New Zealand Part II: Glaciers, peaks, long hikes…and a lot more sheep.

We continue our exploration of New Zealand roughly in the same southerly region that we left off at, departing from Queenstown.

From there we drove a couple hours deeper into the mountains towards the Milford Sound region, staying in Te Anau (pronounced tea ah new).  This is a tiny little town on a lake with easy access to everything in the region (well, except late night food).

A Little Boat Ride

Our first morning there we headed up super-early, well ahead of most tourists, into the massive national park.  Our goal was to drive the few hours deep into the park and catch the first boat of the day at 8:50AM.

The drive was through stunning scenery, but for most of it, the weather was clouded and rainy.  Perhaps one of the more memorable (visible) pieces was the tunnel – which wasn’t like a typical tunnel where the starting and ending elevation are the same.  Nope, this one descended downwards – and quite steeply at that…and with road quality that might qualify as ‘off road’.  Oh, and it was only 1.5 lanes wide.  And since we were prior to 9AM…it was a free-for-all.

At either end of the tunnel were these large birds which simply hung out, waiting to toy with tourists.  Except, in this case The Girl got to take a long stream of photos as one of the birds played with a beer bottle that someone else had left behind.

But…back to our planned boat ride.  You board one of many available boats for a couple hour cruise around the sound, which on a sunny day would allow you to see the 5,000+ foot peak that’s not entirely visible in the picture below.

So instead, we focused on things closer to the ground…like the water.  Which, as you can see, is astonishingly clear:

And the green moss is also incredibly bright:

A number of times we got escorted by Flipper and his friends:

And I certainly can’t forget the seals either.  They pretty much just barked and jumped around, entertaining themselves just as much as us.

The boat also got us rather close to a number of very high waterfalls, like the one below.  And by ‘close’, I mean, directly under.  A few seconds later, we were in the waterfall.

After getting back on dry-ish land (still raining off and on), we made our way back out of the park, stopping to take in a few short hikes, as well as anything else that looked pretty.  Examples being the river below, and the wild flowers.  This was a brief moment of random sun:

After getting back into town that evening, we went out for a run…at 9PM at night.  The totally awesome thing here is that it doesn’t get dark out until 10:30PM.  It’s amazing.

A Long Hike

The next morning we woke up again early (seems to be the pattern as of late) to catch a water taxi off to a remote beach across the lake.  From there we’d hike about 7-7.5 miles up to the top of a 5,000-6,000ft tall mountain (Mt. Luxmore), and come back down again – all in about 14 or so miles.

The first couple miles of the hike is basically just through deep forest, like the below.  For fun, we took along a few Garmin Rhino’s that we’d been lent, and had loaded up some of the GPS tracks of the hike on them, though, with the path as well marked as it was – getting lost wasn’t really going to happen.

At this point in the journey, everything is warm, relatively dry, and smiley:

Eventually we broke out of the trees and across some high meadows, about half-way across this picture we added some clothing layers, as the winds were pretty nasty (at least 20-30MPH):

About 30 minutes later we came across a really well maintained hut, where campers could stay over for the night.  Also of note, is that we started down at the lake in the back of the picture.

Here’s us…using the camera timer technique…with the camera just being a bit too close for my height:

Around these parts, things started to get a bit more cloudy, wet, and windy:

And…some snow was thrown in for good measure:

About an hour after we left the shack, we finally hit the top of the mountain.  Though, with the winds and rains howling – we certainly didn’t stay long.  Here’s proof of the top though:

We were both pretty hungry by then, and found a little couple yard section that was sheltered from the wind by some rocks.  In that section we enjoyed yet another peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I can’t really keep track of how many of these we’ve had this trip – but we’re on our second loaf of bread.  It’s a little concerning.

After we got to the top we quickly retreated back down.  In pretty good time in fact.  There may have been some solid trail running the last few miles.  In fact, this route is used as part of a 60KM trail run race each year (in December).  All in it took us about 6hr and 15m including about an hour of stoppage time for pics/food/etc… With the total mileage being 14.3ish miles.  I think it was a bit longer than that though, since I think this cut a few corners deep in the trees compared to a Garmin unit The Girl was carrying (which was showing about .3-.5 longer, before it ran out of juice).

And finally… the (warm, sandy) beach, and boat back home:

More sheep, wanderings around Wanaka:

Last but not least, a collection of photos from today, as we wandered around the Wanaka area, mostly just exploring a 35km dirt road out to the middle of nowhere (apparently where they filmed Lord of The Rings, but I actually haven’t seen that yet).

I continue to find it interesting that they farm deer here.  Nothing wrong with that at all (Venison!), just one of those things I’m not used to seeing.

Also not at all used to seeing this many sheep:

The road twisted and turned through the farmland – so cows, sheep and everything else routinely wandered across the road.  This cow as just chillin’ by the side of the road:

And finally…

Dear Avis – I can’t yet at this stage apologize for (all) the things your trusty little car has pushed through/over/under/around…mostly because I still have two more days left, both of which involve canyons.  But I can say that I haven’t hit any sheep, cows or goats…yet.  Which, given everything – you should be happy with.  And on the bright side, the car is looking pretty clean after today…

Signed,
Me

Thanks for reading all, and hope your enjoying some of the travel posts!  I’ll keep mixing in regular sport stuff, but since this blog has always been about my little corner of the world, and this happens to be what’s going on in my world…it’s what I end up posting about.

And fear not, I still have more to come.  Aside from the aforementioned days in New Zealand, we’ll actually be celebrating New Years day twice…both as one of the first, and last, places on earth.  Crazy!  Any guesses where?

Have a great weekend!

Pushing the envelope: Ultra-long time tests on Timex Run Trainer andFR910XT

Earlier last month someone on one of the various Internet Forums had asked how long the Garmin FR910XT and Timex Run Trainer would last if you turned off GPS, and instead let it just rely on ANT+ data (heart rate, speed, cadence, power, footpod).

Curious, I decided to set out and try it out.  It probably doesn’t surprise you to know that many of my posts here start off as questions or inquiries from you – be it here directly, or on forums and posts.  Despite a massive backlog/list of post ideas, I’m always looking for cool post ideas – and this was definitely one of them!

The first challenge was how was I going to do a workout that lasted at least 20+ hours (the known battery length of the GPS on for the FR910XT)?  Well, let me tell ya right up front, you won’t see me doing any of those crazy deca-Ironman races (10 times the length of an Ironman).  Thus, that ruled that out.  And even if I wanted to ‘just’ do two back to back Ironman’s…I’m reasonably certain that I’d probably just end up stopping at the first Dairy Queen I saw and ruining the whole test.

So, I was left to figure out a different way of getting 20+ continuous hours of ANT+ data.  And that brought me to the ANT+ Simulator.  The ANT+ simulator is used by companies developing and testing their ANT+ devices, to validate that the devices integrate properly within the ANT+ ecosystem.  It’s much easier than hiring a bunch of high schoolers to stand ready on treadmills that pedal or run on command.

Plus, it’s free.  So I grabbed it from the ANT+ site and went to town.  The tool allows me to create up to eight sensor types, each with different streaming data. I decided that cycling had the most ANT+ sensor types available for use during sport, so I went with that: Power, Speed/Cadence, and Heart Rate.  But since the Timex Run Trainer doesn’t support a cycling profile for ANT+ devices, I also added in the footpod too – which it does support.

I then configured the tool to provide a sweeping dataset, so it would be easy for me to glance over and validate it was still both transmitting data – and thus that the unit was receiving data.  This way it looked like the cyclists was constantly speeding up or slowing down, and the same for power and heart rate.

Then I got low-tech, I went and grabbed a simple kitchen timer.  Now this thing only goes to 24 hours, but after that it just resets itself.  Given I could at least remember the day I started, I was ready to go.

And off they went!

Now, this part isn’t terribly exciting.  They just sat there.  And the numbers changed.  And then they continued sitting there.  With both units the backlight was turned off, and the GPS also turned off.  Here’s what they looked like:

In the middle of this test, the Motoactv joined the fun for its initial battery life tests.  In fact, the ANT+ simulator would stay running for over a month straight, just being there for any tests I needed.  I had both running and cycling data streams being outputted constantly.

A few days later, the FR910XT’s battery finally beeped that it was getting low.  But, I wasn’t about to simply turn it off.  Nope, this thing was going to go until it died.  And about an hour later, at 56hrs and 52mins, it finally turned off.

Now, the FR910XT (like all devices with recent Garmin firmware on them) is designed to shutoff with a battery reserve.  This reserve is to ensure that the unit can properly shut down and avoid data loss.  In the case of the FR910XT, this is 3% remaining.  I haven’t tested the FR310XT in this same manner, but I would expect that it’ll probably end up roughly in the same battery ballpark as the FR910XT.

So, for a watch that’s ‘marketed’ to get 20 hours of battery life – I was pretty jazzed at getting 56+ hours.  Dang!

So what’s the only problem?  Finding something that can actually read a Garmin device file that long.  The TCX file is over 75MB! Most file TCX activity sizes are a few 1-2MB.  The compressed .FIT file is 2,000KB, again, most file sizes are 100-200KB.  For example, Garmin Connect fails on upload:

Sport Tracks truncates the first 35 hours (though, it does look fun up until that point):

But Training Peaks?  Well, it did the trick:

Here’s the graph file, though it too had some issues with data after 35 hours – which leads me to believe that the unit itself may have truncated the data.  But, to be fair, these tests were run on earlier beta versions of the firmware.  But TP did show the correct total time above, whereas Sport Tracks did not – so all is not lost.  In either case, I’ll probably try giving it another go once I have another 56 hours to kill without use of the watch.

You can see the up/down pattern of the sweeping ANT+ simulator.  I think I had changed the sweep rate a bit later on, hence the change in pattern.

But what about the Timex Run Trainer?

Well, it kept on going.

And going.

And still going.

No seriously, days later, it was still going.

See, the Timex Run Trainer’s limitation is really actually more memory than battery.  The unit is designed to last 8-10 hours in active GPS mode (where battery is the limitation), but lasts 6 weeks in standby watch mode (before the battery dies).  So around the 20 hour marker of recording data it beeped that memory was low, and shortly thereafter that memory was full.  Nonetheless, it kept on displaying my data without issue in real-time.

And in fact, it continued to do so – all the way up until 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

At which point, the unit partied like it was 1999, and stopped counting.  The unit simply didn’t know what to do after 99 hours, so it just hung out there.  Now it would keep on displaying ANT+ data, but no further tracking of time was occurring.

Nonetheless – let’s be clear – that’s really damn impressive.  And the biggest kicker?  The battery still showed full availability!  Yup, not a single battery bar had disappeared.

I’d reason/guess that if I left it there it’d probably go 4-6 weeks all-in while being turned on.  But, I use it with other tests and what-not, so it was back into the inventory it went.  But, if you were one of the extreme-nutcase folks that do not just the deca-Ironman’s, but the triple-deca Ironman’s (30 Ironman’s in 30 days), this watch would actually work for you.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed.  It’s pretty clear that for GPS watches, the biggest battery drain is indeed the GPS itself, and not the display.  This is of particular note for the subset of folks that ask about using the FR910XT/FR310XT as a day watch.  In short, if you simply turn off the GPS – it’ll last all day quite easily.

I’m also kinda curious now as to what the battery life might look like on other units with the GPS off.  Maybe I’ll save that for another rainy day…always gotta have a few rainy day projects around. :)

Thanks for reading all!

Actually, P.S.: For those curious about the Motoactv with the new and updated firmware from last week – I’ve been running some fun tests while on vacation.  The new firmware dramatically improves battery life from the previous 2-3 hours, to upwards of 8 hours. I did one today during a 14 mile hike that took about 6hrs, but kept it running afterwards just to see where it’d die.  It finally hit the mat at 8hrs 41m and 13s. 

This is in their new Marathon Mode - with the GPS enabled and a single ANT+ accessory (the footpod), which takes a sample every 3-seconds instead of every second.  Which is basically akin to Garmin’s Smart Recording Mode.  Not ideal for cycling power meters, but generally fine for everything else – and a massive improvement over the initial release.  More in this in the next few days…

New Zealand Part I: Caves, cows, sheep and mountain biking

Most conventional itineraries to New Zealand from the United States usually fly across the Pacific from either LA or San Francisco, with a relatively short 11-13 hour flight straight to Auckland.  But, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I usually don’t do anything the conventional way.  Since we was using award tickets, and booking at the busiest time of the year, our options were somewhat limited.  So instead we took a rather circular route from Washington DC to Frankfurt (Germany), Frankfurt to Singapore, and then Singapore to Auckland.  Yup, three 9-12 hour flights.  Good times!

Upon arrival in Auckland it was two days later and just prior to Santa's arrival, at 11PM on the 24th.  Luckily I found an awesome rate at the airport hotel so we literally walked all of 50 yards from the baggage claim to our hotel room (I highly recommend the Novatel there if you transit Auckland, while the official rate is something crazy, Expedia seems to have it for $108US most nights).

The next morning we grabbed our rental car – complete with the steering wheel on the ‘wrong side of the car’, and headed out on.

We’d end up doing quite a bit of physical map navigation, since phone service (at least for me) has been rather spotty.  I think this is the first place in the world where my phone has had a tough time finding a partner cell company with good signal.

The first day we drove about 300 miles.  Seriously.  We ended up doing a gigantic tour of the northern portion of the north island.  With it being Christmas day, virtually nothing as open except public spaces like national parks (and even then, nobody was there).  Plus, with virtually no cars out on the road, we got around quickly.

Well, except when we found ourselves on a 40-kilometer long mountain pass single-lane dirt road.  There as nothing quick about that ‘major road’ (as per the map).

We both made note of the significant number of road signs on the Northern Island warning drivers about the pitfalls of dangerous driving – such as speeding.  This was only noteworthy in the respect that we found the posted speeds of most roadways to be much higher than we would have expected giving the twisting/turning nature (and occasionally single-lane).  Even a number of times were there was just simply no way we were going to go the posted speed limits on some sections of roadway, just too fast to be safe (and this coming from one who’s not usually concerned with such things).

Anyway, eventually we did arrive at the beach.  We were headed towards Hot Water Beach, which has natural hot springs that feed up to near the waters edge, allowing you to dig a hole and create a hot tub.  This only works though +/- 2hrs from low tide, and with our unanticipated mountain pass single-track adventure taking as long as it did, it somewhat delayed our arrival.  Nonetheless, the beach was great.

From there we headed south down to Waitomo, where we’d overnight before going caving in the morning.

I should point out at this juncture that pretty much all we ate that day was Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches.  Being Christmas day – absolutely nothing in the countryside was open, except for a single convienance store we found.  So our first Christmas together as newlyweds had both a PB&J lunch and dinner.  We make it high class! (Ok, I suppose we could have elevated it another level by adding Vegemite, but decided against it).

You get 5 points if you can correctly pronounce all four location names listed below…

Early the next morning we geared up for a 5+ hour underground adventure.  It would include rappelling over 100ft into the cave, then working our way through flooded passageways via either swimming or tubes, descending quite a bit further into the cave.  The ultimate goal was to check out the awesome inner workings of the cave, as well as the ‘glow worms’, which are little maggots that glow a neon green color in an otherwise pitch black location.  Really cool, like a starry night, but inside.

The whole caving trip was awesome, and I definitely would encourage selecting the longer (5hr) trip over the shorter trips.  While the water was chilly (hence the bulky 5mm wetsuits), and we were certainly rather cold at times, it was still a blast.

After our caving, we stumbled into a small petting farm – complete with all sorts of miniature farm animals.

Our trip to the North Island was pretty short.  We had initially planned to split the time more evenly between the North Island and the South Island, and drive across the two – but after looking at the activities we wanted to do, most were in the South Island.  So after two full days on the northern part of the North Island, we jumped a plane south to Queenstown – which is pretty much the outdoor adventure capital of New Zealand.  Sorta like Boulder in the United States, or Whistler in Canada.

The very first thing we found in Queenstown was Cookie Time.  We’d seen this shop a few places along the way, but since the first two days were both Christmas Day and Boxing Day, we weren’t able to visit it.

Inside the whole store is dedicated to the cookie, which is brilliant.  Though, the cookies did seem a bit drier than my personal preference (I like warm, soft chocolate chip cookies) – but nonetheless – I warmly applaud the concept.

After wandering around the pretty cool town of Queenstown, we went out for a mountain bike tour of a nearby canyon.  The tour was all downhill mountain biking, which if you’re not familiar with the concept means that you avoid doing any and all work, as you’re transported from the bottom to the top, where you get to ride down (again and again).  It’s pretty much identical to skiing, except without snow (and ironically enough, we were riding at the edge of a ski area).

You can see above the track that cuts across the canyon, that’s where we were.  There’s actually a mountain biker in that picture as well about a third of the way from the right side.  The scenery was awesome, the single track fun and very manageable – even for me, as a triathlete.

After we got back to town we noticed that there had been a sprint triathlon that morning, that unfortunately we didn’t know about.  Serious bummer!  We definitely would have gone out and thrown down there.

Finally, we wrapped up our day with a multi-hour drive out towards Milford Sound.  Along the way though we stopped to take pictures of the never ending sheep, cow and deer farmlands.  Somehow, it still hasn’t gotten old yet.

Stay tuned, got lots more to come in a few days!