The Future Is Now
Thinking about a new data set - Left/Right pedal dynamics - got me thinking about new tools, the technology for which already exists, but just awaits some eager entrepreneur to put it all together for the seemingly insatiable/bottomless triathlete market, filled with so much excess disposable income:
- Swimming VR goggles. This would utilize an Endless Pool, GoPro (one side view, one front on), and VR technology modified for underwater use. The idea would be to provide real-time feedback on one's swim stroke, an improvement over our current method of relying on one's own kinesthetic sense, on-deck stroke coach, or out-of-pool review of underwater footage.
- Core temperature. For a hot weather race (Kona; Malaysia; etc), swallow a thermometer pill, and re-jigger a Garmin or similar wrist computer to provide real time core temperature. Then you'd know when you are getting close to (literal) meltdown, and could control your pace and fluid intake with additional data to just HR. The pill could be re-usable to not, depending on your squeamishness.
- ReTul in a wind tunnel. This would allow simultaneous micro-adjustments to both dynamic movement of the legs, as well as to the bike and one's position on it
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Interesting fact: Simon Whitfield used bullet #2 as part of his Athens Olympics prep. Not linked to garmin, but to something to monitor core temperatures.
These pills have been used for a couple of decades now in heat stress research. Athens was before ANT+, no? I'm thinking real time in-race data-on-your-wrist.
Aerocamp by ERO Sports is pretty close to this already.
Al - this most certainly exists and has been utilized often, but not to the masses. A friend of mine did RAAM for a few years and partnered with IBM. They used telemetry from his PM, HRM, internal temp, hydration levels, and had an algorithm run by IBM's "Watson" that interfaced with weather data to optimize his race and tell him when to eat, drink, sleep, etc. The technology isn't that complicated, just needs integrated into our existing platforms to create the consumer demand. Full stories linked below, with relevant excerpt copied here:
The internet of Dave includes Shimano D-Fly, Qurq Power Meter, Equivital harness, Di2 DFly, AT&T Network and New Galaxy S7 Active equipment, Satellite connection, Wifi access, as well as Garmin Connect technology in addition to local weather data. All of these devices will provide information about Dave’s speed, cadence (or RPMs), power, core temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, skin temperature, as well as upcoming weather changes and storm alerts. All of the data from these devices will stream to the Watson IoT Analytics Platform where it is analyzed, digested, and simplified, and then fed back to Dave’s support team who can then inform him how he should proceed
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-...ase-rides/
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-...analytics/
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/f...bm-garmin/