Hour record equipment: Interval timer
So this has been an amazing problem. I need an interval timer that works in tenths of a second, I could get by with a piece of software, an app or a stand alone piece of hardware. You would think that I could go on Google or eBay and hook it up in a few minutes, not the case. I started poking around for something like this last fall, I did my first hour test last November and spent way to many hours in advance of that just trying to find a damn interval timer that would beep every 19.7 seconds. Lots of options in the stand alone market, almost all made for MMA cage fighting or boxing, of course none of them work in tenths. An app would work fine to, I have a super small Sony Android powered phone that is even ANT+. I would love to have that thing just mounted on my bar and beep ever 19.7 seconds. I probably downloaded 10 different apps, no luck. Same thing for programs that go on a PC. Oven timer? Same deal.
So, being that my day job is writing software I figured I would just bang out an Android app, been needing a reason to mess with the app world anyway. I am a website programmer, do .NET work in VB.NET and C#, so this should be easy enough right? So 8 wasted hours later trying to install frameworks and extensions into my development environment and I had to give up. I did not want to spend any money liscensing tools, and after a day wasted on it I decided this was to much time to waste. Apparently building an Android app was not going to be a quick afternoon project, though I will get a nice one going at some point in the future, just have to much “paying” work to be blowing out my time on app dev at the moment.
At a point in this type of endeavor you just have to take a step back and look at the goal. The goal was to run an hour test, not learn a new skill set. So I put an entire TEN MINUTES into building a quick webpage with some simple JavaScript in it and brought it up on my phone, taped the damn thing on my bars and was good to go. This was not the ultimate solution, but at this point I just wanted to run a test and see if the hour was within reach (far reach back in November). Here is a link to my simple hour record test interval timer.
So I warmed up, suited up and taped up my phone at 6am on a Wednesday morning back in November and let her rip. My simple goal was to run 20 minutes with the cheesy timer on my bars, if I could hold hour pace for 20 minutes I would go forward with the project for a few months and then try and do a 30 minute test.
So how did it go? Well I am much deeper into the blog so that should give you the answer. I made it 20 minutes, but I don’t think I could have made it 22 minutes, I was blowing big time at the end. This was going to be hard.
So once we did the full on 1 hour test I realized I need a bit better timing solution, perhaps a 20 minute effort on the programming front. I wasted a quick hour searching the web for the infamous and impossible interval timer that would do 10ths of a second, still not in existence apparently. I guess the cage fighters are not in need of that level of accuracy, nor are moms baking cookies. I knew that I needed something that would run from the track side, as I needed Rog to be able to start the thing in sync with my front wheel, I was not looking to be pressing a button while I was riding. Also I am not going to be able to run a timing device on board my bike during the record attempt. It would be cool to have an app on my tablet to use, but I had wasted a bit of time trying to get going with some app dev and it was not going to be a quick thing. So I dropped about an hour and knocked out a quick program in VB.NET and installed it on my laptop, this would simply run track side on my laptop, that in turn would be plugged into the PA system.
The lesson learned here is that you need to put your limited time into the real goal (hour record) and not get stuck wasting valuable time on small details (like picking up app dev). Of course I did spend the extra 2 minutes setting it up so that I could trigger the start from a timing strip I have, just in case I want to trigger the start while I am riding…