Behind the scenes: LeMond Fitness

The guys at LeMond Fitness offered a tour of their facility over a year ago, when I first met the at the 2010 ANT+ Symposium.  Given I’m often in Seattle to visit family, it was just a matter of time before my schedule and their schedules matched.  And finally, last week I got a chance to go check out their Woodinville, WA facility.  Woodinville is about 20-25 minutes away from downtown Seattle, towards the Cascade mountains.  It’s most well known for its wineries, many of which you’re probably familiar with – such as Chateau Ste. Michelle.  These days though, much of the surrounding farmland is now gone – replaced by office parks, homes and concrete.

But overlooking some of the last of the farmland, and sitting directly next to the most popular running/cycling path in the Pacific Northwest (Burke Gilman Trail) – is the headquarters of LeMond Fitness.

Most of you have probably seen LeMond Fitness spin bikes and other indoor cycling equipment at the gym.  But last year is when they started to make themselves better known in consumer circles when they introduced the LeMond Revolution Trainer, which is a wind trainer (meaning it uses wind resistance as opposed to magnetic or fluid resistance) that you attach your bike to, albeit without a back wheel.  Instead your bike mounts directly via the cassette. Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t reviewed a unit yet.  Turns out there was a minor communication SNAFU where they thought I had a unit shipped for review last spring.  No worries though, that’s getting fixed. The most recent stockpile arrived shortly before I did, and within that pile sits a trainer for me to review.

But enough with the backstory though, let’s get onto the tour!

When we arrived at the office park, I found it appropriate that a FedEx freight truck was just pulling up to the loading dock.  In a matter of just a few minutes it very quickly loaded its contents, managed to do a modified donut in the parking lot (impressive), and then headed on out.  But what was going on just inside of that loading door?

This.

A gigantic pile of Revolution trainers and other assorted LeMond fitness gym equipment.

The above pile of Revolution Trainers was just delivered prior to my arrival.  Like virtually everything in the cycling industry, manufacturing for LeMond Fitness is done in Taiwan.  The trainers are then placed into containers (two for the pile above), and loaded onto a cargo ship.  That ship takes approximately 21 days to get from Taiwan to the Port of Seattle.

At this point it’s unloaded by longshoremen where spends a few more days clearing customers.  Finally it’s loaded onto a truck for the short drive over to Woodinville:

You’ll notice as they arrive onsite at the LeMond headquarters that they are still fully palletized.

I thought it was interesting to see the original manufacturing pallet inventory writing still wrapped in the pallets:

Once here these trainers are shipped all over the world.  LeMond Fitness generally prefers consumers to buy from a local bike shop, so the majority of the trainers head out to bike shops as opposed to directly to an end consumer like you or eye.  In fact, as I was there UPS came by and picked up a small pile headed out to a LBS on the east coast.

But shipments and support parts aren’t limited to just the US.  Check out the below shipment – headed out to US Air Force Base Bagram, Afghanistan.

And shipments aren’t just limited to Revolution trainers either.  Here’s a slew of exercise bikes that will eventually go to a gym near you:

Now you may have noticed that the warehouse seems pretty empty – perhaps a bit overly large.  That’s due to the fact that they just moved into it a few months ago from a much smaller facility.  They wanted plenty of room to grow, given the massive growth they’re seeing.

But this space also gives them plenty of room to store lots of things. Take for example, all of their show floor materials – for events such as Interbike:

And they have got their own gym in there.  Apparently they’ve got a bit of a group TRX routine going on – one that multiple employees commented that they were still sore from the previous days workout – and these folks looked pretty darn in shape already.  Back towards the windows there is all the usual equipment you’d see in a gym from treadmills to bikes to free weights.

Stashed in the far back corner there’s the ‘Office Party’ pile, which is a giant pile of equipment that will ultimately end up on Craigslist.  This is mostly just various pieces and parts that are being sold ‘as-is’.

Next up is the development area.  Everything you see below is part of the development area, which actually extends to the left a bit as well.

So what do they do here?  Well, everything from testing of their own new designs for new pieces of equipment – to improving old designs, to testing competitors equipment.

Below is an example of them taking apart some potential options for brake units, merely as a way to redesign that portion of the unit – though not for an entirely new product:

One thing I was surprised to hear (separately from a few different folks) was how involved Greg LeMond actually is from a design standpoint.  I assumed it was mostly a name thing, but in reality, he’s actually here pretty frequently – and he’s constantly giving the team direction on new products.  I heard it described a few times along the line of ‘The man has a 1,000 ideas  for new products and improving others, and is constantly delivering those ideas to us’.  From the discussions it was clear that is on the trigger side of innovation at the company, though he ultimately empowers the team there to execute on his ideas/concepts.

One little example that happened to be easy to convey was the below bike.  Apparently on a trip a few weeks ago he sat down in it, decided he hated the seat – and then took a saw out and actually sawed the seat to his liking.  What you see below is now the new design.

I asked if his involvement has shifted from the past (with either more or less involvement), where everything was focused on the gym side.  They noted that the Revolution Trainer really added a renewed sense of innovation in the company, one that they’re really excited to drive towards.  The trainer was really the reincarnation of an idea that Greg LeMond had seen previously many years prior and wanted to improve upon.  And that’s not to say that they aren’t looking to improve it.  They’re listening to the feedback and working to see how they can address the only issue that most folks find (the noise).  From Greg LeMond’s standpoint though, he would only release a product that absolutely felt like the road – even if that meant something that also sounded like a small jet engine.

Next to the development area was the parts depot.  This is where they stockpiled parts and accessories for when your LeMond product needs a little bit of love:

Of course, before you get a new part shipped out to you – you’ll probably talk with the support team.  They’re just a few yards away, right inside the more cube-like area.

Though I suspect that your cubes don’t have a Noah’s ark of every LeMond product sitting out-front:

Like the boxes you saw shipping off to Afghanistan – their support team was pretty proud of helping out soldiers as well.  Here were two certificates of appreciations from US Forces in Iraq.

Last but not least…LeMond Fitness’s grand expansion plans.  As I alluded to earlier, the company is expanding rapidly. Part of the reason to move into the larger facility was for the warehouse and development area, and part of it was to also house employees working on future projects.  The following hall of cubes are empty today, but are quickly being tagged for new employees they plan on hiring shortly.

With that, my pre-Thanksgiving Day tour was complete!

Just want to say a quick thanks to Matt, Devon and the rest of the crew there for spending a bit of time the afternoon prior to Thanksgiving to give me (and you) a tour of the place.

Thanks for reading!

A Thanksgiving Weekend in Seattle

I flew out to Seattle Tuesday night, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US – to enjoy a bit of relaxation after a rather busy fall, with my family (it’s where I grew up).  Of course, in the end the weekend was full of stuff – but there was still some relaxation mixed in.

And, there was a bit of DCR sports tech mixed in.  I’d long been invited to come check out the LeMond Fitness facility, which is only about 15 minutes from my parents house.  So Wednesday afternoon I finally took them up on their offer and headed over to check things out.

The facility there does quite a bit – from design to development/test to support to centralized shipping and receiving.  The only thing it doesn’t actually do is full blown manufacturing.  I’ve got all the cool photos for another post tomorrow, cause otherwise I’d never get through this post.

Later on that night we went up to check out my brothers indoor soccer game.  His team won, likely due to his three goals.  As a kid I spent many hours in this facility watching my mom play soccer (and us as kids running around all over the place).  It was like a little flashback.

Thursday being Turkey Day we spent the whole day at the house.  Of course, the focus was clearly all things Turkey.  And a seemingly never ending assembly line of food ending up in my belly.  All of which culminated in Mr. Turkey:

My Mom still has an old hand mixer that she was given years ago.  It’s always been the one to use for making mashed potatoes, and astoundingly – despite being made in December of 1968 (says the boxes date of birth) – it works flawlessly nearly 43 years later.  I wonder if my Garmin watch will work in the 2050’s?

On Friday, The Girl and I decided that it was time to attempt some physical activity.  Sure, we’d been walking a bit here and there – but nothing at an aerobic level.  So we went down to the newly renovated Rec Center, paid our $4.50 each (out of town fee) – and enjoyed an impressive array of equipment.  First we warmed up on some exercise bikes, then did about 20 minutes of running on a treadmill, and finally, finished up with some swimming.

Well, in a lazy river pool.

With bubbles. Lots of bubbles.

And water slides.

Yes, water slides that have digital laser timers to record how fast each run was.

Seriously.  When you started (whether with or without a tube, single or dual), it tripped a starting timer.  That timer ran until you tripped the laser at the end of the waterslide some 11-13 seconds later, where it then displayed the time on a clock on the wall.

Yup, public Rec Center.  The Girl and I decided that if our local Rec Center had this setup, we’d likely have post-swim workout races (probably rather competitive too) to try and best each others time.

Onto Friday, and more water.  In this case the never ending pouring rain of skiing.  The local ski areas have had considerable snow over the last week – but unfortunately, by Saturday morning it turned to rain.  But, we took what skiing we could get in.

I was also testing out some Garmin Rhino 655’s that are two way radio’s with integrated GPS.  Basically, they’re like an increda-version of your normal handheld radios that you might use while skiing or hiking.  But with all the outdoor features of a Garmin handheld.

They do crazy stuff like automatically transmitting your exact location each time you talk.  From there you see the location on a map (basemap, topo map, or satellite imagery).

More on this in a bit, but really cool stuff.  I honestly didn’t expect these to be as cool as they were when they arrived from Garmin to try out.  The fact that I can automatically request and receive a location update from one of my friends (even if they as a human don’t respond), is pretty impressive – all without cell coverage.

The radios were of particular note as we tried to best each other on the basically empty mountain (I think there were about 6 people on the entire mountain, including lift operators).  Given both my brother and I ski raced fairly competitively growing up, we were up for a game of ‘who can hit the fastest speed on the Garmin’.  With the radios we could easily communicate whether the line of our choice was clear, and then give it a shot.  Here’s the day’s fastest run (me, by exactly 1MPH):

Going a bit fast…

(Yes, my tuck position is a bit high, not terribly aero.  It’s been a few years since I’ve needed to use it on a daily basis.)

And in case you were curious, here’s the recorded speed – 53.9MPH:

With that, our weekend was pretty much all set.  We went out Saturday night to celebrate my Dad’s 60th birthday…crossin’ the big six-O!  Only to be followed up later by hot out of the oven freshly made biscotti from my mom.  The majority of which is sitting in my suitcase just a few feet away from me on the plane…

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  And thanks for reading!

The mother of all Triathlon/Endurance Sports Black Friday Deals listing

So the other night I started collecting some of the deal e-mails I was getting from various companies, intending on putting together a bit of a Friday post on Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals relating to endurance sports.  But once I stumbled on this linked post from Michael Hutto, my little list looked like a rather wimpy collection.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it lost ‘collection’ status next to Michael’s massive library of deals.

So instead of duplicating what he’s done – I really just suggest you go check his list out instead.

There’s also another good pile of options on this Slowtwitch thread as well.

And if you’re trying to decide what to buy sports-technology wise, just think of Monday’s ‘2011 Sports Technology Recommendations’ post as a gift guide.  Or a cash-spending guide.  Or something to make you feel better about all the turkey you ate on Thursday.

Also watch my Twitter feed, because as unannounced things pop-up that I think are worthy, I’ll notate it.  Though, it’s gotta be really worthy – not just sorta worthy.  As an example, Garmin.com’s BF sales wouldn’t even qualify as barely worthy.  Having the price be equal to what others already charge doesn’t really count in my book.  To catch my attention – it basically has to be both an awesome product and be the best price I’ve seen for it.

Finally, I just want to again thank everyone for all the incredible comments on my Philly Race Report post from Wednesday, I really appreciate it.  Your comments and flood of e-mails really mean a lot to me.  You’re just awesome people.

Additionally, many folks requested that The Girl (aka, my wife) write up her race report.  So she caved to your pressure cooker and posted her own race report last night – right on her blog.  So now you can read all about her first marathon, and some of our pre and post antics that didn’t quite make my post.

Thanks for reading,  and have a great weekend everyone!

App Review: SwimRadar–Finding pools while travelling

(I’ve long been asked to do app reviews.  And I have done a few here and there, as well as written about them for various publications.  At the moment the number of developers asking for my app reviews far exceeds my time to do them – yes, I know, I need a testing minion – so I decided to make them a bit shorter than my typical in depth review.  I’m also only doing them when an app sufficiently piques my interest or really differentiates itself.  Over time I’ll also do some roundup ones as well.  Anyway…onto the app!)

Back about a month ago I was contacted by a developer that had put together a new app that allows you to search for pools both domestically and internationally – right from your phone.  Longtime readers know that I’ve always recommended SwimmersGuide.com as an awesome (and totally free) way to find a pool.  Since I travel a ton, this has always been great.

But the challenge with SwimmersGuide – especially overseas – is knowing the lay of the land from a nearby city standpoint.  You couldn’t just put in an address and have it show you all the nearby pool options.  Instead, you had to specify a city/county.  In some cases, with larger cities – this could mean it gave you a massive list of pools with locations rather far from your actual location.  Making matters worse, when I was travelling overseas I’d often have to try and decode the different ways different countries presented street addresses – even more complex in non-Latin characters.

SwimRadar solves both of those problems.  First off, you can enter a given address and it’ll tell you exactly how far you are from the place. 

Or, if you don’t know your address – you can just use your phone’s current location and it’ll bring up a cool map of the nearby pools:

Even cooler is that you can filter the pools by different parameters; including length (in yards/meters) and whether it’s indoors/outdoors:

Once you’ve found a nearby pool it’ll list all the details such as contact points and pool information.  Additionally, it’ll just route you straight there.

Speaking of routing – one thing I like is being able to change the radius distance and have it find nearby pools within a larger area.  Why would I want this you might ask?  Well, oftentimes at the end of a business trip I’ll try and sneak an early morning swim in on the way to the airport.  In most cases, I’m looking for anything in between those two points (me and the airport).  This allows me to easily spot a pool along a given route.

In using the app over the past month during beta it has been super-cool in finding pools in places that I probably would have spent more time that I wanted to trying to lookup.  The database today has 5,000 US pools in it, and about 12,000 internationally.  So while you can always use online resources for trying to stake out pools, I simply find an app a heck of a lot easier.  And, in the event you find a pool that it doesn’t know of, you can use the in-app form to get it added to the database:

At this point, I can’t really find any negatives about the app.  They took some initial beta feedback I gave when I first started using it last month – and has incorporated those minor changes.  However, since I’m certain they’ll probably read this – feel free to toss suggestions down below.  They were very receptive to feedback.

In talking with the developer they noted that they’re looking to release an Android version next, followed by a Windows Phone 7 app assuming enough interest.  The app costs $2.99 without ads, and $.99 with ads – and is available to all users in app international app stores.

If you’re like me, the app is just in time to work off some of that Turkey and Pumpkin Pie dinner this holiday weekend as you may be travelling for the holidays.  Enjoy!