Triathlon at Retirement

Strava is a program on the internet where you can upload your exercise if you have a GPS supported fitness tracker. There is a free version and a paid version with more features, but the free version is very useful. If you are regularly active, you will hear a lot about Strava, and I suggest you join. (I am not paid or supported at all by Strava, this is my personal recommendation.) Start with the free version and see if its interesting to you. My Garmin tracker automatically uploads the training to Strava when I am done. For cycling and running, there will be a map of the course covered, data from the tracker like speed and heart rate. What I find most interesting are the "segments". Individuals can map any course, short or long, and all Strava users that pass the segment will have their best time uploaded in a table for other Strava users to see (unless they opt out of this feature).  The segment leaderboards allow you to see how you stack up against other people. There are...

It is so great to have a fitness tracker and get objective feedback on the workout, making sure I train on target.  I have a Garmin Forerunner 735X which I am very pleased with. It has enough battery power to run GPS for a whole day which saves me from carrying a smartphone. My Garmin can also measure swim distance. I have noticed that the recorded running distance often appears to be slightly short. I previously used a Fitbit, which also was great. The Garmin records shorter distances in comparison to the Fitbit on the same tracks. This has to do with how distance is measured by the tracker.  The Fitbit used my estimated stride length, which I had calibrated on a measured course. The backside of that was when I got faster and my strides longer, the Fitbit recorded a marginally shorter distance! Garmin use a GPS grid and interpolates distance between points. I think this is where the discrepancy starts, if the track has many curves, the grid has a tendency to straighten the co...