Monday, November 8, 2021

Canadian Rockies Bike FKT's?

 Although larger in-person events are starting to return as a result of more people getting vaccinated, chasing Fastest Known Times or FKT's is still increasing in popularity. The objective is to complete a route, trail, or loop faster than anyone else who has decided to share their experience. Strava makes it easy to share and rank attempts but of course there is a history of attempts from before GPS use was common and there are "luddites" who I think it has always been more of a running or climbing thing (and even a skiing thing). 

The concept of an FKT has become more established in the mountain bike community with videos of attempts of various routes: Kokopelli and White Rim in the USA, and West Highland Way in Scotland for example. 

Locally, running FKT's like Rockwall and Skyline trails have provided motivation for me; even though I am not capable of taking them, I would love to make an attempt. But on the mountain bike, there isn't much out there to motivate me to continue hammering over the hill that I have just climbed, and instead I have been contriving out and backs and half laps so that I can meet up with my girlfriend.

Locally, there are some possibilities for the creation of popular FKT segments. The routes used by TransRockies already demonstrate how towns and campgrounds can be linked together. In fact, the actual network of trails is so complex that an endless amount of options are available and it is difficult to confine what could be the go-to Canadian Rockies Mountain bike FKT to one route.  

Racing through the wilderness is controversial. Is it responsible to go fast on trails that shared with other users and wildlife? Where the terms "fast and light" mean carrying less or forgoing first aid and repair equipment. Where racing means riding on the edge of control and around blind corners. Although my familiarity with the above mentioned international FKT routes all seem to have frequent access for support crews, which is a big reason why videos of the attempts can be made. They are also around 100miles, which would slow things down a bit on flatter sections. FKT's also commonly start and finish from a prominent location, ideally a town centre for maximum exposure.

Anyways, here are my ideas of what could become classic Canadian Rockies FKT routes. I think they represent the brand of riding that is possible here in that the rough singletrack excludes most production gravel bikes:

Old Bow 80 course: ~80km, 2200m climbing. Sulphur Springs-Elbow Valley-Powderface Creek-Prairie Link-Prairie Creek-Powderface Road-Jumpingpound Ridge-Cox Hill-Tom Snow. Definitely classic, and the FKT is probably the course record from the race. 

Bragg Creek to Canmore: ~100km, 3000m of climbing. But how do you narrow down the options? Tom Snow to up Cox Hill (ugh...) or Elbow Valley-Prairie Link-Powderface Road-Jumpingpound Ridge? Baldy Pass? Jewel Pass or Skogan Pass?

High Rockies singletrack section: ~65km, 1200m of climbing one way (and an existing Strava segment). I think an out and back could be a good candidate as it would be closer to the 100miles, and the existing one way times require riding really fast on the flat singletrack sections. 

Various TranRockies/Doug Eastcott routes that are more remote: 

Elkford to Etherington over Fording River Pass. 

Etherington to Sandy McNabb or Turner Valley? over Grass and Sullivan Passes

Turner Valley to Bragg Creek: Volcano Ridge-Wildhorse-Ford Creek-Powderface Creek-Elbow Valley.

Sheep River to Elbow River sufferfest. How fast can you run up the middle of the Sheep River?

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Coros Pace 2 Review

 Ever look at the price of most GPS sports watches? Eyewatering. Imagine spending more than you would on a laptop and it might not even be able connect to your cycling power meter. It's ok, it will read your text messages to you (which you need to carry your phone with you to use), play music (so you don't have to carry your phone?), tell you when you need to rest (I can tell how my own legs feel thank you very much). 

The Coros Pace 2 watch comes packed with a bunch of useful features rather than the fluff found on Garmin and Suunto watches around $300. For someone who bikes and runs, power meter connectivity is pretty key so that you can replace the stand-alone bike computer. All I ask for is the kind of features that are on a 10 year old Garmin Edge 500 (Power meter capability, Barometric Altimeter) with an update of whatever 10 years of technology is and a watch strap. After almost a year of use, I will summarize the main benefits that I see of this watch:

+BluetoothLE and Ant+ connectivity. Not only can you use a wider range of devices, but this is also adds a layer of reliability. I sometimes notice especially if the battery is low on my power meter, it will have trouble connecting in Bluetooth but not Ant+. Ant+ connectivity allows me to go longer without changing batteries in my power meter.

+Barometric Altimeter for accurate elevation gain statistics. Devices with GPS only elevation will not count the small rolling hills you still have to climb. 

+Impressive battery life. You can easily leave the charging cable at home for a long weekend and not worry about losing it somewhere. Or spend all day Everesting. Or go on a long ski traverse.

+App is excellent. Perhaps it is also my new phone with better battery life so I can leave Bluetooth on, but uploading rides off of the app is fast, easy and mostly automatic. 

+Wrist HR seemed like a bit of a gimmick to me, but its use has grown on my. Sleep stats are somewhat interesting. I don't think the wrist HR is accurate enough for doing intervals, but for general runs, bikes, and skis, I can leave the heart rate strap at home and use the data from the wrist HR to measure a general training load.

+Improved GPS accuracy. Not only important for Strava KOMs, but also for accurately measuring run pace, which for runners is important for their version of "power".

With a few negatives:

- I have the version with the velcro strap. I don't particularly like this strap. It gets caught when I take sleeves on and off. I wonder if it is less durable, not only from the loops getting pulled, but I have also had to re-apply glue to keep the hook patches from peeling off. Also the strap is designed so that it won't pull out of the loop (which is good so that it won't fly off your wrist if it comes loose), but this means that you can't put it on your handlebars because you can't fit the strap over shifters, brake levers, and cables.

-Compared to my cheaper ($200) and older Lezyne and of course the more expensive Coros models, the Pace 2 lacks breadcrumb mapping. The map of your activity shows up on the watch screen when you save the activity. I am unsure why they can't have this capability, but it is nice for not only seeing how cool your activity map is going to turn out, but also seeing how close you are to the car at the end of a hard day. 

-I did notice some potential power meter dropouts with the watch on my wrist. This was evidenced by a lower average power recorded by the watch than with my Lezyne Micro GPS bike computer. 

-To get rides onto my computer to upload into non-web based software for which there would be an App, I have to email them to myself and download them to my computer. This seems to take longer than plugging in the watch and dragging the files off of it as it it was a USB drive. 

-No custom activity profiles. It would be neat to clone an existing activity type (bike, run) into to create a custom display/autolap arrangement for other activities such as trail running, backcountry skiing, and cross country skiing.