Internal Mono(b)log

A few weeks ago I was very fortunate to receive an evaluation RCX5 from Polar to review for the readers of my blog. I’d hoped to get the complete configuration, that included the watch, hrm, gps, foot pod, and bike cadence and speed sensors; however, unfortunately, there are no gps units to be found. 🙁 That being said, Polar did ship me all the other parts of the kit for evaluation. Pretty awesome!

First Impressions

My current training watch is the Timex Ironman Global Trainer.  I generally like the Timex, but it’s not without it’s problems: it’s huge, needs constant charging, and the HRM transmitter is not compatible with the powermeter cpu on my bike.  When I unpacked the RCX5 I was immediately struck by how much smaller it is than my timex.

The polar is small and stylish enough that you could just wear it as a day to day watch.  This makes sense as the GPS functionality that’s built into the Timex is a separate piece of equipment with the RCX5.

Swim

The evaluation kit arrived at my office on a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago. Lately Fridays have been my open water swim day. This Friday was not an exception and I was eager to take the RCX5 into the water. Not having hrm data from my swim sessions, I find very annoying. (Yes I’m a data monkey, I know it. As a triathlete, I also know I’m not alone in my hunger for performance data and desires to use that data to improve.)  I was definitely watching the clock to get out of the office and to the beach to give the RCX5 a test in some open water, with a wetsuit on.  Happy to report: the RCX5 worked flawlessly in the water.  It collected heart-rate data through my entire 1.5hr swim.

Data Upload/PolarPersonalTrainer.com

Later, when I got home, I installed the Polar Websync software, uploaded the workout to Polar’s site and exported the data so that I could upload it to TrainingPeaks.com.  The watch sync is done wirelessly to a USB dongle, this is pretty nice.  My desk and livingroom chair areas are scattered with cables from various devices.  Wireless (and not infrared) is definitely a big improvement that Polar has brought forward with the RCX5.  Polar’s website is pretty nice, it allows you to do some pretty good detailed analysis of the workout.

I’ve been training and capturing my training data to trainingpeaks.com for far too long to even think about moving (and Polar’s site is really about workout/training analysis, and doesn’t have the nutrition tracking and other features that trainingpeaks has).   At this time there is no sync of data between Polar’s website and Trainingpeaks.com. You have to manually export and upload your workout data to trainingpeaks.com.  I’m told that many have asked for this integration and that it’s high on Polar’s priority list.  The export and manual upload isn’t difficult, it’s just an extra step that would be nice to have automatic.  Syncing workouts to dailyburn would also be a plus 🙂

Run

Saturday is long-run day, so I strapped up the RCX5 foot pod, wore my Timex and the polar (and 2 hrm straps) and went for a 3 hr run.  Once again, the RCX5 operated flawlessly.  Even without calibration the foot pod measured my distance to within about 2km of that the Timex reported.   Without the GPS module the RCX5, of course, didn’t capture my route data, but unfortunately, the run also highlighted something about the RCX5 that is a bit of a short-fall for me: the RCX5, even with the GPS module, does not capture altitude changes.  This may not matter to some, but I frequently look back at workout logs and to not have the piece of data that explains that my HR and speed were doing odd things because I was climbing some heartbreak hill, is a definite gap.

Bike

Sunday was long ride day.  On my bike I normally train with a power meter. Just having speed cadence and HR is definitely a step back for me, but I strapped up the sensors on my bike and we took it for a spin.

 Unfailingly the RCX5 did it’s job.  It captured and reported the data flawlessly.  Also of note, the dual mode hrm strap works with my power meter, so I only had to wear 1 hrm strap to get both cpu’s receiving heart-rate telemetry.

Other Features

One of the features that I didn’t spend a lot of time with on the RCX5 is the Zone Optimizer.  I go for regular VO2Max testing and so have a much more accurate view of my HR zones than the Zone Optimizer could offer, yet as a test I did take it out for a run to see what it’d tell me.  The zone optimizer measures your HR and activity as you are guided through some warmup steps.  Based on how your body reacts to the warmups it sets a heart rate zone profile for you.  In the small test I did it was surprisingly accurate.  Certainly close enough for the average, not completely hung up on data, recreational athlete.  I believe that the zone optimizer also takes past workout history data into account, so in theory, the more one used it, the more accurate it’d become.

I really love the customizable displays on the RCX5.  Each sport has up to 6 workout displays that you can customize to display the data you most want to see at any given time.  This is pretty slick and a smart use of a modern individually addressable lcd pixel display.  My 2 favorite additions to the display were 2 graphs.  One that shows graphically which HR zone you’re currently in and another graph that shows, for the workout, the distribution of your heart rate data broken down by zone.

Race Day

On July 16th I raced in the Gravenhurst Olympic Distance Triathlon (and then did a 10k training run afterwards). I decided to wear the RCX5 for the race as a final test.  As before swim, bike and run data were captured without fail.  Transitioning between 1 event and another is not quite as clean as the Global Trainer in it’s multisport mode and the RCX5 doesn’t capture transition timing (at least not obviously to me), but the RCX5 certainly was not at all cumbersome in this regard, it just required perhaps a few seconds more focus than the Timex (a happy compromise to get HRM data in the water and only wear 1 HRM strap on the bike I may add).

My Wish List

My wish list for the RCX5, all things that can be worked around without a lot of fuss btw:

• Multiple HR zone profiles: it’d be nice to be able to share an expensive piece of equipment like this between myself an my wife or, in my case, knowing that my HR zones are different between the 3 different sports being able to have HR zones tied to sport profiles would be AMAZING.  No device on the market today has this feature and probably very few athletes would care, but I do 🙂
• Data sync between Polar’s website and TrainingPeaks, DailyMile, etc.

Final Thoughts

In summary, I think the RCX5 is a pretty great piece of technology.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t test it with the GPS module, but I believe that with the GPS module and google maps, you could address the lack of altitude change capture by comparing your workout data to elevation change data from the mapping source.  The RCX5’s modern technology, modular approach and flawless functionality make it a strong contender in the multi-sport space.

Thanks to Polar for the opportunity to evaluate this leading edge piece of gear!

Last Saturday I took the day, drove to Huntsville and pre-rode the bike portion of the Ironman Muskoka course.

The bike route is a lollipop shaped course leaving from and returning to Deerhurst Resort and encircling Lake of Bays.  Let me cut to the chase and say this route is beautiful.  A lot of awesome scenery, great roads and a lot of shade.    There are no road hazards that I noted on the course save for 2 things, both of which will be addressed by or on race day:

• Currently there’s construction on the stretch of South Portage Rd between North Portage Rd and Dwight Beach Rd. I’d spoken with the race director before hand and was told that there was some construction on the route but that it’d be done long before September.  He characterized it as loose gravel, but that was pretty minimal even last Saturday.  Certainly rideable.
• A few places on the course the road turns abruptly, but appears to go straight.  I hit these sections going way to fast and was emergency stopping to slow enough to get around the corners.  I’m told that these will be well signed and also have plenty of volunteers directing people.

This route is for people who love hills, slow grades, steep grades, sharp corners then steep climbs, fast descents into corners or back up the next hill.  This route has them all.  Make sure your deraileurs are working well and that you’re planning to shift frequently!  Definitely avoid the temptation to just push up these hills in high gears.  Be especially cautious to save  your legs during the stretch from Dwight to Baysville.  These hills aren’t as challenging and you may be tempted to “chop up the candle and burn the bits”, but don’t!

The last 20k of this course is tough!  Your legs are tired, your butt is tired, and some of the most aggressive climbing on the entire course is in the last 20k.  Make sure you’re hydrated, fueled, caffeinated, and have energy in the bank when you hit this section.  There are bottle exchanges at Dorset and Baysville, take advantage of them! It’s going to be hot, and you’re going to be sweating through a lot of fluids.  And of course, don’t forget, you have a 21k run waiting for you on the other side of the bike.  I know part of my strategy for getting through this section and into the run 🙂

Looking forward to heading back up in August to ride it again and of course for September 🙂

I’m a pretty big fan of First Endurance and their product line.  I think I use pretty much everything they sell except for their multi-vitimin (and that’s only because I had a regimen that I’m very happy with before finding First Endurance).   I’ll write reviews of Ultragen and OptigenHP at a different time.  Today, I want to review for you: EFS Liquid Shot and Pre-race and an effective.. ok super-effective combination referred to as The EFS Holy Hand Grenade!!!

When I 1st tried EFS Liquid shot, I have to tell you, I was pretty turned off by the taste.  It’s very strong flavoured and takes a little getting used to; however, the strong flavour serves a purpose.  It encourages you to drink water or other fluids and not just suck back gel.  You need to be consuming liquid with your gel or it sits in your gut and doesn’t get into your blood stream.  I’ve found with many thick sweet gels (or worse, chew supplements) that drinking isn’t 2nd nature after consuming them.   Not good.  Liquid shot, consumed straight, will encourage you to drink – don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t taste BAD, it’s just STRONG.   Now… dilute the shot with water in a bottle or in your mouth and it’s quite palatable further, it contains about the same carbohydrate nutrition as a gel, but also, and more importantly amino acids and a good dose of electrolytes.  I recently packed 1 flask (400cals) of EFS Liquid shot for my 3.5 hr run in 30C summertime heat along with a backpack hydration pack of water, during my run I was consuming EFS and water throughout.  When I finished I felt great!  Hydrated, balanced and not the ravenously hungry that I’ve come to associate with being out of balance w. my electrolytes.  Now that’s powerful stuff!

In the past, typically during races, I’d also used First Endurance’s Pre-race formula.  Looking for a pick-me-up for a race?  Something to get you moving and keep you moving? Something that seems to magically drive your endurance levels much higher AND is safe if you’re in a program where drug screening is used.  Well Pre-race is for you.  This stuff just plain works!  I’ll caution you that.. well… it may work too well.  When I was first experimenting with it, I accidentally took too much and felt like I was going to fly out of my skin.  So follow their instructions.  Start with 1/2 a scoop and adjust based on your sensitivity.

Recently First Endurance posted a video about the EFS Holy Handgrenade: a mix of EFS Liquid shot, pre-race and water.

Having tried both products independently, I felt pretty confident mixing them in a race situation, so I did so during my last sprint tri.  1/2 way through the 30k bike course there was a turn-around.  I had a flask of the handgrenade mixed and in my bento box.  While I was slowed for the 180 degree turn, I threw back the handgrenade and some water. In about 15 minutes, I felt the rush starting and it carried me through the rest of the bike and through into the run.  Definitely something that I’m going to keep in my “bag of tricks”.

If you haven’t tried First Endurance’s products, I think you should give them a try.  Nutrition is such a personal thing when it comes to endurance racing, but the team at 1st Endurance has come up with some products that I’ve standardized on and can’t see leaving any time soon.

I just got word from Polar that they’re going to ship me an evaluation unit of the RCX5 for a blog review.  I’m very excited.  I like my Timex Global Trainer, but find that the GPS isn’t super and regret that the HRM doesn’t work in the water.

Just a teaser, but wanted to let you know a review will be forthcoming.  I’ll let you know when the unit arrives!

I can hardly believe that its been so long since the Milton tri. On one hand it seems like forever ago, on the other its still so fresh in my mind that it seems like yesterday. Such a dichotomy! 🙂

Milton was my 1st tri. Sure I’d completed each of the events individually (many times at significantly longer distances) but this was my 1st experience stitching them all together, racing the combined event, and dealing with the transitions.

What a BLAST! I had SO much fun it’s silly!

I’d planned on a full race report, but at this point, I don’t think it makes sense anymore.

My results:

Place	Name	City	Bib#	Time	Category
203	Rick YAZWINSKI	Toronto			308	1:53:48	M40-44

 

Category Place	Gender Place	750m SWIM Cat Ovr Time /100m	30km BIKE Cat Ovr Time km/hr	7.5km RUN Cat Ovr Time /km	Tr1	Tr2
23/64		31 286 15:31 2:05	11 88 52:36 34.2	35 313 42:28 5:40	2:02	1:13

I placed 31/64 in my age group in the swim.  Middle of the pack.. ok with it, but can do better.  Started the swim wayyy too hot and had to really slow down to regather myself and find my stroke.  Once I was in the zone I felt good, but had to overcome a moment of initial near-panic and self-doubt.

11/64 on the bike – destroyed.  Happy with this.  There were a lot of people blocking and drafting on the bike course, which frustrated me, but I still had fun.  My bike time could have been better if it hadn’t been for blocking and for dropping my chain and having to stop to fix it.

35/64 on the run – wasn’t very happy with this.  Need to do more bricks and more speed work on my runs.

Great weather, great fun.  Happy with 1st time out for sure.

 

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Dinner tonight, my 1st attempt at using Black Truffles was:

Grilled Jumbo Purple Asparagus and Grilled Honey Chili Tempeh on a bed of Quinoa w. caramelized onion and fennel, sprinkled with crumbled “Thunder Oak Gouda” and shaved black truffle with a side salad of lightly steamed fiddleheads in a balsamic dressing.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice.  It was pretty damn tasty 🙂

As many of you may know, a few years ago, before I started on my Iron Journey, I tipped the scales at over 250 lbs.  A strict medically supervised diet, followed by a lot of exercise and a changed relationship with food has brought me to where I am now (about 155lbs and 8% bodyfat).

When I was switching off the supervised diet and onto my own behavior management, I invested in a BodyBugg.  Bodybugg is a “personal telemetry” device that measures your body’s temperature, movement, galvanic skin response and determines your actual caloric expenditure with (according to their site) 95% accuracy.

Now, I’m all about data.  I’m a career geek and firmly believe that strong data helps make strong decisions.  Having data driven data about caloric burn just seemed a natural choice compared to the estimation data published everywhere.  Imagine my surprise when after a rock climbing session, where the tables say I should have been burning 800 calories/hr, I discovered that after 2 hours, I’d personally only burned 400 calories!!   Similarly surprising was that my caloric burn walking briskly was higher than that of cycling and because cycling was a fast mode of transport I’d get from A to B faster, but with less of an overall benefit as I’d expected.  I was hooked!  I was already weighing and tracking my nutrition now I could tailor my diet to my actual expenditure and completely dial in my caloric deficit to keep me loosing consistently without pushing my body into starvation mode! Win!

As I’ve started training more and generally being more fit, my relationship with the Bugg has evolved.  It’s rare now that I need to worry about eating too much.  Rather, these days, it’s much more the case that I’m concerned about making sure that I’m putting enough calories in my mouth to keep my energy levels high for the next workout and to provide my body the nutrition support it needs to repair and build.  The same disciplines are in use, but now, with an emphasis on making sure I get enough, rather than too many, calories.

So enough background.  Let’s talk about the BodyBuggSP:

I started with the bodybugg3 and wrist display and “upgraded” to the BodyBuggSP about a year ago, when it was released.

The BodyBugg3 and wrist display provided pretty much the same data as the SP, but the wrist display (like a watch) was cumbersome since I already wore a watch and it’s styling was really pretty utilitarian.  When the BodyBuggSP came out with it’s ability to display data on a paired blue-tooth enabled smart-phone (iphone or android) the “upgrade” path was clear for me and as soon as I could put my hands on an SP I took the plunge, sold my Bodybugg3 and bought the SP.

Well.. it’s been a rocky road for the BodyBuggSP.  In their desire to get to market, Apex pushed the SP out too soon and the software (especially on the Android platform) was, at best, in Beta.  It would crash, functions didn’t work well and most annoyingly, the “trip” functionality didn’t work until a recent software update about a week ago.  The basic functionality was there, steps, calories/day, goal setting, etc. but it was all pretty fragile.

I’m happy to say that it appears that the Beta stage is behind us now.  The BodyBuggSP and it’s android software seem to be working well together now.  Functioning as expected and not crashing regularly.  Makes me a happy camper 🙂

Generally I really like the bodybugg’s and love the data they provide.  A few things that I’d love to see improved to make the offering top-notch in my opinion:

• make a device that I can swim with so that I can get the same data in the pool – may not be possible given the design of the bugg, but it’d be sweet
• on the smart-phone software, show me the battery status of the bodybugg arm-band
• currently, in order to clear the bodybugg memory, set goals, etc. you must pay for, subscribe to, and use the Apex fitness bodybugg website.  For me, this is just a cash gouge. I don’t use the site for anything that couldn’t be done with a local piece of software.  Certainly the site has a lot of value for people who need the educational and motivational support of the site, but I don’t.  Having to pay for the site membership to clear the memory on my bodybugg once or twice a week is nearly insulting.

 

Today I finally got a chance to take my Nineteen Swimsuits Frequency suit into open water for a real™ test.

I went in the morning as the weather forecast for the day was for dropping temps and deteriorating weather conditions as the day progressed. The sun was trying to shine and it wasn’t raining (yet), when I got to Lake Kelso. I quickly donned my suit, put my Timex Global Trainer in swim mode and put it under my mask strap and, anticipating very cold water, put a neoprene swim cap on my head to try to mitigate “ice cream headache”.

Well, the water was cold, but manageable. My hands, feet and face, were uncovered but not icy cold or even really uncomfortable. I’d guess the water to be in the low 50sº F (~ 10ºC). I managed to get in an hour before the clouds started to really move in and I started thinking it was prudent to get out of the water and to my clothes, before rain moved in. Got nearly 2.5km in and felt pretty good.

Now, to the suit review (part 3). (You can find the previous entries: here (part 1) and here (part 2)).

Putting on the suit today I found myself marvelling at how well it fits. Putting it on today over a tri-suit the suit just came on. Sure a little effort was required to get it sitting “just right”, but if that wasn’t required at all, I’d assume that the suit was improperly sized. Once on, the suit feels so good. It moves with you, doesn’t bind, stretches in all the right ways. On shore, I started to get warm pretty quick, so moving to the water was prudent and quickly done

In the water, the suit took on the thin layer of insulating water at a comfortable tempo (not so quickly that I felt unprotected, but not so slowly that I felt I’d be waiting forever during a shore-start for the suit to water-balance). Once swimming, I’m reminded of the benefits of the variable thickness neoprene that the suit is made with: hip rotation it aided by thicker neoprene on the legs, long catch, high elbows and full extension on the stroke are all aided by the more flexible thinner neoprene on the arms and the expanding wing material. More, the thicker neoprene on my legs, I think, helped keep my legs warm and uncramped in the cold water, even though I’m not much of a kicker.

Getting out of the water, the sun was pretty much gone and the wind was picking up, I was happy that doffing this suit is easily managed. I stripped it off, simulating a T1 strip-off in only a few seconds (maybe 10-15 seconds if I were timing). So even though the suit fits well, provides good thermal and swimming support, it still comes off easily to get you on with the rest of the race.

The Frequency suit is the top of the line from Nineteen and, in my opinion, it’s fit, finish, and features, put it squarely in that category. If you’re on the market for a suit, definitely seek out the Nineteen Frequency and make sure you consider it for your needs.

Wow! So crazy busy these days – in a good way, but still 🙂

This weekend, along with my normal long ride/long run, on Saturday morning I did a VO2Max retest with my coach, Ian McLean at ImFit.ca and did a swim stroke analysis session at AbsoluteEndurance.com.

The retest was good, a hard effort, but rewarding. All the hard work over the last 3 months, since my last test, have paid off. I don’t have the actual numbers yet, but initial feedback was that my threshold power is up about 40w, my VO2 max is up, my fat metabolism is working better. Generally I’m more fit and utilizing my body more efficiently. All good! I’ll post the actual data once I get it from Ian.

The swim session, this morning with Brittany at AbsoluteEndurance.com was pretty cool. The session was an hour long, in their endless pool. The pool has mirrors on the bottom and at 45° at the front of the pool, so you can see your stroke while you’re in the water. Brittany and I spent the hour working on small tweaks to my form. She said that my form is actually really good, but that when I try to pickup the pace, rather than keeping long and powerful, I tend to short myself on the power part of the pull and pickup the stroke tempo. Useful feedback and stuff to work on for me. Awesome! 🙂

Of course, having set new threshold power and VO2max levels, means my workouts are now going to get more intense. Bring it!

Yesterday’s long ride, which was planned to be multiple runs of the Milton Tri course, turned into 2 hrs at 200w on my trainer in the pain-cave. It was too foggy and wet to ride solo safely (I could sometimes not see cars infront of me, never mind bikes), and while I really really want to be outside, I also want to be alive. *sigh*

Today’s run was cool and wet, but the weather kept me from overheating and, you know, once you’re out there and in it, it’s not so bad. Hard to psyche yourself up for it, but really, honestly, once you’re going, it’s all good. I did get to wear my new Sugoi Firewall Tights and new Sugoi Versa Jacket. I didn’t really get to take advantage of the removeable sleeves on the jacket, but the tights were just PERFECT for today’s weather. The firewall fabric on these tights worked exactly as you’d want, keeping the worst of the rain and wind off your legs. I’m really impressed with these and was afraid that, given that it’s mid May, I wasn’t going to get a chance to wear them until fall. Guess this shitty weather is good for something after all.

Contemplating yesterday’s ride and today during my run, there were times when the fact that I wear a RoadID was really forefront in my mind. 3-times during my run today, I was nearly hit, clipped or was cut-off by a drivers who just didn’t see me, or having seen me, didn’t register with them that what they were doing was potentially dangerous or life-threatening to me. Knowing that I have a RoadID on and it can speak for me, if I can’t, lends some peace of mind at these times. I own 3 RoadIDs and, because I train (usually solo) 7-days a week, I’m almost always wearing one. I really believe in this product. It won’t make you faster. It won’t make you more efficient. It won’t get you to your training goals any easier. But… it may keep you alive in a situation where otherwise the outcome may not be as happy.

I believe in this product so much, that I’m sponsoring a give-away for a RoadID Wrist ID Sport customized with your info and shipped to you anywhere in the world! There are up to 5 ways that you can enter this draw. Each action qualifies you for 1 entry. Perform all 5, get 5 entries into the draw. I’ll announce the winner on the blog on the evening of May 29th. Leave me a comment on this post telling me how many of the qualifying actions you’ve completed (1 comment with the number of entries is all that’s required) and you’re entered. Note my comments are moderated, so it may not show up immediately, don’t worry.

Here are the ways to enter:

• Subscribe to rss feed: http://www.internalmonoblog.com/feed/
• Friend me on daily mile: http://bit.ly/leG0MV
• Like the RoadID page on facebook and tell them Internalmonoblog.com sent you: http://on.fb.me/jrO3Lm If you already like the page, just leave a note on the wall saying I sent you back to the page.
• Follow me on twitter: @ryazwinski
• And finally, if you have a blog: post a contest announcement there and send me the link for an extra entry

In order to see the comment box, you need to open this post by clicking on the post title or clicking on the “comments link” under the title. I’m looking at how to make this easier, but for now bear with me.

Good luck and train hard!