiver weighs 1.9 ounces (53.86 g) with the wrist strap attached.

More specifications for the Garmin Forerunner 201 are available on the Garmin website.

The photos shown here are thumbnails. Click on either of them if you want to see the full sized image.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received my Garmin Forerunner 201 last week and began testing it in a variety of exercise situations. For those of you who are just joining this discussion, the Garmin Forerunner 201 is a Global Positioning System-based fitness measurement tool suitable for use during outdoor running, walking, in-line skating, and cycling.

Before I began my testing, I took a set of photos of the Forerunner when it was brand new with the thought that people who are considering purchase of it might wonder what's in the box. Read on in this article for more photos of the stuff you get with the Garmin Forerunner 201.

Continue reading "What's in the Garmin Forerunner 201 Box?" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just watched the first episode of The Lance Chronicles on the Outdoor Life Network. This is a weekly 30-minute look into Lance Armstrong's preparation for the Tour de France. I was mesmorized by a long segment on Lance's work in the Kirsten Wind Tunnel in Seattle where he tested an improved version his time trial bike (presumably similar to the Trek Team Time Trial), a Nike skin suit, and a new helmet that meets UCI specs.

The documentary also shows how he prepared for the Nike "What If?" Ad where he participated in a boxing match.

The glimpse of the wind tunnel testing alone is enough of a draw for any fitness geek. I am going to watch the first episode multiple times. On the basis of seeing it once, I recommend the entire series.

I just found an article by Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune reviewing The Lance Chronicles based on viewing the first two episodes. Johnson said:

The filming started in January, for Thursday's engrossing first episode (7:30 p.m., OLN) featuring Armstrong training, testing a new bike and other gear in a Seattle wind tunnel and lamenting the hard time he had last year, taking his fifth Tour win.

To try to rediscover the good kind of pain this year, Armstrong is promising to "refocus and rededicate," but the cameras make it clear that the distractions and the drags on a steady training schedule are many.... If all of this gets covered -- and there's no reason to believe it won't -- viewers are in for a fascinating journey and a more open window on big-time contemporary sport than any NBC Olympic video will show.

Just watch it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I received my Garmin Forerunner 201 Bike Mount Bracket yesterday morning, attached it to the handlebars of my Marin Bear Valley SE, and took off for a quick 6.2 mile ride with my wife in beautiful Spring weather. I wanted to try it as soon as possible because I knew after my Garmin Forerunner 201 test ride yesterday that strapping the Forerunner to my wrist was not an optimal solution for cycling.

If you watch carefully, you see a lot of professional cyclists in races like the Tour de France ride with a heart monitor strapped to their wrists. These riders are using their HRMs as data collection devices and not for performance feedback. As a result, you never see them look at the watch during their ride.

Most recreational cyclists use heart rate monitors or other types of bike computers for performance feedback. Bike computers provide ride time and distance, speed, and other information which varies from unit to unit. The Forerunner has GPS functions, which means that you can get information about things like elevation and geographic location.

This is why it's best to mount a device like the Garmin Forerunner 201 on your handlebars when riding. This way, you can glance at it, see your speed, distance traveled, or elevation, while not take your hands off the bars. You do take your eyes off the road or trail momentarily, but this is not normally a problem once you become accustomed to having the Forerunner mounted there. Before you are used to riding with it in that position, it's best to avoid riding on busy roads or technical trails.

Most bike computer mounting brackets are fairly simple. The Garmin Forerunner 201 Bike Mounting Bracket is a bit more complicated than most because it's designed to allow you to mount the Forerunner without removing its wrist strap. This means that people who use the Forerunner for both running and cycling will be able to change between the exercises with a minimum of delay.

I'm definitely glad I bought a bike mounting bracket for the Forerunner 201. I think it's going to do the job for me. The only thing that concerns me about the design is the durability of the mounting bracket adapter, which the Forerunner snaps into. It looks like it could break some day with extensive use. Other than that, it's logically designed and worth buying for Forerunner users who like to ride.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I took my Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike out this morning and rode around eastern Mercer and southern Middlesex counties for an hour and 45 minutes in order to test the Garmin Forerunner 201, a Global Positioning System-based fitness measurement tool. I had a great time.

In order to make the Forerunner 201's output easier for Operation Gadget readers to visualize, I created a breadcrumb trail over a satellite map of the area. I did this by following the excellent howto article written by Phillip Torreone.

I want to go into some detail about the ride and the work I had to do in order to make the images that you see in this article. I think you'll be interested in the processes.

Continue reading "23.5-Mile Bike Ride Mapped Using Garmin Forerunner 201 and USAPhotoMaps" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I forgot to mention that I received my Garmin Forerunner 201 yesterday from Amazon.com.

I ordered it on Saturday, April 24, using the FREE Super Saver Shipping method. I got the "Your Amazon.com order has shipped" message overnight between Monday and Tuesday, and received it around 6:30pm on Tuesday, April 27. The delivery estimate was May 3 - 4. I guess I lucked out.

The Forerunner shipped with version 3.10 of the firmware. I upgraded to 3.30 as recommended by Phillip Torreone's howto. I also installed Forerunner Logbook and USAPhotoMaps.

I'm planning to ride my mountain bike sometime later this morning or early this afternoon. When I do, I will follow the rest of the howto and post my results.

I took a set of photos that show what's in the box. I'll try to post a story about that today or tomorrow as well.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I decided to order a Garmin Forerunner 201 for use in my spring running and cycling. Before I bought it, I checked out the price at various on-line stores. I also visited the Eastern Mountain Sports store at Princeton MarketFair on U.S. 1. I found that Amazon.com has a terrific price on the Forerunner 201, about $32 better than EMS.

I appreciate the opportunity to see products in bricks and mortar stores like EMS, but there's no way I'm paying a 20 percent premium for the privilege of buying there. I'm sure there are products on which EMS is much more competitive.

I also bought a Forerunner 201 Bike Mount Bracket so I can put the Forerunner next to my Polar S-720 heart rate monitor. It will be interesting to see any differences in the measurements that these two devices have in common.

I am looking forward to using the Forerunner 201 to make breadcrumb trails on satellite photos. This morning during our walk around the neighborhood, I was trying to explain to my wife how these photos are produced. It's definitely easier to read Phillip Torreone's howto than it is to explain it verbally.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In his second column for Engadget, Phillip Torreone has produced comprehensive instructions on how to translate exercise data captured by a Garmin Forerunner 201 into overlays for satellite photos. This article is really an elaboration on what he told me when he announced the Runner Art Project. But, he's put together instructions that pretty much anyone can follow, if they are motivated enough to get involved in what I'd have to refer to as "geek training" for lack of a better term.

A couple of comments on what Phillip is doing:

• I think he's pretty much staked out the high ground in terms of providing information about uses of the Garmin Forerunner 201 to the running community. If I get involved in this, I might have to spend more time on cycling applications.
• I look at the columns that Phillip submitted this week and last week to Engadget, and I think, these are great, but why not use the Extended Entry field in Movable Type for part of each of them? I mean articles that are that long, no matter how good they are, really break up the flow of the page.
• Phillip's done an outstanding job pulling these resources together. I don't think anyone could make these instructions more understandable than he has.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Phillip Torreone of /run fame told us that he is beginning a "Runner Art" project. He is doing a series of 10 mile runs in different cities, collecting data with his Garmin Forerunner 201, and producing map satellite map overlays using an application called USAPhotoMaps.

Phillip has already done the runs in two cities:

• Seattle, Washington (his home city), and
• Minneapolis, Minnesota.

His goal for this project is to run 10 miles in 10 different cities. I like this idea, and I want to try to do something like this myself.

The only issue I can see with what Phillip has produced so far is that I need to get better at satellite image interpretation. I think I recognize Lake Union in these satellite photos of the Seattle area; The addition of a few captions would dramatically increase the usability of these photos.

If I get more details about this effort from Phillip, I will pass it along here on Operation Gadget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Phillip Torreone, the guy behind The Geek Gym, has consolidated most of his fitness technology information into a site called /run. He's done a lot of interesting research on fitness gadgets, and I think his site is definitely worth putting in your RSS aggregator. It's going in mine right now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In many parts of the country, we're already into the Spring outdoor sports season. For many years, my wife and I have gone whitewater rafting around this time of year.

One of the issues that always comes up is whether you can safely take your electronics with you when rafting, canoeing, or kayaking. Many of us want to get a photo of the group mid-trip, and not wait until the end when everyone looks like they've been out in the elements for too long.

A good solution for situations like this is the Aquapac Digital Camera Pac. This resealable plastic bag can hold most digital cameras and affectively keeps them safe in extremely wet environments. These pacs are waterproof to a depth of 30 feet and help your gear to float if it hits the water.

The manufacturer says that the Digital Camera Pac (and other containers designed for cameras) allow you to take good photos without removing the camera from the bag. I'd like to test this and see how well it works.

Aquapac makes a complete line of waterproof containers including pacs for carrying:

• folding wallets,
• compact cameras,
• small mobile phones,
• "barrel-shaped" camcorders, and
• walkie-talkies.

One reseller pointed out a use of the Aquapac Walkie Talkie L/LH that I hadn't thought of-- they can waterproof walkie talkies for use while windsurfing or kiteboarding. There is minimal two-way volume loss when a walkie talkie is placed in one of these bags.

Aquapac makes many different products. For a fairly complete selection, do an Amazon.com search for "Aquapac". Check the dimensions of the bag you are buying to make sure it will fit your device. Some of their products have descriptive names, but, your particular gadget may require a smaller or larger bag than Aquapack suggests.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just noticed that Amazon.com has started accepting pre-orders for the Garmin Forerunner 101, the little brother to the Garmin Forerunner 201. What's the difference?

The Forerunner 101 has:

• no connectivity-- PC interface removed,
• different power source-- uses two AAA batteries instead of a rechargeable,
• increased thickness-- unit is 0.2" thicker, probably to accomodate batteries, and
• decreased price.

It will be interesting to see if this product makes as big a splash as the Forerunner 201 did. The 201 is one of the most popular products that we've ever featured on Operation Gadget. Will the 101 sell like hotcakes because the street price is below the magic $100 price point?

If you have any thoughts about the Forerunner 101, I'd love to hear them.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Before my trip to Texas, I reported that I sent my three year old Polar S-710 in for battery service. I received the receiver and a new T61-Coded transmitter back from Polar this afternoon, via UPS.

During email correspondence about the Joel McNamara's review of the Garmin Forerunner 201, Joel asked me to report on the experience of having a Polar heart rate monitor serviced by Polar USA. He said:

I was wondering if you'd gotten your s710 back from Polar yet. I've always managed to either break or squeeze the last remnants of life out of my monitors, and have yet to do the battery replacement thing. I'm definitely interested in reading about your experiences, since the whole process is kind of a mystery to many Polar owners.

Fair enough. I'm providing all of the details. Read on if you are interested....

Continue reading "Polar S-710 Back from Battery Replacement" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Joel McNamara wrote a really thorough review of the Garmin Forerunner 201, including a comparison with the Garmin Geko 201with the Forerunner.

This is a well-researched piece by someone who definitely shares my interest in fitness gadgets. Joel has also pointed out a product and a service that I had not seen before that relate to adventure racing. EndlessPursuit is a value added reseller of GPS and heart monitors that offers a service integrating information from the two in a way that allows better performance analysis. (EndlessPursuit also helps you exhibit your training to friends and family.) TopoFusion is a $40 software product that lets you integrate GPS tracking information with map data from the Microsoft TerraServer.

Included in this review are size comparisons with Timex Ironman wrist watches and late-model Polar HRM receivers, and Joel's list of "cool" and "iffy" features. He seems to agree that this product has some minor satellite lock issues during exercise, as I suggested it might in previous articles. He's also not really a fan of the Logbook software, at least version 1.0.

As I said, a great review. He includes the first screenshots I've seen of the Logbook. That alone makes his review worth checking out.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been using a Polar S-710 heart rate monitor for cycling, biking, and running for two and a half years, with hardly a complaint. But finally, the watch receiver's battery has started to die. So, I decided to return the S-710 to Polar USA for battery service while I am travelling.

I'm having the battery replaced, rather than buying a new one, because I am happy with the feature set I have. There are a number of models that are slight enhancements to mine, such as the Polar S-720i which is aimed at cyclists, and the Polar S-610i which is more for runners. But, the S-710 has not been sufficiently superceded to make me part with over $200.

Polar USA recommends that the entire unit (receiver and transmitter strap) be returned to them for service. The instructions are on the Polar USA website. I understand that this can cost up to $59, but, they will replace the battery on one or both of the units, and (most importantly for me) clean and test them.

I'll report more on the service process when I get the HRM back from Polar.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polar Electro and Nokia have announced mobile phone - fitness measurement gadget connectivity so that data from forthcoming Polar heart rate monitors can be sent wirelessly (via infared data transfer) to a forthcoming Nokia sports-oriented mobile phone. The devices that will be integrated are the Polar S625X Running Computer, the Polar S725 Cycling Computer, and the Nokia 5140 Mobile Phone.

infoSync World reported that Polar has created Java applications that are optimized for the Nokia 5140 so that exercise data can be visualized on the phone, and the data can be sent on to other mobile phone users via data services like SMS.

The Nokia 5140 is scheduled for shipment in the second quarter of 2004. It is reported to be the first GSM phone to be designed for push-to-talk.

The Polar S625X, scheduled to ship in March, is the first Polar heart rate monitor to support the Polar S1 Foot Pod, a speed and distance monitoring add-on.

The Polar S725 is expected to ship in May 2004. It has similar features to other Polar high-end cycling computers, like the S710i and S720i.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Operation Gadget is continuing to get a lot of traffic and comments about the Garmin Forerunner 201 fitness gadget, so I thought I'd do a bit of an update. According to the Garmin website, the Logbook software will be available in February 2004. Back at the beginning of December, I reported that the software was slated for "early January 2004" release. I continue to suggest that gadgets like the Forerunner are a lot more useful if they can upload data to a training log that is maitained on a personal computer.

My wife and I were browsing in the Eastern Mountain Sports store in West Windsor, NJ on Friday night, and I got to see a Forerunner 201 again. Everytime I pick one of these things up, I am struck by how large and heavy it is relative to other fitness measurement gadgets like the Fitsense FS-1 Speedometer and the Nike Triax Elite. Granted, the Forerunner 201 is a one piece unit, so you wear everything you need on your wrist, while the other two that I mentioned have "footpods" that attach to one of your shoes. But in my experience using devices like these, I most often notice the size and weight of the thing that I wear on your wrist. The size and weight of devices that attach to my waist, arm, or shoetop are a lot less noticeable.

In light of the positive user comments about the Forerunner that have come my way, I'd say that there's definitely a group of people who are going to like this product a lot if they give it a try. But, I have questions for the Forerunner 201 users out there, if anyone would care to answer them:

1. Before you purchased your Forerunner 201, did you visit a store where you could see and possibly try-out the Forerunner, or did you buy it solely on the basis of product reviews?
2. Have you ever used any fitness measurement gadgets other than the Forerunner? If so, what is it about the Forerunner that makes it the thing you wear on your wrist when you are out for a run?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Fitsense FS-1 Speedometer is a good fitness monitor for readers who want a fairly sophisticated speed and distance monitor, but don't need to collect extra data like GPS coordinates or heart rate. The FS-1 Speedometer consists of a foot pod which acts as an accelerometer, and a watch that collects data from the foot pod and computes pace and distance covered.

The Fitsense foot pod seems similar to the foot pod that comes with the Nike Triax Elite. The difference between the Fitsense and the Triax Elite is that the Fitsense does not include a heart rate monitor or a way to uplink data to your PC, although those features are available as add-ons directly from Fitsense.

The advantage of the Fitsense FS-1 is that its modules can be purchased separately. This is a benefit to those athletes who are not sure that they want to get as deep into the data as some of the true fitness geeks do.

I think the Fitsense FS-1 is a good fitness monitoring alternative for many runners and walkers. It isn't as heavily marketed as products from Polar, Timex, and Nike, but, it is competitively priced and is designed to be a modular system.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nike Triax Elite Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Distance Monitor is one of the most full-featured personal fitness measurement devices available today. It's the top-of-the-line fitness measurement device from Nike, a company who has been expanding into this space over the past couple of years. The Triax Elite is aimed at runners and walkers because it combines a heart rate monitor with a very accurate electronic pedometer. It also comes with data upload capability to PCs or Macs, and excellent fitness journal software.

The Triax Elite is a stopwatch and a heart rate monitor strap that are both water resistant to 50 meters. It supports display of heart rate, current running pace, and pace target information for interval training. This puts it in the same league as other top-of-the-line fitness measurement devices like the Polar S610i and the Timex Bodylink. The Triax Elite's foot sensor is splash resistant but not as waterproof as the other components.

Nike's fitness journal and workout creation software is among the best I've ever seen. For an example of how powerful the software is, watch the Flash demo of creating a workout. This shows you how to build interval training workouts with point-and-click ease. I don't know of any other software included with a fitness gadget that makes building workouts this easy.

Nike's software also lets you tag workouts with sets of attributes. For instance, you can assign attributes to workouts that you do repeatedly. The Polar Precision Software, by comparison, lets you label each workout, but doesn't do anything to help you compare or aggregate similarly-named workouts.

The features that Polar offers in its S-Series heart rate monitors that are missing in the Nike Triax Elite are estimated V02 max and caloric consumption. Accurate caloric consumpution data is valuable to athletes who are carefully monitoring their diets, either for weight loss or performance optimization purposes. V02 max, the measure of maximum oxygen carrying capacity of an athlete's bloodstream, is an important fitness benchmark that is hard to measure accurately without a fitness lab workup. But, Polar's HRMs do an amazingly accurate job of it considering the data that is available from their system.

A lot of people who would use a Nike Triax Elite, however, would not be as interested in caloric consumpution estimates as in the advanced workout planning and reporting features of the Triax Elite software. I think V02 max is very helpful at certain stages of a long-term training program, but, a lot of people find detailed heart rate data far more important, and there is little apparent difference between Polar and Nike in this area

I was really impressed with the Nike Triax Elite. It is a great system for athletes whose training involves running or race walking at a high level. The system produces and analyzes enough data to be helpful to a professional fitness coach, although it would be better if it supported V02 max and physiological testing mechanisms like the UKK Walking Test or overtraining tests. The included fitness journal software is an improvement over the equivalent software from Polar in most areas.

If you are in the market for an advanced fitness measurement device that is designed primarily for running and has excellent interval management support and journal capabilities, the Nike Triax Elite would be an excellent choice.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (52) | TrackBacks (0)

It's clear from reading the Operation Gadget website traffic reports that a number of readers have some interest in the Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS-enabled personal fitness tracking device. So, I want you to know that I noticed that Garmin is telling potential buyers of the Forerunner 201 that the Logbook Software, meant to keep a journal of exercise activities, will be available in "early January 2004".

Although I think that the Forerunner 201 is a very interesting product, I don't think it's usefulness can be fully evaluated until more is known about the Logbook. If you read and understood the article I posted last week, called Why Training Log Software is One of The Most Important Features of a Fitness Gadget, you probably already realize why I am taking this position.

With respect to the Forerunner 201 Logbook, there aren't even any screenshots of a prototype posted on Garmin's site. If I was making a purchase decision, I would assume that the Logbook software will be of limited value until I see more information about it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week I said that in my opinion, most fitness gadget review articles don't help serious amateur athletes choose the best fitness gadget for their exercise regimen. To understand one reason why, take a look at the output of my Polar S-Series heart rate monitor as viewed through Polar Precision Performance Software, the training log software that came free with my HRM:

This is data that my heart rate monitor / bike computer captured during a duathlon (run-bike-run race) that took place in August. Only a few high end fitness gadgets ship with training log software that can produce a training log with this much performance data in it. Polar Precision Performance Software also provides daily and monthly summary views and charting capabilities that are of similar detail and complexity.

One of the biggest reasons that fitness gadgets like the Polar S-725 cost $200 to $300 is because you can build very detailed training logs with them. You can use historical data to help set thresholds for interval training. You can look at your performance over time and plan the intensity of workouts.

The problem with many fitness gadget reviews is that critical facts like whether the products ship with good training-log-management software are very often left out. Make sure you understand whether you are getting a complete package of fitness tools before you decide which cool fitness gadget to buy.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

MSNBC published an article on Tuesday by Samuel Greengard about the increasing number of fitness gadgets that amateur athletes can use to measure their fitness and motivate themselves. The article talks about Fitlinxx, an integrated health club-based circuit training system, as well as a few heart rate monitor-based training systems, including the Nike Triax Elite runner's training system and the Timex Bodylink System with GPS support, and a non-HRM device, the Fitsense FS-1 Speedometer for running.

All of these products can be used as a mechanism for measuring personal fitness levels. Some of them can be used to track fitness improvement over time. But, articles like this do little to help you understand why an individual personal fitness device might be a good addition to your life.

I have used a Polar S720i for cycling, running, and ice hockey fitness training over a period of more than a year. I chose the a Polar S-Series Heart Monitor because I do a lot of cycling, and I wanted to include distance ridden, speed, and cadence data in my training log. I'm going to try to talk about each of these products in separate articles here on Operation Gadget so that you can understand how to choose the right gadget for your training needs.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a fan of mountaineering headlamps for their practicality. I have used them for outdoor running in the evening darkness of the Fall and Winter, hanging Christmas lights on the outside of my house at night, car repairs, and running telephone wire in my attic.

The best headlamp I have ever used, in terms of comfort, flexibility, and cost, is the Black Diamond Gemini. I bought this one after going to a local camping store to see and try on the various options. Until then, I had only known about one manufacturer of expedition-quality gear, Petzl. But, after seeing the various types and deciding that I didn't need the most expensive and sophisticated model, I chose the Black Diamond Gemini.

I like the Gemini because it has separate xenon and LED bulbs. These provide good illumination for both close-in and short-distance work. The battery pack takes three AAs and puts them in a waterproof package that sits on the back of the headband. The headband is very adjustable and made of a comfortable elastic.

A few members of my family give me a strange look when I tell them that I regularly run 5 kilometers or 10 kilometers outdoors after I get home from work, at this time of year. But, a good mountaineering headlamp makes this easy to do. I'd like to try riding my mountain bike in this fashion some day, but, I am going to wait until I pick up handlebar-mounted lights as well.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm heavily into both cycling and running, as well as measuring my performance and fitness levels. So, the latest gadget from Garmin is definitely aimed at me. The Forerunner 201 combines GPS and stopwatch, neatly collecting much of the data that I could want about my run.

According to the information I've read, it also has the ability to create a virtual race partner to add a little competition to solo workouts. We'll have to see how useful that feature is.

There are a number of fitness monitors already on the market that are aimed at data junkies like me. I use a Polar S720i which is a heart rate montor primarily designed for use by hardcore cyclists. The key feature of the S720i that is lacking in the Garmin Forerunner is the Polar Precision Performance Software package. This software allows you to create a very good training log. It has real value to a serious athlete, but some weekend warriors may consider it overkill for their purposes.

I brought up the Polar S-Series heart rate monitors not to say that their design is hands-down better than the Garmin Forerunner, it's just different. If you are more of a trail runner than I am and you don't need or want to record heart rate information or calories burned, the Forerunner might be the best fitness monitor for you. But, if you want to create a detailed exercise journal on your PC, and you value features like heart rate management, and infrared or sonic uploading, you should carefully compare existing products on the market to the new Garmin Forerunner.

Update: As Operation Gadget reader Kent Folsom points out in an attached comment, my initial review of the Forerunner 201 said that it had heart rate monitor features. It doesn't. I am not sure why I thought it did. I have modified this story to make it more accurate. --Dave Aiello, 11/20/2003

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)