Fitness and Technology

race result communities: AthLinks

There was a thread on the top-secret Microsoft triathlete mailing list last week about a few websites that help you track your race results and/or do some research about people that you'll be racing against.

The first site mentioned was www.athlinks.com.  The sheer number of race results in the AthLinks DB is quite impressive.  The site's top bar tells me that they have data from 40k races - 16MM results across 9MM racers.  Some quick math - that's an average fo 4k finishers per race meaning that they must track a lot of running road races.  Triathlons and bike races don't have that many competitors!  16k people have signed up for a free account which lets you have a facebook-ish profile/wall page. 

The site's most interesting feature is called Rivals - they figure out who you've raced against 3 or more times.  For a junkie like me that can lead to hundreds of rivals!  (Right now I have 857 listed.  Oy!).  I have it on good authority that they're about to upgrade the Rivals feature to include more cinfigurability - that wil be worth checking out.

Other features include
  * Friends - you can tag another user as a friend
  * Search Athletes - type in a name and see a bunch of race results
  * Search Races - find results from the 40k races in their DB

The result-to-person matching is imperfect but the site makes it easy to claim other results as your own.  I saw five of myelf in the search results - one with my home state of Washington, three in states where I've raced (California & Hawaii) and one in Texas, where I used to live - but in claiming one of those duplicate-selves I was shown a list of other "results that might be me" to claim. 

Some of the results are imperfect as well.  Most of my races are triathlons and their result-reading software sometimes has a hard time figuring out which columns are swim, bike and run.  I see Swim-T1-Bike and Total-Swim-T1 as two of my 16 triathlons that the site knows about.

The site has a few social networking features, some of which are rathe runqiue and well thought-out while others just seem to be thrown in:
  * Race Reports let you include a bunch of structured data - most of the "report" consists of selections from radio button groups or drop-down lists: race distance, how you slept the night before, what training phase you're in...  I wonder if they plan to let users and/or race directors mine this data...
  * Athlete Journal: blogging
  * Playlists: song_artist pairs that don't appear to be connected to any other features on the site
  * What Did You Do Today (WDYDT): training log with slightly-structured data entry
  * Add Article Link & Upload a YouTube Video Clip: these features tie into the site's goal of aggregating your online sport-focused experiences
  * Add Gear Item: describe/rate an item that you just bought, complete with pictures!

The site also provides a calendar of upcoming races. 

I will review some of the others sites later in the week - www.triresults.com and www.sportstats.ca.  Let me know if you've heard of others.

fun with widgets

As I pulled deeper into the vortex that is social networking I am compelled to play around with widgets.  I was checking two sites today (amongst others): Traineo and Widgetbox.  Traineo leverags your social network to help you reach your weight loss & fitness goals.  They have a pleasing user interface that reminds me a little of 37signals's work (like Backpack).  Widgetbox is a widget hosting and syndication site that makes it easier for technical neophytes to add widgets to their blogs & other sites.  They also give widget developers an audience.

Unfortunately I can't get Widgetbox's default widget-installing architecture (SCRIPT tags) to play nicely with MySpace - the SCRIPT tags get removed when I save the updated text.  I also can't yet find a way to integrate with Facebook although I heard that they're making a formal announcement today regarding increased Integration features on their site.  Right now they have an API that you can call to retrieve information from Facebook (who are my friends, what groups am I in) or to upload pictures... but you can't perform any other upload/write operations beyond photos.

Anyhoo, let's see if the Traineo widget that I found on Widgetbox can easily be added to my Community Server blog.  Here goes nuthin...

And it turns out that the SCRIPT tags get blocked by the rendering piece of Community Server. I can see the tag is still here in the HTML editor, even after a save/publish/view/edit cycle. But when I load the newly published entry in my browser and [view source], the SCRIPT tag is gone.

Time to look for plan B. Let me know if you have any hints/ideas.

The CompuTrainer

It's time for an introduction to this fabulous piece of training equipment that resides in my garage: the CompuTrainer.  This posting will be targeted at the unitiated - apologies to all the experts out there.

The computrainer is an indoor cycling trainer that looks similar to a magnetic or fluid trainer.  You clamp the rear axle of your bike into the trainer and the rear wheel spins against a drum.  The spinning drum can provide varying resistance.  For magnetic trainers, there is usually a lever to select one of five levels.  On a fluid trainer, the spinning drum pumps fluid through a coil of tubing, producing resistance that scales nicely as you ride faster - remember from fluid dynamics that air & water have similar properties in this respect...  the computrainer uses electromagnetic resistance that can be altered by the computer to which the computer is connected.  There are two modes in which you can use the computrainer:   * Standalone mode, where the head unit controls the resistance - this can be a fixed wattage that you specify or one of 50+ built-in programs   * PC mode - the holy grail of computraining - where you can download a a course (or draw one if you have their mapping software) and the computrainer will alter resistance to simulate every hill on the course

In PC mode, the computrainer software can tell you how fast you are going, how much power you are putting out, your pedaling cadence and even how balanced your pedal stroke is.  I've used my CompuTrainer to "preview" far-away courses and to do power intervals in my garage, despite not having a power meter on any of my bikes.  I also use the standalone "ergometer mode" a great deal.  You set the head unit to maintain a fixed wattage and it will adjust the resistance as your speed changes to ensure that your power output remains the same.  This can lead to an unstable equilibirum as you tire, since when you slow down it must get harder to pedal!  In the other direction, it gets *easier* as you pedal faster, which doesn't always translate when you get out on the roads!

If you are lucky (or well-funded) enough to have two computrainers then you cna link them together and race a friend.  With RacerMate's Multi-Rider software you can link up to eight CompuTrainers together at once for group workouts.  I know of four CompuTrainer training centers in the Seattle area - one in Ballard, one at the CompuTrainer office near the Burke-Gilman trail, one at Cycle U and one at Eastside Multisport in Bellevue/Redmond.

A CompuTrainer with the Pro/3D software retails for about $1500, so the target market is "cycling and multisport enthusiasts."  The device can also work in a commercial setting - I know of multi-rider setups in the Seattle area at Seattle Multisport in Ballard, at Cycle U near Magnussen Park and at Eastside Multisport in Redmond.

mapping your run (or ride)

I've seen at least half a dozen options out there to measure, track and/or share running routes so I figure a review is in order.

Microsoft Streets and Trips (Client software). I have to start here b/c I use this one more often than any other.  Its raison d'etre appears to be providing driving directions and whatnot for Car People.  It has a sweet "Measure Distance" feature under the Tools menu (Ctrl+E is the shortcut) that lets you draw a line on the map and get a distance.  You can click-and-drag to draw a curvy line or you can just click to mark each point and the software connects your points with a stright line.  The line doesn't have to follow streets (in fact it is completely street-agnostic).

Pros: fast, responsive UI for drawing routes; draw-a-box zooming is nifty
Cons: price (not free); no connectivity/sharing

GMap Pedometer (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/).  This GMap mashup appears to be leveraged by a lot of the other run-mapping sites out there - some let you import maps that you drew here.  You draw a route by selecting a series of points on the map.  Select a point (by double-clicking on the map) and the map will automatically re-center itself on that point.  The site automatically adds mileage markers as you draw your route.  But sometimes the end-of-route or mileage markers get in the way of adding a point.  Single-click and drag to scroll the map - or just add a point near the ege of the map and let it auto-scroll.  You can also pan & zoom using the standard GMap controls in the map's upper left corner.  When you are done with your route, you can click a [save] button which gives you a route ID & a hyperlink to find the route again.

It looks like nearly 1 million routes have been saved by gmap-pedometer users.  This is up 100% since I checked them out last October.  This means that they're getting over 75,000 saved routes per month.  I reckon a large number of users have also clicked around & measured their route without clicking [save] to get a route ID. 

Pros: free!, web app - accessible anywhere; maps can be imported into other sites
Cons: no sharing/community features; only way to remember your routes is to bookmark or write down the ID

Favorite Run (http://www.favoriterun.com).

Usage is about 1/10th of gmap pedometer, with just over 90,000 routes uploaded.  This number is also up roughly 100% since I checked last October, meaning the site gets about 7500 routes uploaded every month.  This site stands apart from the first two tools I looked at in that it has Community features - forums, blogs, articles and user accounts.  The niftiest feature here is the ability to search for a running route in your area. I found 14 uploaded routes within 5 miles of Microsoft's zip code (98052).

The route-drawing interface is identical to gmap-pedometer and you can import routes that you drew there if you know their Route ID number.

In addition to advertising (which is significantly more invasive/annoying than on Gmap-pedometer) FavoriteRun has a paid subscripton model.  For $11.95/yr you get elevation data on your routes, some kind of Garmin GPS integration and a few more statistics on your running log.

Pros: search for a route; search for a running partner;
Cons: pages are a bit slower to load and the ads can be distracting/annoying

http://local.live.com - Microsoft's mapping site added a route-drawing feature to their Collections about six months ago.  Once you discover the constellation-like button on the bottom of the scratch pad, the route-drawing UI is clean and lightweight.  Once ou are done drawing a route it automatically gets added to whatever collection you have open - generally an unnamed, unsaved collection that is empty unless you have used this feature before.

Pros: free; drawing UI simpler than GMaps; sharing feature exists
Cons: sharing is a little bit clumsy right now; feature isn't highly discoverable or advertised;

http://www.run.com - A new site that only has a few hundred routes so far. They use gmaps but have a slightly different look and feel from the other sites mentioned above.  They cap routes at 75 points - this can be a bit limiting but I have seen gmaps slow down a lot when routes get long so this limitation probably improves usability... that said, the type of user who is eager to go draw their route on a website is probably meticulous enough that they want to enter hundreds of points...

The route editor is the best run-specific editor that I have seen. You can add point of interest along the route.  There are a few specialized text-entry fields - route description, direcitons to get there, tags, neighborhood...  the only drawback I see - I feel more comfortable with teh MS Streets and Trips approach to map scrolling than the GMaps approach - I don't like having to center the map before I zoom.

Pros: search for nearby routes; much faster page loads than FavoriteRun.com; UI design; nifty symbols on routes; elevation data
Cons: 75-point limitation; new site - not a lot of routes yet; gmap UI

http://www.runtheplanet.com - appears to be built by the same guys as Run.com.  Claims to be "the largest worldwide running community on the internet."  Seems like a dubious claim - I see 90 uploaded routes in the state of Washington whereas FavoriteRun has thousands.  This site's UI design & look-and-feel are the nicest looking of any of the sites.  RunThePlanet also has a nice selection of articles that seem well-integrated into the site.

But this blog entry is about the mapping feature and RunThePlanet is getting out of this space.  Some (but not all) of the site's links to Find a Route take you to Run.com.  The route-uploading feature that RTP once had appears to let you specify a city and write a paragraph describing the route.  You don't actually draw the route on a map.

Pros: informative content; nice UI design; pages load really fast
Cons: routes described in text only

Nifty Improvements that nobody is doing yet
  * Route drawing with a "snap to street" option.  This would be more useful in road cycling than running (as it sbetter for your joins to run on trails).  It can be bothersome to try to follow a road with your mouse.  You should be able to easily say "follow this road until I say to get off."

You are what you eat

As I sit here and work my way through a pound of ripe strawberries it feels like a good time to write up some reviews on the food tracking sites that I've been playing with.  First, here are some characteristics that seemed to be common across all sites:
   * Ability to search for foods in a catalog.  This routinely works well for "raw" foods like fruits and vegetables, somewhat well for packaged/processed foods and questionably well for restaurant entrees.
   * Easy to add foods that you've logged in the past via a "favorites" list
   * Possible to add new foods that aren't already in the catalog

FitDay (http://www.fitday.com/).  Free web app.  $30 for the desktop app.  2.2 million users. 

The user interface for logging foods is reasonably clean and easy to use.  The site doesn't require a lot of extraneous clicking to get the job done.  The units often default to cups, which isn't the most logical unit for graham crackers, apples and bananas... but it is quick and easy to change the units while or after you add the item to your food log.

I was disappointed that there wasn't a separate entry in the catalog for my natural peanut butter but that lack of granularity does reduce the number of search results.  I was very disappointed that the only result for "sweet potato" was a Healthy Choice frozen dinner.  On the positive side, I guess this means that they have lots of prepared/frozen entrees in their DB.... but sweet potatoes are such a fantastic food!  I did find ten results for "yam," including a tasty-sounding side dish: "Starchy vegetables, Puerto Rican style, including yam, white sweetpotato, tannier, no plantain (viandas)."

I've found that FitDay tends to have a reasonable number of entrees in their DB but that you're still unlikely to find an exact match for what you ate - there are just so many different entrees & recipes out there.

The food log shows calories and grams of carb/fat/protein for each line item plus a summary pie chart that also includes types of fats.

FitDay also includes an exercise log, some reports, a journal and other features that I may review in a future column.

DietSite (http://www.dietsite.com/). Free web app with $10/month option where you can get advice from a registered dietician.  Appears to be a consumer-targeted version of the Pure Wellness platform which is primarily marketed to employers and health clubs.

(click for larger version)

One unusual behavior that I noticed on sign-up was that if your requeste username is already taken then they just append a randon number and give you that name without really saying anything.  For example, I asked for "crash" and noticed that my welcome page says "welcome, crash503!"  I wonder how many users don't realize what their username is the next time that they try to sign in.

DietSite has the same Search, Favorites and Custom options that FitDay has.  The UI feels a little bit more clumsy to me - a few more clicks are necessary and components seem to take up more space here than on the other site.

One feature that I like is that you can associate each food item with a meal and a time of day.  (Each meal default to a hardcoded time if you don't feel like entering times for everything.)  I like that this gives my entries some logical grouping whereas if I enter my data into FitDay in the "wrong" order then my post-breakfast snack is harder to find amongst my dinner entries.

Search results on DietSite consider the units to be part of the food item.  For example, "Strawberries, raw - cup halves" and "Strawberries, raw - small (1" dia)" are two separate items int he search results.  This explodes the number of search results and makes it a bit more difficult to find what you are looking for.  I also see some duplicate results in the list: the cup of halves raw strawberries is in there twice... and with small/medium/large, sliced, whole, halved and pureed, I have seven choices for the same food.

The layout of entered foods feels a bit more clumsy than FitDay's, too.  Once you enter a food item you can't change it.  There is a button to remove the item and a hyperlink to see nutrition details. 

DietSite provides an interesting feature that I on't see in FitDay - meal planning.  While you could pre-log food for tomorrow in either site, DietSite tries to give you suggested menus based on your caloric needs.  The concept is cool but I think that the execution could use another revision.  You can pick a calorie target from a drop-down and then the site gives you a set of drop-downs for each meal where you can pick items to fulfill the suggested number of servings of each food group.  I may dig into this further in another column.

What should be next
A few features that I didn't see on any of the sites:
   * restaurant entrees with nutrition information
   * cache-a-meal: if you routinely eat the same 3-5 foods together, you should be able to bundle them into a unit that you can quickly add to future logs
   * nutrition info for more brand-name products - if a site like these got to a critical mass of users then food companies (and restaurants) shoul dbe clamoring to have their data in the DB.  Searching would become a bit more difficult, though
   * to really go crazy with partner integration: what if you could link your "what I ate" account to your frequent customer discount card at a grocery store.  There woul dbe some privacy concerns, but they could share your purchase history with the food-tracking site and then you could just select from ingredients that are already in your pantry.
   * a web-2.0-esque way of sharing (and validating) user-entered nutrition information in order to grow the database

FitLinxx

Last fall I got the chance to check out a FitLinxx installation at my girlfriend's gym.  FitLinxx is a hardware/software package that is integrated into the equipment at your local gym - in this case the Bellevue YMCA.  Their website (www.FitLinxx.com) says that their system is "installed at over 500 facilities in the U.S. and Europe and is used by over one million exercisers."

There are three key pieces to the FitLinxx system:
   * sensors & touchscreen interfaces on gym equipment
   * kiosk in the gym lobby
   * website

The most interesting piece is the hardware attached to the gym equipment - the touchscreen console and the sensors.  According to their site, their hardware is compatible with over 1000 models of fitness equipment.  At the Bellevue YMCA, each piece of strength equipment had a touchscreen like the one shown below:

When you sit down at a machine you type in your FitLinxx PIN number and the console shows you how much weight you should lift and how many repetitions you should do.  An on-site personal trainer can review your workout logs and make suggestions for your program.

Sensors on the machine measure whether you are exercising the proper range of motion and whether you are lifting the weight too quickly or too slowly.

The other pieces of the FitLinxx system are the kiosk and the website.  Users must login at the kiosk before they can use their account with any equipment - which seemed like an unnecessary constraint to me.  Users can also review their workout logs on the FitLinxx website.  They also have an incentive program where users can compete within a facility or across the FitLinxx system to see who is working out the most.

All in all, a rather nifty system. 

High-Tech Gym Equipment

In an article in yesterday's Sacramento Bee (link only works for subscribers: http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/158005.html), Alison apRoberts reviewed some new pieces of gym equipment that were on display at "the 26th annual International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association's 2007 convention and trade show in late March."  A few that stuck out in my mind:

A company called Alter-G (www.alter-g.com) is marketing a reduced-impact treadmill that they call the G-Trainer.  It uses a compressed-air apron to reduce your effective body weight so that you don't pound a hard on your joints as you run.  I would expect the resulting exercise experience to be very similar to running on the underwater treadmill that I got to use recently while rehabbing an injury to my foot.  With either machine you can use a running motion wihtout bearing your full weight on your legs.  But each is quite expensive - the health-club version of the G-Trainer retails for $75k and the underwater treadmill, which resembles a large hot tub with a treadmill floor, probably costs a bit more than that.  I could see the Alter-G being used in physical therapy clinics (physio if you're a Canuck) as a lower-cost replace ment for the underwater system.  The commercial price tag puts it out of reach of all but the most obsessive (and well-funded) home exercise enthusiasts.

Alison also talked about the GameBike (www.gamebike.com).  I've heard of this device before but not investigated it in much detail.  The basic idea is an exercise bike that can be used as an input device with some of the popular video game consoles (xbox, playstation, gamecube, PCs.).  They list about 75 compatible games on their website.  I like to see this attempt to mix physical activity with video games and target the youth market.  Although it reminds me of a city bus conversation that I recently had with a gamer who was on his way to a comic book convention.  He said "I don't like the Wii 'cause I don't like to move around.  I want to just sit still when I'm playing games."  Oh well, I guess you can't reach 'em all.  The GameBike is made by CatEye - a company whose name I know from their cyclocomputers. 

The GameBike reminds me of a device that my bike-racing and triathlete colleagues consider to be the gold standard of virtual cycling: RacerMate's CompuTrainer (http://www.racermateinc.com/).  Like other indoor trainers the Computrainer applies resistance via a cylinder that spinds against the rear tire of your bicycle.  What sets it apart is its electromagnetic variable resistance mechanism which let's you simulate hills (ride a far-away race course from your garage) and let's you measure your power output.  It targets racers more than sedentary folks or even fitness enthusiasts, but the technology could easily be applied to those markets.

One other Wii reference that I saw today: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/18/wii-sports-experiment-sheds-nine-pounds/.  Mickey DeLorenzo of Philadelphia has followed a "Wii workout program" for the last six weeks and dropped nine pounds.  Far from scientific (there is certainly a placebo effect at work as well) it's still a fun idea.

biking power estimates

About for years ago I read an article by David Sing in the Autin Triathletes newsletter that talked about estimating your cycling power output without a power meter by climbing a known hill and noting your time & your weight (bike+rider).

This morning my friend Kent and I went out for our weekly Cougar Mountain Zoo Hill ride.  Today we only had time to go up once but I happened to note the time that it took each of us to get to the top so that I could perform these calculations later in the day.  I couldn't find Dr Sing's original article with his equations on Jester Hill in Austin, but I found a reasonable substitute at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Power_required

Here is the raw data that I plugged in:
  * I weighed 151 pounds on the bathroom scale this morning
  * my Cervelo P3 bicycle with heavy training wheels, a pump, a flat bag and a bottle is probably about 22 pounds
  * Kent weighs about 180 lbs and suspects his bike is about 20 with bottles and pump and whatnot
For arbitrary reasons, I plugged in 171 lbs for my Rider+Bike weight and 201 lbs for Kent's.

According to a race flyer for the Cougar Mountain Hill Climb that was held last summer, the route is 3 miles long and has an average grade of 8%.  I spent 19.5 minutes suffering my way to the top.  Kent had the pleasure of spending 25.5 minutes.

The formula from Wikipedia is: P = (Vg*W*(K1+G) + K2*(Va)^3)/375

The constants are calculated for standard/British units: ground and air velocities (Vg, Va) are in mph, W is in pounds, and G is the percent grade (elevation gain per unit distance traveled).  The frictional (K1) and aerodynamic (K2) drag coefficients are defined in the wikipedia article as 0.0053 and 0.0083, respecitvely.

Plugging in all the numbers, I could up with the following average wattages for Kent and I:

Kent: 231.6 W (225.8 from gravity, 5.8 from air)
Chris: 263.7 W (250.7 from gravity, 13 from air)

Those power numbers are a bit lower than I would have expected given the amount of effort that we were putting in, as I suspect that my functioanl threshold power is closer to 300W.  But it is possible that the steepness of the climb took me away from my optimal form or that I made some errors in measurement or calculation.  If I find any (hopefully positive) adjustments then I will post an update.

foot scan

Today I saw Dr J Mari Adad for a Foot Scan.  The basic idea is that I run on a treadmill while these footbed sensors are inserted in my shoes.  The systems takes a ten-second recording and then I get to see these cool heat-map pictures of how the pressure is distributed across your foot when it strikes the ground.  I will ask the doc for some copies of the pictures and post them here.

More specifically, the sensors are embedded in a thin sheet of flexible plastic which has a ribbon of wires running out.  The wire-ribbon inserts into a very medical-looking box that was velcroed to my ankle.  Then there are bigger cables running from the ankle-boxes to a control pack on a belt.  That control pack can be connected to the doctor's computer in order to transfer data.  I felt like some kind of robot or cyborg with all of the equipment on - I wish I'd had my camera with me.

Once you are outfitted and calibrated, they threw me on the treadmill.  They only need ten seconds worth of data, so once I was up to speed they had to push the button on the control pack...  we did a few trials with different shoe inserts and at different speeds.

The resulting images show a time-lapse from when your foot first strikes the ground (usually the heel) until you push off (usually the toe).  When I picked up the speed to 5:00/mile pace (maxing out the treadmill) we found that I'm more of a midfoot/toe striker.  This didn't surprise me at all, but that is a discussion for another day.  The biggest learning from the pictures was that my first metatarsal on my right foot barely touches the ground whereas on my left side most of the pressure is on my first and second metatarsals.  We discussed a few theories but eventually figured out that my first left metatarsal actually sits "higher" relative to the other toes than my right does.  We may look at creating a customized insole for my right foot to allow the metatarsal to bear more of the weight, taking stress off of my anterior tibilias tendon which had been getting overworked.

The reliability of the system was a bit underwhelming - the laptop had crashed a few weeks ago and today we needed multiple reboots to recover from a dead battery (which died rather quickly).  The system was also a bit more cumbersome than I would have expected.  That said, it was a very cool piece of feedback to get about my running and the system was certainly workable despite its roughness around the edges.

I will post those pictures once I get 'em.  For now, here is a picture from a podiatrist's wesbite:

The patient shown above is either leaning to their right or has a lower/collapsed arch on their right foot.  You can see more pressure along the outer (anterior) side of the right foot whereas there is much less pressure on the medial side of the left foot.