Technology and sport

This isn't going to be as boring as the title might suggest. In fact it's bloody hilarious! Chris has moved into the 21st century. Let me wind back a bit.....

I may have had a tiny rant about the amount of technology that is now necessary, it seems, for me and my "fellow Californians" to go out for a run or ride. Receiving a phone call while shooting down a hill, to warn me about the danger of the hill - that was at best ironic, at worst downright dangerous.  Being honest, though, I have brought much of this on myself. I bought the power-metered pedals, and the new high-tech Garmin 920XT. With my new Garmin I can even measure my "SWOLF" score. In case you're interested that's a combination of your stroke count (don't make up your own jokes boys, this is my blog) and your time to swim a length. The lower the better (39, since you ask, but I currently have no idea if that's good, bad or indifferent). Last Saturday I went to Marin to recce the bike and run course in preparation for this weekend's race. The idea was to use my new power meter pedals to record my stats, then use that as a guide for the race. No more guessing how hard I need to work on the bike for me. Now I would be able to let the Great God Garmin tell me how hard to work. However, I had fitted the new pedals, which contain all the tech stuff, but not the right cleats on my shoes. In short, this meant I couldn't clip my cycling shoes into my pedals. A fairly fundamental shortcoming. I had to revert to my old-fashioned, non-power enabled pedals so I couldn't record the data. But if you think that's pretty stupid, coach Dave went way past that - he forgot his Di2 battery. The modern cyclist, once he has connected up all the necessary technology to get out on the road, now uses electronics to change gear. Electronics are fast, efficient, reliable and are absolutely the future. But they need a battery. Without a battery the gears default to the hardest gear ratio you have, which means its unrideable. So we had driven for an hour over to San Rafael in Marin County with some very specific and scientific objectives in mind that would give us an advantage over all those poor suckers who still ride on feel and change gears manually. But I couldn't get my data, and Dave couldn't ride at all! That would be SUCKERS 1; TECHNOLOGISTS 0

I won't even mention the fun-filled 48 hours I had trying to get Garmin / Pedals / Apple / Strava doing what they should. But that's all history now; I am fully empowered, totally enabled, utterly technology-bound. And I have a spare Garmin with very little resale value, as it can only monitor Heart Rate, Speed, Distance, Cadence, Elevation and Location. Which is where Chris comes in. Chris's idea of technological edginess is a high-viz jacket, but he knows a bargain when he sees one, and a free Garmin is a bargain alright. So Chris is going to give it a try once I manage to get a mule to take it across a few borders for me. Chris, as I might have mentioned previously, is the original no-
nonesense "bloke". A proper man's man if you're still allowed to use that phrase in the UK (It was almost certainly banned in California years ago). He doesn't have time for frippery such as Garmin monitors, and I suspect the relationship between him and the 310XT may be a short one. But here's the interesting bit that I promised at the start of this narrative: he got so caught up in the whole technology thing (no doubt a bit delirious with the acquisition of something for nothing) that he took a "selfie". Chris! A "selfie"! He's gone right down in my estimation now.