1X triathlon bike for age groupers, amateur triathlete, etc

Does 1x road setup work for a triathlon or 70.3

Does 1X work in the real world for Joe Blogs on the street trying to get through a Triathlon, Ironman or a time trial?

Ready for just one shifter in your next event? You should be - read on to see why I feel so from my experience

First of all, getting a Tri bike fitted is not just like any other bike - you need a fit, and that fit takes into account many things, all of them static in a room, not out there in a field, in an amateur's case with many people who have never raced in a group before, or have too much testosterone ... and that all adds up to having to just worry about one hand focussed on shifting being a good thing, especially if you are mechanical shifting! 

But that is all subjective, what about in a race as the results, well it just so happened I went 1X on my first middle distance event to throw myself in the deep end and find out :)

If you can manage a smile on a 19% hill too many; you know 1X was the right choice!

Well the short answer is yes, it does, and the data I use as proof of that is that using a 1x set-up I not only:

1.  Managed one of the steepest 70.3 courses on a 48t 11-36 set-up, with 19% and 1400m of ascent, many propose the gearing either has to be too tall or too short which is Weymouth 70.30 bike course, but 
2. Also managed the same top speed, over 76km/h, as my colleague who did the whole event two hours quicker than my and qualified for the 70.3 World Champs, so again, enough gearing to keep up on the downs.
3. It was also one of the bumpiest courses I have ever been on, with some sections seeing competitors dropping chains, and hearing the awful sound of steel chain smacking against carbon chainstays all around me, but not my chain or chainstasy, and that is even without a clutch derailleur.

17% gradient 61.9km into the bike leg of an IM 70.3 and 76km/h max show that 1X has the range even for an amateur

So headline facts of why I consider the experiment a success dealt with, let's get on with the more subjective stuff of feel, and confidence going into my first 70.3 distance event with a 1x I had only tested in Richmond park beforehand... as well as the other benefits, especially for a triathlon bike set-up, and two other key factors of why I am never going back to 2X...

Sram XX 11-36t Cassette and a 48T got me up 19% gradients and a 76.8km/h top speed - who says 1x lacks range!

I normally ride a 50t or a 52t with a wider 11-42t cassette range, and yes, the extra top-end flexibility is nice, but if you look at the stats you can easily extract out of a di2 groupset - you will see you only ever use your top gear in anger for very short period of time, and if you cannot get the RPM, I suggest getting a singlespeed and working on your range, there really is nothing easier to maintain in winter either (other than couping yourself up on a turbo / rollers...).

Having only tested in Richmond park did not prepare me for the long, rough IM 70.3 Weymouth Course

One problem I did have was not finding the time to take the bike to anywhere like the hills I would face in Weymouth. It turns out however, no matter how bad you may think some of the surrey roads are / can be, it was nothing compared to the Weymouth IM 70.3 course, where in one part I even heard someone in a Yorkshire accent say "should have brought me gravel bike"... Now for those of you not familiar with UK regional nuances; if a "true grit" Yorkshireman says a road is rough... its probably quite rough :). 

Other reasons I choose 1x for triathlons: no dropped chains

Anecdotes aside, even gravel bike rough roads did not unsettle the chain, which in races costs you time, can seriously damage your frame, usually damages it cosmetically (costing you resale money / potential warranty issues) and can be downright dangerous. For me, aside from the bullets above

the XX 11-36t was a game changer when it came out, and is still a superlight, superbike-worthy piece of kit

Other reasons I chose 1x Tri / TT setup: simplicity, safety and weight

So let's get to the meat. I bought a reduced low-end Shiv and seriously upgraded the wheels and crank; two areas of rotating weight, and for me two key contact areas; one with the road, the other with yourself!

Let's be clear, while fast on the flat, and surprisingly so also a good handler when pointing down, anything other than top-end Shivs come with a very heavy alloy cock-pit and fairly basic shifting. While the Sram Rival rear to me is not a problem, the non indexed front at probably even a lower level in the Sram range was a serious "you have to be joking me" moment the first time I rode it. This is not a Sram or Specialized choice of kit issue, this is a Tri / TT issue that means you have fiddle around changing front gears while not having access (in a UK set-up at least) to your all important rear brake. This is a major safety issue, not just the time and physical hand coordination, but also concentration: only having to think about gears with one hand makes one less thing to worry about.

Then their is the weight, while going 1X I also swapped the alloy bar for a Zipp 40mm drop (more on that another time) and used some deda extensions that are the only comfortable extensions I have ever used and really meant for putting on the front of a road bike, again something I find really unsafe when matched with roadbike geometry, but on the TT geometry I can ride all day. In short, dropping the front der. cables, dreadful basic heavy cassette, and extra front ring, I dropped about half a kilo, take the 1kg plus from bars and we are talking night and day in the way the Shiv now climbs... All I need to do now is the same to my waist line (work in progress).

1X Specialized Shiv making light work of Box Hill with the extra weight shed converting to 1X

Other points to think about are the aero gains which I first got to thinking about when looking at the Strada 3T website. I honestly cannot say I can feel that difference, but then I think anybody who says they can, well, I am sceptical of...

One final added safety point is the issue of chainrings in an accident: I was once unlucky enough to see a bad case of what they call "chainring kiss". Do yourself a favour and do not look it up on google images, as it is rare but when it happens it can be nasty, and only really happens with the sharper profile of chainrings made for shifting, and usually only when in the smaller gear, however I have seen chains come off in accidents on geared bikes... This is not a deciding factor at all but an added bonus that makes me happy of my decision. 

Final thoughts: I was more worried about my choice of wheels if it had rained that riding 1X in my first Im 70.3

Would I ride 1X again in a 70.3: absolutely. My only concern going into the race was really the fact that rain had been forecast and carbon wheels with rim brakes in a race are like torture; not only for you not knowing how your brakes will perform, but also seeing so many inexperienced riders hit the floor and the sound of grit destroying carbon...

What next? I may try Di2, which again would make the right hand gear changes safer / easier still, and no I would not go back to 2X, but would plump for an XT/ XTR rear and get a 42T or bigger on the rear so as to put a 50 or 52t on the front. I may also add a Sram Force 1X to the rear as I have done with the road bike, however the Wolftooth Roadlink is doing better with this 11-36 set-up than it did with the sram red 11-40 set-up I had on my road bike.

From there its going to probably be a disc specific 1x aero bike, but for now, the Shiv is still a formidable aero bike, and with the Omega X front brake has quite a lot of stopping power

Real IoT 2018: Smart Bicycle (continued from 2016 article)

Following on from the 2016 realworld IoT article on IoT and M2M, as we used to call it :), is a 2018 view on how that has update, again via another Kickstarter success.

Here at Conecto IoT HQ we have been testing quite a few innovative travel and sprot related IoT products that are interesting in that they pose a problem for non Cloud IoT platforms, in that:

1. Nobody knows their usage pattern, which causes problems for "box and wires" IoT as they do not know how to dimension the service
2. Lot's of people get obsessed with them being either high bandwidth 4G (not needed, honestly) or crappy 2G which is being turned off quicker than any new IoT models can go mass market, more on that below.

Many of these have been in the cycling space, and are confidential / require permission to publish, however one I want to share is public, and its the long awaited Hammerhead Karoo, which I have now had time to test with a Conecto IoT Connect SIM, which is sold to customers on AWS IoT platform via one of our partners and is available in test packs by contacting Conecto directly and making your case.

The British Summer is a great testing ground for riders ability to apply the Velominati cycling rule #9 as well as test IoT

And this is where the true meaning or Real World comes in. Everybody is talking about IoT needing 100s MB or even GB, but that is the key: these people are just talking about IoT. People who are actually doing IoT know that for every high bandwidth SIM, there are literally thousands to millions of low bandwidth SIMs, and volume my friends, is all that matters in IoT!

So it was refreshing for Hammerhead to do two things with the Hammerhead Karoo while I was busy testing 4 SIMs, 18 IMSIs and 4 IoT devices on a typical rainy summer's day in the UK

1. They have paired it down to the bare bones of android, even to the point that when I signed in on Google I had an alert from an "unknown OS"! More on that in a bit; it would at least be nice to see the Operator logo, since I spent 5 mins, the time it takes on the Conecto platform, to edit the SIMs service provider name to "Hammerhead".
2. The devices is 4G ready, but does not have 4G enabled yet. This is good, due to the roaming nature of the Conecto SIM I always had 4 to 5 bars of signal, even in the depths of the Surrey Hills, and this was good as we will see later. So many devices are 2G only and we can see that in dense urban areas in the UK these have now been turned off, as has 2G in its entirety on the AT&T network. 

So onto the good bits, how much data does it use and is 3G a substitute for Wi-Fi. Well yes and no. By pure coincidence Virgin were working on my Wi-Fi when I was trying to download a route, so I switched to 3G and

• The Karoo downloaded a 92km route with Maps very quickly with a total of 31,784,010 bytes, or 32mb to you an me, and that was with a download failure in the middle due to, ok me taking the device past the part of the building I call the "faraday cage". Obviously that would not have been as much fun for the obligatory software update that went before it, however, which fortunately I had Wi-Fi for. Even if I did not have Wi-Fi for it, I would have gone past somewhere I know that has it before the ride, like the office, or local cafe.

So how much does it use in a ride, I hear you ask??? Well I can tell you:

• During a 92km ride the Karoo used 9,847,998 bytes exactly, or 10mb to you and me, and this was a ride which due to me entering and leaving a faraday cage of an entrance 3 or four times to still misjudge clothing and accessories for British summer (wet) riding, I had the "Waiting for GPS error" all the ride, something I would normally have to restart other GPS devices for, but the Karoo was tracking the route better than the devices the route was done on, so left it using the mobile signal a-GPS to keep riding; again, win for the SIM device!

Despite the "waiting for GPS" warning, with a SIM in it the Karoo tracked the route better than the source GPS route!

So what is my point here? Well it's to force home the fact that even this high end Android device could get by using less than 100mb a month, and its here today making our life easier and saving us previous hardware reboot and satellite search time... This is also important as it also affects battery life. I got the same battery usage as people in the forum got with Cellular / mobile turned off, which is important for the data on the go. There is no point my being able to download a software update on the fly if it then (inevitably) gives me range anxiety on a long ride.

Also, in case you are wondering, the average IoT SIM on our platform uses 1.2Mb per month, with the vast Majority being under 1Mb and a small % being in the 10-100mb zone.

Also read the 2016 Realworld IoT article on smart bikes

How ballots break great events - Hyde Park and London lose again...

As you get into triathlons, marathons, half marathons, etc. you get used to talking about your experience as the curious and would be athletes constantly ask about your experiences, training, and generally the process of getting into these sports...

... as this happens, and being a Londoner, you rapidly learn how lucky we are as Londoners in having Hyde Park, and other parks to train in. My friends who live in the country cannot train due to country lanes accessing open areas being dangerous, others live in cities that just do not have the parks we have in London.

However, aspiring sportsters very, very seldom do their first event alone, nor do they do it far from home. They do it with people who have done it before and they do it close to home and at key locations, like Hyde Park (and uniquely Blenheim Palace). This is where Hyde Park has been pivotal in getting myself and all the people I know who do triathlons and half marathons into these great sports that have changed peoples' lives and make London one of the best places in the world to live in. For me, the Hyde Park triathlon was the London 2012 legacy we heard so much about.

The key to these events changing peoples' lives, helping them live longer, stay fitter, being proud of their city and to keep doing these sports is not only that they get people into sports, but they keep them in these sports by creating a stable event around which to keep bringing people into these events. Yes, some go, but for each that goes, at least one new comes, and the one that goes often come back again.

The Hyde Park Triathlon is, or was, a "must do" event that we hyped up, got everybody to subscribe to, to the point that we all follow the event religiously as we did all the brands that sponsored these events: We checked the pages weekly, daily, even hourly and when the moment came, we acted; there was no room for doubt - you were in, and committed to doing the event as it became available - but moreover, we were "all in".

Hyde Park Triathlon was an olympic experiment that got many Londoners into triathlon

This "all in" is important, as we are in together, we train together, and so the event is a success. You cannot expect to sign up for your first triathlon or half marathon alone and expect it to be a success. Do it alone and the chances of it being an unmitigated disaster you tell all your friends never to do is almost guaranteed. Join or participate alone it will most likely be a one-off, like the London Marathon and like so many "bragging rights" events that people come to, they do and they leave with the t-shirt.

Marathons are different; a marathon is 3 or 4 times the distance most avid runners ever want to run and then some more...they are bragging events and so the ballot works: Ironman is the same.

Half marathons and triathlons however are different: We are all members of clubs, either registered clubs or social clubs of our own making via email and social networks - we train together year after year, we plan the following year together, we race together and we compare personal bests year after year together... Which bring others in.

That is until someone who has no interest in the sport, or just wants to exploit an event for short term gain, decides to turn marketing and sponsorship gold that is a whole city gripped for an events release into a mass market maybe in one foul swoop by putting a ballot in place. It happened to the Royal Parks half in 2011 and it happened now in 2013 to the Hyde Park Triathlon. In 2011 I know of spouses who got a place in the Royal Parks Half, but the person who got the spouse into half marathons did not. In the 2013 hyde park triathlon I know 30 people in 5 groups who entered but only one got in. None of us have returned to Royal Parks half and none of us, not even the one who got a ballot ticket for the Hyde Park Triathlon, want to do the event again while there is a Ballot.

While I am very happy for those who got a place, and want as many people who can and want to, to enjoy a great event and a location I am lucky enough to train in every day; the long-term value of an event is built on the fact that it grips its locals and continues to change lives and return sponsor value year after year, and carries on building the legacy of the people who built it and the Olympics that changed London. It also depends on the people who are dedicated enough to follow the event and its sponsors to be on top of the event, its sponsors, their social presence so keenly that the moment they announce entry they buy a ticket and email the people who they bring into the sport and will continue in, the sport. The legacy builds this way.

A ballot not only ruins this community spirit, but also ruins sponsorship value: the Hyde Park tri this year is sponsored by Pruhealth, my insurance provider of many years, and a provider I have introduced and convinced many to join over the years... Is now a sponsor and health insurance provider, like the event, that I now no longer not want to be associated with! In 2010 and 20111 we all came back from holiday to compete and in 2012 we did the same and even took days off while screamed ourselves hoarse at last year's event we could only watch (due to the Olympics) while discussing next year's come back. This year we are unlikely to even turn up, even the one who got a ballot ticket, such is the disconnect a ballot causes.

At the same time, my loyalty to last year's sponsors; Garmin, Tata and Specialized, could not be stronger, and if they sponsor a rival event; I and my training partners will most likely follow wherever they go. And at least there is still the Blenheim Triathlon, which despite being just a sprint continues to grow from strength to strength, like the legacy of the of the man who was born there.

Organisers of events take note - the people who build your event are those who will maintain your event and its ability to continue to attract bigger and stronger sponsors, who in turn will attract more dedicated following and with it more tourism, bigger crowds and new entrants alongside loyal followers and the long term chance of your event going from a "must do" to a legendary fixture. Put in a ballot an you turn it into an x-factor that churns out one hit wonders and attracts second tier follower brand sponsors instead of market leaders... This is not the legacy London 2012 was supposed to create, and it should not be allowed to repeat itself.

Triathlon post

I am finally updating the guide for rational people to triathlon for those (ever more) people looking to this as a way to get both the discipline and the reward to get properly fit in a very rounded manner again (swim, bike, run works pretty much all the major muscle sets). It also pays off in your professional and personal life, as long as you get the balance right.

read more here: http://www.christianborrman.com/p/triathlon.html