IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA 2019 TRAINING

WEEK 9 – Monday 4/29/19 – Sunday 5/5/19

Not much of note for the week as far as training.  The miserable wet weather we have been having in much of the midwest forced me inside to do a couple of my ride and run workouts, but I can’t complain about having that option.  Overall, the week went well and I’m starting to build a little speed on the bike again.

Speaking of the bike, for Christmas last year I asked for a flashing light/video camera device for my bike.  I had heard several people talking about Cycliq and the Fly6 rear and Fly12 front cameras, so I put them on my wishlist and Santa delivered.

Since I hadn’t really had an opportunity to ride outside with them during winter and most of the early spring, I realized that the time to add them to my bike was ideal now that the weather is trying to get better.  First and foremost, they are hi-viz flashers so that you are seen, and they certainly do that job well.  But the most recent camera updates to the devices produce a pretty decent video of your ride.  I guess the idea is to have proof of the offender should you be driven off the road or driven into, but I don’t really want to think about that.

The issue I had was finding space on my very crowded aerobars to mount the device.  I finally was able to attach it so that it wasn’t in the way and I could easily access it.  The rear device mounted very easily to my seat post.

After working out some bugs with my son’s help and figuring out how to use them I gave them a try.  I tried using them both for Saturday’s long 2-hour 45-minute ride but had a couple of issues.  First, the Fly12 (front camera) gave me a notice that the battery was low about 1.5 hours into the ride and it didn’t produce any video for some reason.  Had to be operator error of some sort.  Secondly, the mount bracket came loose and the camera was just bouncing around on my aerobars.  Minor issues that I can easily resolve.  The rear camera produced some great shots though.  Here is an example of the footage it will capture (Note:  Turn the volume down):

The wind noise is horrible.  I’m trying to figure out if that is just a fact of life with the Fly6/12 or there is some feature that I can turn on to make it record sound better.  Interestingly enough it does not pick up the crazy conversations that I carry on with myself, which is a good thing, because they are usually profane laden rants.

So I will be interested in doing a group ride someday and capture some of my teammates riding together.  That would be more interesting footage to watch than seeing the truck that runs me over.

The last thing of note is that I am trying to find another company to make team triathlon racing kits for our small group.  The trouble is we are somewhat of a small group and most of these custom companies have minimum order numbers that we can’t reach.  The company we last used upped their minimums by a few and also declared that the order all has to be of one sex, which stinks because we have added Gunner Jan to our group.  I looked into another company that initially looked promising.  They had promised to work on our project in April, and when I hadn’t heard from them I started emailing them with no response.  I figured the guy was swamped or something, but it turned out that his company got bought out by another company from Mexico.  No wonder I wasn’t getting any response from him.  So I went back to the internet and found another company called Jakroo, which might be our best choice.  They have basically no minimums, will assist with kit design, and you can order in both male or female sizes with no penalty, and I can add cycling jerseys, bike shorts, and other items, not just tri suits.  They had a semi-custom design it yourself feature and I played around with it.  Here are a couple of designs I came up with:

I ordered a kit that I made and will ride in it a few times to see if the quality meets what we need.  I’m starting to get excited about having some new team kits!

Week 9 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 3 total / 76 miles > Runs: 4 total / 24 miles