Week in Review–July 31st, 2011

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Google Plus, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRainmaker.com posts this past week:
A wide variety of posts this week covering quite a range of stuff. Here’s what made the main stage:

Sunday: Week in Review – July 30th, 2011
Monday: A weekend of Cycling, Snow Skiing, Crankworx and Ziplining
Early Tuesday: Quick Note/Request for your suggestions on guest posts
Tuesday: My Top 8 Race Day (and Pre-Race) Fails
Wednesday: Updates on Garmin Vector and new Garmin GPS watch
Friday: Loops around the track and airport in Seattle

Slowtwitch.com Weekly Sports Gadget Mailbag this week:
This week I cover the following topics over at Slowtwitch as part of the mailbag series. You can read it here.

1) The watch vibration feature: Worth it or not?
2) Is the Bontrager Node 1 ANT+ cycling computer good for commuting?
3) How to downgrade your FR310XT firmware (and other Garmin watches)

You can read all my past weekly mailbags at Slowtwitch here. Or the pre-Slowtwitch days here.

Men’s Health/Gatorade/Urbanathlon Blog posts this past week:
In addition to all my writings here, I also cover a bunch of topics over on the Men’s Health Urbanathlon blog. Here’s the goods from the past week:

Tuesday: From Hot to Cold
Weekend: A Sneak Peak At The Urbanathlon Obstacles

Note that I post over there roughly every Tuesday and Thursday, and Sarah posts on Monday and Wednesday. It’s a tag-team event.

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:
Here’s a small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet:

1) TdF Winner Cadel Evans will be doing the USA Pro Cycling Challenge:  Pretty cool, we’ve now got the top three folks and many of the major teams coming.  I’ve actually been offered media credentials to the race – but I just don’t think I’ll be able to fit it in my schedule this year (August).

2) Circulas at Interbike: This will be pretty crazy.  It’s like a mini velodrome, and will be at Interbike this year.  You can bet I’ll be covering that!

3) Ironman Lake Placid power/HR/speed/cadence/etc file from winner: Pretty cool post with the full file from TJ Tollakson (this years winner) over on Training Peaks.  Ya know, only a normalized power (NP) of 290w with a bike split of 4:34… Check it out!

4) A cool bike shop business card design.  Check out these very interesting business cards – but note the bike shop one about half-way down (Thanks Victor for sharing!)

5) A cool photographic year recap from Jordan Rapp.  A neat post into both the personal and professional side of this ever popular pro triathlete.

6) Interesting way to increase exposure for triathlon leading into the 2012 games.  Check out what London is doing to try and make the sport more broadly seen and accessible.

7) A good look at how sports and non sports companies are slowly distancing themselves from Lance.  As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I avoid the whole doping thing from a speculation standpoint, but instead find much of the business aspects around it pretty intriguing.  This piece talks to some of them.

8) A big pile of totally awesome Tour de France Photos.  And also see part II.  Both rock.

9) Head Index Charts and Meanings for Runners.  I shared this on Twitter, but it’s definitely worth a share here as well.  Please keep this in mind as you head out and try to run in the super-hot weather we’ve been having.

Random Notes

No random notes this weekend!

Loops around the track and airport in Seattle

This week my workouts have largely been centered around my hometown in Mukilteo, WA.  I’ve been out here for work all week, but I stay with my parents and do all my workouts in the area near my house.

For my runs they’ve been largely track workouts and in the case of this week, 400’s were the main course.  I had planned on using my high school track as it’s a bit nicer, but it was pretty crowded both times in the evening with non-running events that had spilled over onto the track surface (football parents).  So instead I went next door to my middle school and used the compact dirt track there.

I actually ran track during middle school, and if I remember correctly I did the 800m event, as well as a bit of hurdles.  I have no idea why I did the hurdles, as nothing about that appeals to me now. Neither the whole flexibility part, or the falling flat on my face after missing a step, nor the sprint piece either.

My workouts had about 15 minutes of building activity before I hit up the main set.  I should point out now that my training has fully shifted focus from triathlons to running for the fall marathon season (Philly Marathon).  That doesn’t mean I’m not still swimming and biking, but those sports are just being used for a different purpose now.  Now instead of trying to build strength in cycling and swimming I’m using those activities (primarily cycling) to work on the aerobic side and for recovery days, in short, to minimize pounding on ones legs.

My main set for both track workouts this week was 8x400’s, a bit of an introductory number – also to jive with a bit of an easier week given the heavy travel as of late and upcoming.  Over time this would build to more than 2.5 times this number.  My paces were specified at about 1:20’s per 400 – or roughly a 5:20/mile pace.  Not at all going all out, just moderately pushed.

You can get a rough idea of paces using the McMillian calculator, based on inputting your goal times it’ll spit out different workout times, in my case mine would more correlate with the long distance runner category:

Both my track workouts lasted about an hour.  And since a lot of folks often ask what watch I use day to day, for my running workouts now I’m pretty much exclusively using the Garmin FR610 – simply because I like a fully integrated GPS unit and because it also works as a great day to day watch.

With the rest interval the same as the work interval it meant that I could just barely walk/jog 200m in between each one.  That in turn meant that I was able to pickup a quick sip roughly every other interval.

And, just because I always enjoy track workout satellite views – I offer the following without charge:

Onto the bike we go!

My bike workouts were a bit more free form.  Simply put, on the days I wasn’t running, I was riding an hour easy Z1-Z2.  With the century ride this weekend the goal was primarily to get some some easy saddle time, since I haven’t biked much at all since before the wedding nearly a month ago.  From a ‘readiness’ standpoint, this event will clearly fall in the category of ‘it is what it is’. It’s more about enjoying the day and ride with my dad than any performance goal.

On the training front I always enjoy riding the big loop around Paine Field, home to Boeing’s large wide body aircraft assembly lines, as well as countless other aviation museums that make their homes here.

Here’s a quick snippet of a few of them:

But of course the real star of the show is the main assembly building, which houses the Boeing 747-800, 767, 777 and 787 assembly lines (not a great photo below, as I was riding along when I took it):

You can see it behind in the picture below, which is taken near ‘The Grassy Knoll’, which is located in front of the Future of Flight Museum (the next picture) that allows one to look over the main Boeing ramp as well as watch the nonstop flow of arriving and departing test aircraft, as well as general aviation aircraft.  It’s a popular hangout for families and aviation geeks alike:

The real kicker here is just how many 787’s are packed away awaiting work to be completed on them prior to going to the airlines later this year and next.  Above in the parking lot for the Future of Flight museum is about half a dozen of them.  And below, scattered just about anywhere on the airport grounds they can find tarmac is more.  Here’s four 787’s sitting behind a lot of general aviation aircraft, most ultimately destined for Air India.

(Picture above from one of my sunny day rides, before below from one of my cloudy day rides, same lineup though)

As I rounded the corner on the other side of the airport I managed to find another stash much more visible, and since it was an easy Z1/Z2 ride I got off for a quick second and had a bit of fun with some pictures:

You may actually note that there are no engines installed on any of these aircraft.  Being the most expensive component, these are installed at the very last minute.  But in order to keep tension on the wings, gigantic 17,000 pound blocks are hung on them:

So with that, that’s all I’ve got for the week.  Tomorrow (Saturday), I’ll be doing the Seattle Century with my Dad, which should be lots of fun!  And then I head back to DC on Sunday for a few hours before zipping onto Chicago for more work stuffs.

Thanks for reading all, and enjoy your weekend!

(P.S. – Sorry to all you folks on the other side of the world (Europe/Middle East primarily) who look forward reading this first this in the morning, with being in Seattle this week it meant that I was running about 3 hours behind schedule – putting it closer to midmorning or so your time…fear not, I’ll get closer next week).

Updates on Garmin Vector and new Garmin GPS watch

Note: Please see in depth post on Vector "Everything you ever wanted to know about the Garmin Vector pedal based power meter" posted here (it’s a whole lot more detailed and in depth, and includes comprehensive Q&A with the Garmin Vector team). – Sept 16, 2011

Early yesterday morning I had the chance to catch-up on a conference call with the folks from Garmin.  The goal of the call was to get answers on a potpourri of different topics that you have asked questions on (or just areas that I was curious about).  The call centered around four major areas (listed below), plus a fifth topic area I’ll discuss later in the week.

So let’s get into it!

Garmin Vector Pedal Based Power Meter (formerly Metrigear)

Last summer/fall (September 2010) just prior to Interbike Garmin announced the acquisition of Metrigear, which was working on a pedal based power meter.  This new power meter would be easily swappable between bikes, while also giving left/right power data.  At the time of the acquisition announcement no specific timeline was given (in fact, they went out of their way to say nothing was decided).  You may remember my detailed discussion with the founder of Metrigear Clark Foy about the shift to Garmin.  About two months later during their earnings call they announced they were targeting “H2 CY2011” for availability.  Since then in each successive earnings call the statement has remained the same.

When asked yesterday morning they noted that they are still on track for H2 CY2011.  Garmin’s Justin McCarthy noted that the Vector team has “met all internal dates specified with flying colors”.

I asked whether or not Team Garmin-Cervelo was using Vector now, or had recently.  He said that “We had the team early on do some testing for us”, however that as they’ve neared closer to release they “pulled back and kept it under wraps to avoid major leaks and having competitors grab data” on the units.

One might think this would be silly, but the competitive landscape for pedal based power meters is incredibly fierce.  While four companies have publicly announced plans (Garmin, Polar, O-Synce, and Brim Brothers – though Brim brothers is technically a cleat based power meter), there are others who have not yet announced plans.  There’s little doubt within power meter manufacture circles that pedal based power meters will be a significant market driver a few years from now – and all of these companies (includes ones I’ve talked with that haven’t publicly announced plans) are very protective of any information leaking out ahead of time.

I then moved onto whether or not the pedal type has been determined. I was told that while a pedal type has been selected for “the initial release”, it remains to be publicly announced.

Speaking of pedals, I asked whether or not the team was still planning on committing to update older Garmin units via firmware to support Vector when it releases.  Justin noted that "we haven't come up with a finalized list as far as which devices we’ll go forward with (for Left/Right power support)”.  However he did continue to confirm that all devices that support ANT+ power meters today will still be able to read consolidated power information from Garmin Vector, it just wouldn’t have Left/Right pedal data broken out separately.  The reason for this is that the industry wide ANT+ power meter device profile had to be updated to include the addition of left/right power, so older units wouldn’t understand that data otherwise – but again, Vector will be broadcasting the generic power output measures that any ANT+ device can understand.  I would fully expect other 3rd party companies to implement support for Garmin Vector’s Left/Right data shortly after release.

Finally, last but not least I asked what we’d see at Eurobike/Interbike as far as details on Vector goes and was told that we can “expect some sort of messaging”, but exactly what will be released information-wise is still being decided.

New Garmin GPS Watch For Later This Year

Back about a month ago there was a tiny single sentence note at the end of a Velonews article mentioning that a new Garmin watch would be introduced this fall that would include power meter support.  Somewhat astoundingly almost nobody picked up on it (except the one person kind enough to forward it to me).  I stashed it away like a little squirrel until I got back from my honeymoon to catch up with the Garmin guys on.

They confirmed that a new watch is indeed planned for sometime this calendar year, but wouldn’t go as far as to say it would be in the fall.  Specifically it was noted “no announcement data has been decided on yet internally”.  Further, he confirmed that it was definitely not going to be out at Eurobike or Interbike (September).

I asked whether this was a FR310XT replacement and was told that “We’ve been looking at taking different aspects - the most positives aspects from all our other watches, specifically our running watches and cycling devices” and “combining things that like in different products and putting it into different packages."

It was noted that ultimately “we're always trying to take the great things and roll it into one package, much like the Montana recently - a do it all device that you can use for various activities” – in reference to the Garmin Montana series, which while not a cycling device – is a single device that attempts to bridge many other outdoor activities (Hiking/Marine/Geocaching) in the same way the Forerunner 310XT bridges across the different sports a triathlete competes in (Swim/Bike/Run).

Since inevitably you’ll ask whether or not I think this is the FR310XT replacement watch, the answer is: I’m not sure. In many ways, if they take the FR610, add power meter support and then toss in waterproofing – then you’ve essentially got a FR310XT replacement.  As for whether or not to wait for it to come out (the most common question I get daily), I don’t think you should.  The reason being that since it won’t be announced until at least October (if not November, though I wouldn’t expect them to want to miss the Holiday buying season), it really ends up being past the Northern Hemispheres triathlon and running season.  Thus it’s five months till Christmas from now – that’s time you could be using a watch versus not having one. Just my two cents though.

Firmware Updates

Firmware updates are always a popular subject amongst Garmin owners.  I had a few items that I was curious about, based on some recent updates that they’ve pushed out.  Specifically they were:

1-Second Recording: Over the past few months Garmin has gone back to a handful of devices and added in 1-second recording in cases where a power meter was previously required (such as the FR310XT).  Further signaling a shift in thinking, new devices like the FR610 came with the option to turn it on/off.  I asked whether or not this would extend back to the few remaining watches without it (FR110/FR210/FR405/FR410), and whether we should expect to see an update for those.  They commented that there are “No set plans, but we’ve had great feedback from introducing it to other watches – both new and old”.

ANT+ Wireless Downloads for Edge series: You may remember back a couple months ago when I showed off how you can use the Wahoo Fitness iPhone/iPad/iPod dongle to wirelessly download your workout from the Garmin FR310XT/FR610/FR405/FR410 watches straight to the internet (Garmin Connect, Training Peaks, e-mail, etc…) - all without a computer involved.

During some discussions with Garmin about it at the time I asked whether or not they considered adding support to download workouts from the Edge cycling series devices as well, which today require connection via USB.  This is because there’s nothing technical that keeps them from adding in the feature for wireless downloads, it just would require a firmware update.  Given the huge pile of feedback that you provided in that post, I figured now would be a good time for an update.  They said that it’s “definitely something that we’ve chatted about", though it’ “most likely will not be in the next firmware update, but is still being discussed”. So, there’s still hope that we’ll see it come to fruition.

Max Speed addition, and Clock removal for FR610: Finally, I asked about both of these feature requests, given I hear (and see) a ton of requests for both a Max Speed data field to be added, as well as the ability to remove the clock from the active data fields during an activity. Garmin noted that they were definitely very aware of both requests and are looking at implementing them and have had a fair bit of discussions around it, but didn’t commit beyond that.

Garmin GTU Updates and Product Progression

Last but not least we’ve got the Garmin GTU10.  This is the tracking device that I used during Ironman Boise 70.3 where a surprisingly huge number of you tracked me in real time.  This is actually a bit of an interesting product from Garmin because as Justin noted, “The GTU10 wasn't market specific, we wanted to see how folks would really end up using it.  Now that we're nearing mid-summer we're seeing a lot of interest within the fitness and hiking markets”.

He noted that it was somewhat of an unusual launch for them in that they really weren’t sure how people would take the product, or how they’d ultimately end up using it.  They’ve since found that folks are doing a lot of interesting things with it, from tracking in athlete events like I did, to permanently installing them in cars as their own personal LoJack device.

I asked whether or not we’d see an website update to allow one to publicly share the tracking map – which would make it more competitive in cases where you wanted to share position with more than a handful of people.  He said that “It's a big one we've discussed, but there are no set dates at this time.”

He did however note that "We are putting a lot of thought into the GTU, we think there's a lot of cool things that can happen within the product and that we evolve from” in future iterations.  That’s good news, as I think with a little tweaking (and an ANT+ chip) this could be a blockbuster product for endurance athletes and live tracking, especially given it’s very reasonable $180 price point.  While cell phone tracking programs are good in many scenarios, they don’t work as well in race cases, or ones requiring significant battery life (the GTU10 can go weeks at a time).

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That’s all I’ve got for now, thanks for reading!

My Top 8 Race Day (and Pre-Race) Fails

I’m a firm believer that what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger.  Al Franken summed that up pretty well with his quote:

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.”

I also believe that a large part of my ramblings here is to provide you with an educational experience.  Specifically, one where you learn from all my mistakes, perhaps thereby minimizing the number of them that you choose to repeat yourself. 

So in an effort to illuminate some of my more 'highly talented’ moments, I’ve put together the below list.  If nothing else, I assure you it will provide plenty of entertainment.

The Pre-Race Screw-ups:

Ya know what I’ve found?  That some of the most embarrassing screw-ups actually occur before the race even starts.  I think this is because I can’t even blame fatigue at this point…just…well…my own stupidity.  Here’s when things went wrong before the starting horn even sounded:

1) Ironman Providence 70.3 2009: Forgetting all nutrition

Usually when you have two people packing for the same race you double your chances of packing success.  But not in this case.  Despite going through multiple Race Day and Race Travel checklists, we found ourselves with our race day nutrition not exactly making the trip up to Rhode Island for the race.  With a longer event like a half-iron, you spend considerable time ensuring that you train with the nutrition that you plan to use on the course.  So when you realize the morning before that you lack all of it, you pretty much freak out.  Then go ahead and multiply that freak out factor by two people people (myself and The Girl).  Let’s just say it was not good times.

Thankfully though my parents came to the rescue and found the only place that had it in stock – about an hour away in Boston, and drove up and back to get it for us.  Yup, they’re awesome.

2) Nautica New York City Triathlon 2010: Forgetting my swim goggles…and then more…

Like many big inner city races, they are filled with lots of complexities and things to keep track of.  Yet while I managed to navigate all of the more complex items…I inexplicably managed to forget my goggles on race day.  See the day before I had gone to get in a swim workout and taken a different bag. Somehow in the packing activities the night before the swimbag didn’t get set back into my regular bag – despite my packing list.  Thus fast forward to race morning and I find myself on the banks of the river with thousands of my dearest friends trying to borrow a pair of goggles.  Turns out I’d find one friendly women who’d lend me a pair of goggles.  Pink goggles.  Pink leaking goggles.  But goggles nonetheless… My pre-race fails (and during race fails) wouldn’t end there though, but it’s probably best you just wander on over and read the first portion of the race report.

3) DC Triathlon 2011: Being unable to shift/change gears

In retrospect I knew this was coming…but I just didn’t think it would get as bad as it would as quickly as it did.  See I was having a bit of an issue in the weeks prior to the race where when I would go and shift into certain gears the chain would drop (fall off towards the outside).  This was being caused by a bit of damage to 4-5 gear teeth on my large chain ring (that’s the front gear).  But somehow in the craziness in the days prior to the race I forgot about this only to be painfully reminded about it as I was riding my bike the short quarter mile or so to bike check-in the evening prior.  Despite the onsite bike mechanics best efforts to remedy the situation there wasn’t much he could do aside from get it to stay perfectly in one gear with the sage advice to ‘pretty much avoid shifting’.  So I did.  And if you watch the video from that race you’ll notice that I pretty much never shifted.  But in the end it worked out with a 3rd place overall, so perhaps I should break my bike more often.

Fear not though, my chain ring is now happily swapped out for a new one…albeit post-race.

4) Boise 70.3 2011 - Main zipper on tri suit failed just prior to start

Just a week prior to the DCTri chain ring incident I found myself at the start of Boise 70.3.  Everything pre-race was going along just great.  Bike was racked, transition area all setup, and all the prerequisite port-o-potty visits had gone swimmingly well.  I even got some sunscreen applied.  And then I went to zip up my one-piece triathlon suit.  As I did so the fabric connecting the zipper piece to the tri-suit piece got caught on itself and then subsequently ripped itself away from the tri-suit while at the same time damaging some of the zipper itself.  After a bit of analysis I attempted to make the situation better…but that only made it worse.  Before I knew it – I had a completely open and permanently stuck tri-suit.  My solution?  A small army of safety pins pulling the suit closed like a scary looking voodoo doll, especially when some of the safety pins would pop loose, sharp ends and all.  Not at all my most fashionable hour…

The On Course Race Fails:

While it seems that getting to the starting line is half the battle…the other half is clearly on the course.  Here’s my top on course Homer Simpson ‘Doh!’ moments:

1) Rev3 Knoxville Oly Triathlon 2010 - Getting hit by a car during bike leg

There’s little more terrifying or astounding in triathlon than a bike crash.  But when you add a car to the mix, the holy crap scale increases dramatically.  And assuming one ends up relatively alright (though everything's ‘relative’ when you involve cars), it will always make for an interesting story.  And since the whole story is far to long to type here, I instead typed it up in my original race report.

2) St. John's Triathlon 2010 - Three flat tires…one race

Come to think about it, 2010 really wasn’t a good year for me and luck at races.  In fact, I didn’t even mention getting severe food poisoning the night before the Las Vegas Tri last year.  But this paragraph is instead about the St. John’s Triathlon up in Newfoundland, Canada.  I was pretty excited about this race for a slew of reasons – namely that it was in The Girl’s hometown.  The swim went…swimmingly, and I was quickly onto the bike ready to rock in roll – with a very solid chance of nailing the overall podium.

But…the Newfoundland pavement gods wouldn’t have it that way.  I’d end up flatting about 5-6 miles into the race.  No worries, I was able to quickly tear off the tire and stick on my spare tubular.  Then, just as I started going, I found my other wheel had flatted. Lacking any more wheels I kept going on the flatted tubular to complete the first loop (6 more miles). I was lucky to get a sag wheel swap for the flat tire as I passed transition.  Yet my flat tires weren’t done yet.  By the end of the race I’d end up flatting my newly replaced tubular yet again.  Needless to say, at $100+ per tire, it was a very expensive race day…

3) Kirkland Triathlon 2010 – Falling and face planting while running

Continuing my 2010 season of falls and fails, I went into September at a race in my hometown of Seattle.  The swim went fine, and the bike so-so, but I was really looking forward to the run since that’s my strongest sport.  And with a sprint race having ‘just’ a 5K run, it’s pretty much balls to the wall.  Add to that the nice cool climate of Seattle (compared to the sauna of DC) and I was ready to rumble. 

Well, turns out I should have said ‘rumble and tumble’.  As I was navigating the turnaround at the out and back of the race I managed to slip and face plant right onto the ground.  Astoundingly my face wasn’t damaged, but my leg did get fairly cut up.  The cool part here though is most definitely the gash and blood stream running down my leg mixing with the light rain to produce a very Hollywood horror movie like situation.  In fact, it pretty much looks like I was shot. Thus, let’s be honest, that’s just pure awesome.

4) Escape from Ft. Desoto 2009: Having to stop in the middle of the run course for directions

This was my first triathlon of the season that year and I was really excited about throwing down on the sprint course. The swim went fine, and the bike went exceedingly well. I was onto the run and screaming along when I got to a section of sand dunes and beach (I should mention that neither of which are ideal for running) which had conflicting signage. One sign pointed one direction, while navigational cones pointed another direction.

See one of the hazards about occasionally lucking into the pointy end of the pack is that there isn’t a stream of folks to follow. Sometimes you end up having to blaze a trail…quite literally in this case. Another runner (and competitor) came along, but we were both equally as confused as to which way to go. In the end we took a gamble and lucked out, but it did cost me a touch bit of time and probably a few places on the overall standings. But I certainly can’t complain with an AG podium either.

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So I just rounded up my top race day fails, but I wanna hear from you!  What have you got hidden away that others can laugh at learn from?  Remember, points are awarded for both the mistake…and the recovery.

Thanks for reading!

Quick request post/note for your suggestions on guest posts

Just a quick post before the main post of the day in a bit…

If you remember way back to the big survey I did in February one of the items that you expressed interest in was guest posts from some companies.  Not in a PR/marketing sense (none of us want any of that action), but rather in a ‘How we do it’ sense.  For example – how exactly does a given company take their products from back of the napkin ideas to your hands.  There’s a lot of interest from a number of sports technology related companies on this front, but I really want to hear from you folks.

In an attempt to keep poking at Google+, I’ve started a bit of a discussion there.  I’m finding this an interesting way to do it simply because it allows more interaction amongst yourselves around ideas.  It’s also nice in that it lacks some of the formality of a blog post or the limitations of Twitter.  It’s almost like mini-forums.

So, without further ado – feel free to wander on over and leave your comments…or leave your comments on someone else's comments.  Or just read the comments.  And if you can’t leave a comment there, you know you’ll always feel my comment love here as well.  Comment away!

A weekend of Cycling, Snow Skiing, Crankworx and Ziplining

Given I’m out on the west coast this week for work, I decided to sneak in a bit of activity north of the border up in Whistler, Canada – about 4 hours from my parents place outside of Seattle.  We found some sweet last minute deals for about $109US a night for accommodations slope side in the village, certainly can’t pass that up!

Upon arriving on Friday evening we headed up north, arriving in the village a bit later than we hoped due to traffic.  But since I’m still all dorked up time zone wise, it meant that it was easy to wake up early, and thus we were up early and ready to ride Saturday morning even before the breakfast places were ready.  Since I had a simple 1hr 30m ride to get in we decided to just head north on the main route, continuing through the mountains.  I should clarify that ‘we’ is my Dad and I.  We’re actually doing a century ride together next weekend here in Seattle, it’ll be quite a bit of fun!

The weather was spectacular with it being warm and sunny, and of course the scenery was equally as awesome.  I just love riding up in the mountains (primarily ones with topped snow) – just wish I could do it more often.

After we finished up our ride we quickly transitioned into clothing appropriate for skiing (shorts and t-shirts) and headed to the lifts.

Yup…that’d be ski lifts, I didn’t misspeak.

Two chairlifts later and we’d be close to snow and ready to hop on a short shuttle ride that would take us to the base of the final chairlift.  The bus was an interesting combination of skiers, snowboarders, rock climbers and tourists.

Once we boarded the final chairlift, skiable snow was finally nearby:

Upon arriving at the top we found ourselves at 7,500ft and with a great view of the glacier area below, which is the primary skiing area…but this was not before we viewed a slew of warnings signs:

…and a small tunnel of stickers.  The tunnel went under the end of the T-Bar lift.

The glacier opens up early in the morning for ski, snowboard, and aerial camps.  The aerial camps are probably some of the more amazing spectacles to watch, as young athletes perfected their moves into gigantic airbags:

You can see a skier below – inverted – as they work on a front flip.

We had quite a bit of fun getting in a few short hours of skiing once the place opened to the public at noon before closing a couple hours later. Because of the lifts and what-not it did take a bit of time to get back up again for each run.  You could actually ski both in the glacier as well as outside of it on a run down to the lodge.  We found that the outside run got us far more skiing in compared to the glacier.  And with the T-Bar lines being long, the Bus+Lift combo actually turned out pretty quick.  All in my Garmin FR610 said we got in some 10.63 miles of descending runs, totaling 8,867ft of descent.  Not too shabby for a mid-July day, though it certainly helps when you can drop on average 2,000ft of vertical per run via the long way – albeit lasting only about 2-3 minutes per run. Obviously we didn’t get in a ton of runs…

But that’s alright – at least I was able to check off a single outdoor ski day for the season…which is somewhat sad panda coming from someone who grew up as a competitive ski racers often doing 4+ days a week on the snow.

Once we finished up there was really only one logical way to wrap up our chairlift rides back down:

Yup…ice cream cone while riding the chairlifts in ski boots in the middle of summer.  Brilliant.

After skiing we walked over to the main village area to catch the start of Crankworx and the Redbull Joyride competition.  This is essentially a massive mountain biking event that culminates in a 5:30PM multi-hour showdown between the top athletes in the sport, all flying through the air. The place was packed – more so than for the Olympic games when I was here last.

Because the post is getting pretty long already – I’m going to stick with just a massive pile of pictures I took.

Note the next three photos.  This is precisely why I generally avoid mountain biking.

Finally, last but not least, I bring you to Sunday morning.  We decided to catch an early morning zipline tour through the forest. Here’s my dad just leaving the platform on the longest run we’d do that day at about 1,000 feet – it ended far away where the river temporarily disappears from view. 

I took a few videos, but my video editing software is being problematic – so instead I’ll just take a quick screen capture of my dad, hanging upside down with arms wide open, more than a hundred feet above the rushing river below (left side of the photo in blue):

You know what’s great about ziplining though? No athletic effort required. You simply sit, clip on and enjoy the view.

I hope you all had a great weekend! Thanks for reading!