GPSBabel#

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:32:20 +0000

GPSBabel is a free software command line application that can talk to many GPS devices (including my Forerunner 305), and convert a zillion GPS data file formats to and from each other. Relevant points for my use

• the gpx format is XML-based: GPS's "lingua franca" for tracks, routes and waypoints, but does not support HR data
• the garmin301 format is a very simple CSV format for track data: timestamp, lat, lng, alt, hr.
• the gtrncntr format is a partial implementation of the Garmin Training Center XML format. It does support heart rate, but the files that gpsbabel exports are in other respects presently a bit noddy.

http://www.gpsbabel.org/

Trainrec#

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:34:21 +0000

Trainrec is my work-in-progress Javascript/SVG/GoogleMaps hack to get interesting stuff out of my GPS/HR traces.

Current state

• Loads a data file (in gpsbabel garmin301 format)
• Displays graph of speed and HR against time
• Draws the route onto a Google Maps overlay
• The time graph has functional zoom in/out and functional (not pretty) pan left/right

Plans

• chop input file into ranges (e.g. laps) using selectable criteria (time gaps in trace, speed < threshold, time since last lap, distance since last lap, speed > threshold, location within x metres of {some point}, etc)
• better polyline simplification
• simple stats (mean, s.d., yadda yadda)
• histograms: {hr, speed, etc} vs time at that level
• other graphs as we think of them
• GPX import/export (would be more use if GPX had support for cadence data, thobut)
• for privileged users (me, currently), keep the data on the server so that permalinks for published graphs are possible
• some way of saving state between visits (when we have some more state)
• ...
• Profit (this bit's a joke. probably)

Known bugs

• Requires Firefox - very unlikely that it works in IE at all (I'll fix it when I have nothing better to do than swear at the MS Script Debugger thing)
• Only ever tested on Linux - may even not work in Windows (though I've fixed the most likely cause of trouble there)
• "Pan right" button is inexplicably flakey (looks almost like it only sees clicks on the white bit not the blue bits, though the "Pan left" button has no such restriction that I can see.
• generally rather vanilla visuals. I'm a programmer, Jim, not a graphic designer.

Try it!

1. go to http://maps.coruskate.net/trainrec/
2. download the sample data file (or use your own, if you have the GPS-fu)
3. upload it again
4. try the zoom and pan
5. drag the markers around and watch the route map update

Impressive, isn't it? No, I agree, not very.

Feedback, if you feel the urge, to dan at coruskate.net. Any email saying "sporttracks does all this and more" will not be responded to: I don't use Windows, and I don't want to use Windows.

:article

Life is what happens ...#

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:10:33 +0000

while we're making plans. So I've been dipping in and out of Friel lately and am going to make some fairly random notes about it that I will come back and clean up later.

Take-home messages

So far, these would appear to be

• goals. Work out what you want to do and when, and assign priorities to them: A rces are season goals, B are important, and C are races-for-training that there's no shame in missing
• periodization, on several scales: both on the annual level (aim for peak fitness one two or three times in a year, training intensity ramps up through the year to each "category A" target, then falls off before building up again to the next), the monthly level (one week in every four is "light"), and the weekly level (make sure the easy workouts are easy so that you're in good shape to make the hard ones hard). Before a "race" period you'd expect two weeks' "peak", 8 weeks "build" and a 12 week "base" - prior to that is "preparation".

• know your limiters. These are not necessarily all your weaknesses, just the ones that are "critical path" to achiving your goals. They may be race-specific, even - if your climbing performance sucks, that doesn't necessarily matter much if all your events are flat.

• force - how hard you can push the pedals
• endurance - how long you can push them for
• "speed skill" - whether you're pushing them efficiently

and then introduces "muscular endurance", "anaerobic endurance" and "power" as being combinations of each of them, which I find oddly reminiscent of Aristotle combining "earth" and "fire" to get "dry". But maybe that's just me. Anyway, there are a whole bunch of suggested workouts designed for each of these areas, and a chart which says "if you plan to train 300 hours this year, you should be doing 8 hours a week in week n, and it should be x% on this area and y% on that", and then you just slot things in as appropriate.

h2. Random musing

• there are difference between skating and cycling
• technique plays a far bigger role: the Speed Skills workouts are not really relevant, but they can be replaced with technique sessions. Will need to define exactly what goes into those sessions to make them useful
• races are mostly a lot shorter: a 1:15 event is going to be over faster than most bike races. This may have a bearing on training duration and intensity

• Intention is currently (a) find a fast German marathon in early season, (b) another one at the end of the season - such as Berlin if I can get a decent start, and (c) the LIM, becase it's the home race. Maybe also Le Mans: I still have to think about how I can do a better job of it than last year and maybe even enjoy it. So that's three peaks and if the first is mid-May, that means Base 1 starts more or less when the year does. (Also need to find out when Prezelle and the One Eleven are, and see how they fit in)
• I need to work out how much of the non-training skating I do (which is approximately all the skating I currently do, yes) qualifies as training and what kind of training it is. In this regard it would really help to find my lactate threshold.
• my biggest weaknesses right now are technical and mental, and I'm reasonably sure they'll be limiters in any event that's not "skate in a straight line on a completely traffic-free road". Which is most of them. Oh yeah, and diet, but I have very little idea as yet on how to fix that without actually, y'know, cooking.
• Although the timetable doesn't actually require starting Base 1 until January, an eight week Preparation phase does seem like overkill, so I think I'll be bringing some of the Base workouts forwards to this year if only for the variety. And let's not forget that things will probably stop for a week over Christmas. For the moment, though, it's pretty straightforward: get the miles in on easy aerobic workouts, and learn to go round corners.

Forgive me, Father ...#

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 21:19:01 +0000

.. it has been a week since my last confession^Woutpuring.

• Saturday: route check for Stroll at faster-than-usual speed (I was the only one there, so it was Dan-paced), plus some lengths of Serpentine Road, plus a few halfhearted crossover exercises. Knee fine. Although I did the whole thing wearing my HRM chest strap, forgot to actually put the watch bit on.
• Sunday: Mike's video review, Stroll, Halloween Skate
• Tuesday: Route check for LFNS - for which I did remember my HRM. Based on that (average 135 bpm, but that included a couple of uphills I decided to attack just to liven things up) and my subjective effort indication, I think it's somewhere in the "easy aerobic" range.
• Wednesday: one-legged skating. I'm sure my right leg used to be better than my left, but I find it much easier to balance on the left one. Body position, again.
• Friday: LFNS bike riding, which has left me absolutely knackered. Maybe it was a bad idea not to eat beforehand or maybe there's something wrong with the bike that's making it more effort than usual, but there were a couple of points at which I was really feeling like throwing up.
• Saturday (today): rest. Several muscles sore - as is knee again, which is a bit annoying
• Sunday (tomorrow) - long slow skate (though without the technique intervals) - 80km or so, in the New Forest

Skating-related but not actually on skates, please take a moment to admire the new LFNS Week on Wheels archive - if you could see the grossly inefficient hacky code behind it, you wouldn't. And if the content you see there looks vaguely reminiscent in places of the text you see here, yes, I did have a hand in writing some of it.

No TLC at TCR#

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:41:18 +0000

I am still largely unable to understand the attraction of Tottenham Court Road: the prices are too high, the selection is poor, the service generally surly and uninterested, and the product knowledge is nonexistent. After trying four or five shops, I ended up buying my new camcorder from Dixons (or "Currys Digital", as it apparently is now known).

Now I know it's not fashionable to like Dixons, but consider this: they had the model I wanted, it had a visible price tag, the price was not stupidly high, and the sales assistant let me play with, answered some (fairly basic) questions, sold it to me without scowling, and didn't even try to make me buy an extended warranty.

The camera in question is the Canon MV900 (actually an MV901, which seems to be a Dixons-only variant that probably only exists so that nobody can call them on their "Price Match" offer) selected on the basis of (a) price, (b) reviews which indicate that it's better in low light than most competitors at that price. I will probably write more about it when it's finished charging.

Decade, decayed#

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:56:09 +0000

:; whois telent.net
[...]
   Updated Date: 14-Apr-2005
   Creation Date: 08-Dec-1996
   Expiration Date: 07-Dec-2006

Buy it. Sell it. Live it.#

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:51:28 +0000

Nobody asked me...

Sunday Stroll#

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:06:13 +0000

The Sunday Stroll is a seven to nine mile street skate around London, every Sunday (hence the name). It's designed to cater for two groups: skaters who are new to street skating, and skaters who are too hungover to want to go fast. In other words, it's quite a relaxed pace

The official web site is http://www.sundaystroll.co.uk (presently this is actually the same site as the LFNS - we run both from the same place)

Light camera action#

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:09:55 +0000

I said I'd talk more about the camera, and when I get better with it I'll do so probably at length. For the moment, I just want to say that it's surprisingly good at shooting night skating (in London it's never really dark, of course) and overall is far better at taking pictures of what I'm pointing it towards than I am at pointing it towards anything worth taking pictures of.

A few notes for the moment:

• it copes well in the light and acceptably well in the dark. Gets very confused if half the picture is dark and the other half not (e.g. a dark room with sun outside the window)
• although not well enough in dark that you'd really want to use it for stills in that situation (see right)
• kino will do nicely at getting data off the camera and into a computer
• The controls are designed for use when the camera is held at eye level with the hand cupped around the base. When I'm skating I'd rather hold it at waist level with my hand around the top: in this position I can reach the zoom ok, but the start/stop is inaccessible (unless I use both hands). Pretty much anything else I leave in automatic: if autofocus can't do the job at 15 mph, then tough - I can't either
• sometimes I find I've knocked the zoom unintentionally: "objects in the lcd may appear closer than they are"
• Today I found out about youtube-dl : hooray, at last I can look at the youtube cesspit without having to go and look for an adequate flash plugin.

I know I'm supposed to be writing about skating, but I don't think I've done much lately. Here's a summary for completeness' sake

• 7 Nov: RC
• 10 Nov LFNS was rained off, would have ridden bike
• 11 Nov Stroll RC + crossover drills courtesy of Mike's Practice Club
• 12 Nov Brief appearance at the Marshals' Speed session (starts), then Stroll bike riding
• 14 Nov RC
• 17 Nov LFNS was rained off, would have ridden bike
• 18 Nov more at the Practice Club: a bit of parallel turning and some one-foot skating. Then a session on armswing, which will inevitably force me to write at length on that topic one day soon...

Heart in my mouth#

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:07:13 +0000

• Pedalling the sound system on the Sunday Stroll: 148bpm average. Spent a lot of this in one gear - I only have one right hand, which the video camera and gearshift were both competing for.
• Pedalling the sound system back to base after the Sunday Stroll: average 162bpm, max 191. I think this included traffic lights - at least, I usually stop when the lights are red... I wasn't feeling especially like I was dying, either.

Video will be forthcoming on the LFNS site when I've cleaned it up a bit more. To my previous words on Kino, I will add the caution that one should save work frequently: it locked up on me two or three times over the course of a few hours editing last night.

The Londonskaters Speed Team#

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:15:21 +0000

I joined the Londonskaters Speed Team (LSST) last January. The other day I was in the pub (which in itself is not unusual) and accidentally managed to involve myself in some LSST meeting at which I was asked "what were your impressions of the club" and couldn't think of anything to say. So, let me see if I can now -

The basic point is this: the LSST is encouraging towards people who want to improve their skating. There are lots of people in London who can skate quite fast - or in some cases very fast: there are far fewer who actively spend time helping other people get faster, and generally speaking you can find them all in the LSST. There seems to be a belief in some other parts of the skating community that how fast you can skate is a simple function of how physically fit you are and/or how much talent you were born with, so there's little point trying to go faster except just by putting more effort in, and sometimes I want to shake people until they realise that's just not true.

I skated the LFNS as an ordinary member of the public (I usually marshal it) last week. That was really an eye-opener: so many people putting in so much effort to go really not all that fast. Perhaps we should flyer them: "join the LSST and in a month's time you could do this skate with your arms behind your back" ;-) Rant over.

LondonSkaters Speed Team#

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:16:14 +0000

a.k.a. LSST

See the web site

My opinions in [[this blog entry => The Londonskaters Speed Team]]

Arms race#

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:54:27 +0000

From further conversations with Mike: the height of the swing at the back is important for cadence, but the bit that actually provides power is when the arm comes forward of the body and bends at the elbow. This is entirely consistent with what I've been feeling, so I might actually be getting it right.

Still haven't thought much about why it works, mostly for the basically trivial reason that unless I'm actually skating I can't visualise which arm is out in front during which part of the push on which leg. So, um.