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Monday, December 1, 2008
Lance Armstrong will race in 2009 Tour de France
It’s official: Lance Armstrong will go for his eighth Tour de France title this summer.
It doesn’t matter what you think of Armstrong, or why you think he decided to enter the Tour again. The Tour de France suddenly got a lot more interesting.
Here in Austin, we can look forward to another July packed with yellow ribbons, Tour de France watching parties and a mini-boom in cycling madness.
Bike stores will cheer the surge in sales Armstrong will no doubt bring. We’ll see more Lycra on our roadways. Those who can afford it will head to Paris in hopes of watching Armstrong cruise home on the Champs-Elysees with a glass of champagne in hand.
Some people love to hate on Armstrong. They love to second guess his every motive. No matter what they think of the man, they’re drawn to the sport’s most incredible success story.
At the moment, Armstrong is in the Canary Islands, training with Team Astana. He told the Associated Press today that he will ride in the 2009 Tour de France. Go here to read the article: http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=3737287
I spent the day with Armstrong about five weeks ago, when he went for an 80-mile cruise through the Hill Country surrounding Wimberley. He looked fit and sounded focused. (The photo above was taken that day.)
Clearly, he loves the race. And this time, he’s got more motivation — spreading awareness of his global fight against cancer.
But he’s 37 now. He’s spent the last three years in retirement, although “retirement” for Armstrong included running three marathons and, more recently, racing mountain bikes.
Can his body still take the punishment that the world’s most grueling three-week race will bring? And this year’s route is interesting — the next-to-last day’s stage is a charge up the notorious Mont Ventoux, which Armstrong has called “the hardest climb on the Tour, bar none.”
There’s no guarantee that Armstrong will even be the leader of the Astana team, which also includes 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador.
We’ll know more on Jan. 20, when Armstrong rolls off in his first elite bike race since he retired — the Tour Down Under in Australia.
I, for one, can’t wait to see how he does.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment Categories: cycling
I’m in love (with my heart rate monitor)
I think I’m in love with my new heart rate monitor.
It swims with me. It aqua jogs with me. It cycles with me. Soon, when my injured calf muscle is healed, it will run with me.
It’s called the Polar FT60, and it’s sparked a whole new facet of my obsessive/compulsive personality.
At first, I resisted its lure. It was just one more gizmo I’d have to figure out how to use. And all my techno-savvy brain cells were being fried learning how to use my new iPhone (which, by the way, I also love dearly.) Did I really need to know how fast my heart was beating and how many calories I was burning every moment I was exercising?
In a word: Yes!
My Polar FT60 has many parts. First, there’s the watch, a big, kind of ugly pink monstrosity with silver trim and five silver buttons. There’s a stretchy black band that fits snugly around my chest, and a little black computer pod called a WearLink that snaps securely onto it. I’ve also got a GPS unit that attaches to my upper arm, and a separate little tray called the Polar FlowLink that lets me download all the information gathered by my heart rate monitor to my computer.
Polar introduced the FT 60 in September, targeting it to what they call “fitness and cross-training enthusiasts.” That’s me! I especially like it because I can take the heart rate monitor (not the GPS) into the pool with me. I just have to be sure to snap the little computer pod off the chest band when I’m done, so it dries off completely.
It took a while to get over the intimidation of setting it up. Polar should re-edit the user manuals — I cursed more than once trying to figure out the basics. That done, I set up the watch and WearLink to test my current fitness level. (It’s easy; you just lay there quietly and it predicts your VO2max.) My fitness level is already good, so I told the device my goal was to maintain that level. You can also put it in weight loss or improve fitness mode.
It takes a bit of practice to get used to how it works, but now it’s a snap. Before swim practice, I put the chest band and WearLink on under my swimsuit, strap on the watch and press the start button when I hop in the pool. It gives me a constant readout of my heart rate. At the end of the session, it tells me my maximum heart rate and average heart rate. It also breaks down my workout into how much time I spent in each of three intensity levels — light, moderate or hard. You can read more about what each of those levels does at the Polar website.
The GPS unit is handy when I ride my bike. It tells me how far and how fast I’ve gone. And when I start running again, that info will be really useful in my marathon training program.
The whole system takes all the guess work out of my training. I don’t have to estimate how hard I’m working — I can look at the monitor and see.
When each session is done, I press the stop button and the watch stores up all kinds of interesting info, including calories burned. During one particularly tough swim practice last week, for example, I burned 666 calories during a 63-minute practice. My average heart rate was 147; my maximum was 170.
I can set weekly targets, and get guidance on how to improve my fitness, too.
When I get back home, I head straight to the computer to download all the data. That’s easy, too. I just lay the watch on a little tray. A light flickers to let me know it’s working, and just like that, the info is transferred to my computer. I can call it all up by going to a special website at www.PolarPersonalTrainer.com. Besides logging all my exercise sessions, I can look at my long-term progress and chat with other Polar users.
It’s OK if I don’t download each workout right away, too. The watch holds 100 workout files and 16 weekly training summaries that I can scroll through.
My only complaints? Polar should update its graphics. There’s a lot of info there, but it’s not so easy to grasp looking at the webpage. Definitely not very pretty to look at. The GPS sensor is a bit bulky on the arm, too.
Oh, and there’s the cost. The Polar FT60 sells for $239.95. If you buy it with the GPS sensor, it costs a whopping $349.95. The PowerFlow data transfer thing tacks on $54.95.
Not cheap. But for the exercise obsessed, it might be worth it.
I, for one, am hooked.
Anyone else use one?
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