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A new training device and new capability. A brief overview.







Gotta go...

There will be a new look to my training data. I have purchased a new training device which puts far more information at my fingertips. It's the size of a watch (a very large watch) and utilizes GPS technology to track the data.







As confusing as this might seem at first, it's not all that hard to understand.



Looking at the graph, the red line indicates heart rates. When the line goes up, it shows that the heart rate has gone up.



The blue line is the pace which is shown as the amount of time required to complete a mile. When the line goes up, the speed has actually gone down. Those vertical sections on the blue line represent red traffic lights.



The green line shows elevation. So it forms a profile of the ride's route. This ride started at around 3,400-feet, dipped down to just over 3,200, then climbs to a little over 4,000-feet.



The gold line illustrates the grade of the roadway, measured as a percent of distance traveled. The steepest grade on this route is about 5% -- 5-feet of vertical elevation gain, for each 100-feet of forward movement.



A five percent grade may not sound like much but at 12 mph, one advances forward 100-feet in 5.7 seconds. The work is the same as lifting your body straight up, 5-feet, in 5.7 seconds. Now repeat that until you've gained 100-feet in elevation. You get the idea.



That said, when the pro-cyclists are riding l'Alpe d'Huez, they encounter sections 1-kilometer in length where the grade is 11%.



My old device still works and the old software, which I wrote myself, will be there for me should I have a need to fall back on it. For now, I'm going to see how this works. At any given moment on the bike I can glance down and see my speed, the amount of time I've been riding, the calories I've burned, my current heart rate, current elevation and the current grade of the road.