I cannot remember when it hit 71 degrees in Denver on March 1^st.  Well, today was the day and I took full advantage of it!  I got in a tough workout with lots of climbing during my 5 hr. 15 min. ride with a 40 min brick run.  I rigged up my Timex Bodylink and as usual I was impressed with what this thing can do.  I have included some screen shots of my workout courtesy of my Timex Trainer Software.  My friend Greg and I chose to do some hill work in the mountains.  He is training for a 9 day stage mountain bike race in South Africa later this month (the site is http://www.cape-epic.com/).  It looks like such a memorable experience!  Anyway, we did a long 4 + hour loop through Evergreen, CO.  It got cooler as we went higher in elevation, but was still warm enough to wear shorts & a short sleeve jersey. We had a great time!  My HR was pretty high on the hills and by using the body link I knew exactly what zone I was in.  Check out the profile and you can see exactly what altitude we were at and how steep the climbs were.  Total distance climbed: 8,518 feet.  Also, in the Timex Trainer Software, for those of you who have it, there is a great feature called Course Statistics.  When you open the activity in the software, click the button marked “Course Statistics” (see screen shot) and it will show you several useful pieces of key information about your workout.  Perhaps the coolest is the Latitude and Longitude column.  At each ½, ¼, or 1 mile interval, you can see exactly what longitude and latitude you were at.  Another great feature that I found useful was the Ascent column.  This allows you to see how many feet you were climbing per ½, ¼, or 1 mile interval, which ever you have it set at.  It’s a great way to rate how fast you are climbing.  It was a great workout and I am getting more and more confident that my races coming up will go well, thanks to the Timex Bodylink and it’s features that allow me to better organize my training.

Thanks for reading!

Tim