Another great order from Rocky Mountain ATV arrived today. I love their free shipping. I ordered it 2 days ago, late in the afternoon and it’s already here.
This will be my 3rd order through them and they have always been perfect.
This time I got
Now that I’ve had some time to play with the SporstsTracker recorded track from the last race, I am uninstalling Google’s MyTracks. MyTracks worked fine but Sports Tracker is just amazing in the amount of information it gives you, especially when paired with monitoring devices like the Zephyr bluetooth heartrate monitor.
Using the playback feature at sportstracklive.com I was able to see my speeds at fairly precise locations on the track and also my heartrate. It was interesting to find out that my heartrate was around 200bpm during the whole race. That will definitely help me target my workouts and zone training. I was also able to track my speed over time and map it to my fatigue points.
SportsTracker, and my trusty Android 1 phone will be a huge asset in preparing for the Baja 1000. Next, I need to try out the live feature. If it works the way I think, my pit crew will be able to track my progress as I am racing.
$4.99 for the app was well worth it.
2 hours was a lot more difficult than I had imagined. I had dry mouth after the first lap and fatigue less than half way through.
I recorded the entire race with the Zephyr heart rate monitor and Sport Tracker Pro. It was interesting to see that my heart rate was around 200bpm throughout the race. That’s way higher than I had expected.
Here is a link to the data: Track map
I did finish the whole thing and I only crashed twice. The first time wasn’t my fault. I was passing a slow rider on the left when he suddenly decided to go off the track…. to the left. He clipped my back tire with his front and kicked me sideways. The course was muddy so I slid sideways for a while and ended up on the burm, sliding toward a huge tractor tire. I tried to gas it, to get back down on the track but the tire dug in and the quad rolled over. I got sort of catapulted off the bike and landed on my back, sliding down the track. I felt like a turtle as I slid through the mud, spinning around on my back. As soon as I stopped, I got up and ran back over to the quad. It was wedged in the mud on the burm so I couldn’t get it upright. Luckily there was a flag man right there who helped me get it on the wheels again. I franticly tried to start the engine as more racers were getting in front of me but it wouldn’t fire. Then I realized my engine kill cord was dangling off my vest. I plugged it back in, fired up the motor and got back on the track. I did look over at the guy who clipped me. The impact had peeld the tire off his rim.
The second crash was not as exciting and I’m actually glad nobody was around to see it. Towards the end of the race, I was getting very tired and I took a turn a little too fast and I didn’t lean quite enough. The quad high-sided up on two wheels and I planted my foot on the ground to stop from falling. The back tire hit my boot and knocked me down, then it ran over the rest of my body. I actually have some road rash and bruises from this fall. The track had dried out and the ground was a lot harder than it was earlier in the race.
All in all. it was a great race. I didn’t break anything and I finished. It did make me realize that I have a long way to go in order to be fit enough to endure 1000 miles of racing. I was just short of 70 miles in this race and it was tough. The results haven’t been posted yet, so I don’t know what place I finished in.
— 2/20/2012 edit —
They posted the results and it looks like I got 2nd place out of 11 entries in my class.
It took me 45 minutes of my 60 minute cycling time to figure out how to get SportsTracker to do zone training without a GPS signal. Once I figured out that “heartrate only” really means “everything but gps” all was good.
The program is actually really nice. You can adjust the zone times down to 30 seconds and the heartrate for each time segment. Once you start it talks to you when you need to change zones and tells you your current heartrate and what the new target is. Tomorrow I will get a full workout on it.
The Zephyr hardware was flawless. I had to wet the band to get it to turn on but the instructions mentioned that on just about every page so I was prepared.
My Valentines present arrived early. It’s a Zephyr HxM BT heart rate monitor. I wanted this model because it’s compatible with my Android phone. I downloaded the app and got it all connected through bluetooth.
By the way, Google Tracks works with it also, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of zone training. I bought the pro version of SportsTrackLive to help with fitness but I’ll probably still use Google to record my rides.