By the way, FRS has come out with a new Protein product that I’ve been trying out.  We’ll give it a review when I’ve had a chance to fully test it.

The Wilier community is still celebrating Michele Scarponi’s 2nd place finish and other stage successes at the Giro D’Italia. Congratulations to Wilier and the entire Lampre ISD team. Scarponi dominated the field on a Wilier Cento1 SL as featured below from our friends at Competitive Cyclist. The second video is a shameless plug for my newest ride, the Gran Turismo. (Let’s be honest, I would make the Cento1 just look silly)

Please be aware that if you’ve had your bike fit done professionally, cleat installation is a critical piece of the formula. Long rides locked in at the wrong angle can be terrible for your knees. If you’re uncomfortable replacing the cleats yourself, head back to your bike fitter and they’ll likely help you out for nothing if you’re a loyal customer.

ENJOY!

Do a Google search for caffeine and its effects on the body or its effects on an athlete’s performance, and you will get more information than you can possibly read or internalize in a lifetime. The frustrating thing is that there is no common conclusive ruling that the medical community has made on the subject. Most athletes, like myself, just want to know: is it beneficial or damaging?; how much should I take in?; how often?; daily/before training/before a race? will it help my sprint events? how about ironmans?

The other notable thing you will discover in your search around the web is the mind-boggling volatility in articles, blogs, and message boards on the subject. People in all walks of life subscribe to a personal theory that works for them and will defend that theory to the bitter end. It’s almost comical. I always encourage people to be passionate about things in life. I personally don’t choose to funnel that passion into the caffeine habits of other athletes who I’ll likely never meet.

It is not my intent to influence your own personal decision. I did find the following article to be very fair, straightforward, and academically sound, and applicable to 10DL readers.  If you don’t like all that boring sciency stuff feel free to skip about half way down to get to the meat you’re looking for.

Please feel free to add perspective in the Comments (keep it kind, please!)

Full credit to Dr. Mark Jenkins at Rice University for the content of this article.

Coffee was first discovered over 1000 years ago, and currently approximately 75% of Americans drink coffee on a regular basis. Despite the thousand years that have passed, there is still mystery and controversy surounding the biological effects of coffee and it’s principal active ingredient, caffeine. Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant drug in the world, usually ingsted in the form of coffee, tea, soft-drinks, and chocolate. Table 1 shows the relative caffeine content of these food items. Caffeine is also used by triathletes and other athletes as a peformance aid. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of caffeine as an ergogenic (energy generating) aid in endurance sports and to discuss the health issues related to caffeine use.

What happens when caffeine enters the body

Caffeine is well absorbed from by the stomach and intestine, and peak blood levels occur about 45 – 60 minutes after ingestion. Once in the blood stream, caffeine causes a number of responses in the body. Caffeine is well known for it’s stimulant effects on the brain, but there are a number of other physiologic effects that occur. Blood pressure, pulse rate, and stomach acid production are increased, fat stores are broken down, and fatty acids are released into the blood stream. These effects can last from a few hours to as long as 12, but within 4 days of regular use, the body develops tolerance to many of the effects of caffeine. For example, although caffeine increases blood pressure and pulse in a first time user, a regular user will not experience any significant change.

Caffeine and Health

In making a decision whether or not to use caffeine — or any other drug — it is important to consider the potential adverse effects on health. These can be separated into short term (ie. related to a single dose) and long term. The short term affects of caffeine are much better understood than the long term effects.

Because caffeine increases the production of stomach acid it may worsen ulcer symptoms or cause acid reflux (“heartburn”). Insomnia, poor sleep, and anxiety are well described psychological side effects of caffeine. Regular evening use of caffeine may, over time, deprive the body of proper sleep, resulting in lack of energy and fatigue.

Many studies have suggested a relationship between chronic caffeine use and a number of diseases. Proving a cause-and-effect, however, has been difficult and most of these suggested links remain inconclusive. Some of the difficulties that arise in studying the long term health effects of caffeine are due to problems in accounting for other lifestyle variables (eg. smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise), differences in genetic inheritance, form of caffeine intake (coffee, tea, sodas), and the presence of other biologically active substances in the beverage. For example, one study looked at the whether caffeine intake increased the risk of heart disease. Over 45,000 people were evaluated and the data indicated a slightly increased risk of death from heart disease in individuals who had an average daily consumption of more than 5 cups of *decaffeinated* coffee. Currently, there is no evidence that caffeine causes cancer, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, or serious heart arrhythmias.

Caffeine Withdrawal

Abrupt discontinuation of caffeine in a regular user may trigger caffeine withdrawal symptoms. The most common symptoms are headache and fatigue. The headache may begin as soon as 18 hours following the last dose of caffeine and may worsen with exercise. It is not known why some people experience caffeine withdrawal and others do not.

Caffeine and Athletic Performance

Despite considerable research in this area, the role of caffeine as a performance enhancing drug is still controversial. Some of the data are conflicting, which is in part due to how the experimental studies were designed and what methods were used. However, there is general agreement in a few areas:

Caffeine does not appear to benefit short term, high intensity exercise (eg. sprinting)
Caffeine can enhance performance in endurance sports.
Glycogen is the principal fuel for muscles and exhaustion occurs when it is depleted. A secondary fuel, which is much more abundant, is fat. As long as there is still glycogen available, working muscles can utilize fat. Caffeine mobilizes fat stores and encourages working muscles to use fat as a fuel. This delays the depletion of muscle glycogen and allows for a prolongation of exercise. The critical time period in glycogen sparing appears to occur during the first 15 minutes of exercise, where caffeine has been shown to decrease glycogen utilization by as much as 50%. Glycogen saved at the beginning is thus available during the later stages of exercise. Although the exact method by which caffeine does this is still unclear, caffeine caused sparing in all of the human studies where muscle glycogen levels were measured. The effect on performance, which was observed in most experimental studies, was that subjects were able to exercise longer until exhaustion occurred.

In addition to the beneficial effects on muscle, caffeine may alter the perception of how hard you are working. During testing, athletes are asked to judge their effort, which is referred to as the rating of perceived exertion (RPE). Some studies have yielded significantly lower RPE’s — less fatigue — when the athlete used caffeine. Other studies have not found this effect. Obviously, the RPE is very subjective, and there are many things that may influence it.

What about caffeine in Ironman races?

The exercise studies on caffeine involved endurance testing of approximately 2 hours, so there is no specific information related to ultra-endurance races. Pre-race caffeine may be beneficial though, because the longer the race, the more important fat is as a fuel. During the race, caffeinated soft drinks are one of the choices at the aid stations in an Ironman. Whether this source of caffeine is useful is unknown, but these soft-drinks do supply necessary carbohydrate. Because longer races have a greater baseline risk of dehydration, nausea and abdominal cramps, it is very important to consider the side effects of caffeine (below).

Variable results and side effects

Despite the known benefits of caffeine in endurance exercise, individual results may vary greatly. Differences in metabolism, diet, and frequency of caffeine use are some of the factors that can determine how an individual will react to caffeine. Additionally, some athletes may actually experience a decrease in performance, usually due to side effects of caffeine.

Although caffeine does not appear to significantly alter water balance or body temperature during exercise, dehydration is a potential concern because caffeine is a mild diuretic. Some athletes may also experience abdominal cramps and diarrhea related to the large intestine contractions caused by caffeine. The combination of dehydration and cramping can have particularly detrimental effects on performance.

Recommendations for athletes

If you choose to use caffeine, then here are a few tips that may help you maximize the benefits.

Ingest caffeine about 3 – 4 hours before the competition. Although blood levels of caffeine peak much sooner, the maximum caffeine effect on fat stores appears to occur several hours after peak blood levels.
Consider decreasing or abstaining from caffeine for 3 – 4 days prior to competition. This allows for tolerance to caffeine to decrease and helps ensure a maximum effect of caffeine. Be careful though, because some may experience caffeine withdrawal.
Make sure that you have used caffeine extensively under a variety of training conditions and are thoroughly familiar with how your body reacts to this drug. Never try anything new on race day.
Be prepared to accept the consequences if your urine test is above the current cutoff.

Conclusion

In writing this article I am not suggesting that athletes use caffeine nor am I supporting the use of performance enhancing drugs. I am simply reviewing the use of caffeine as an ergogenic aid as well as the known health consequences. Athletes must individually decide whether or not it is appropriate to use this drug — both in competition and day-to-day. All of the information for this article came from the current medical literature. Those of you who take prescription medications or who are under a physician’s care should check with your doctor about the relevance of caffeine to your health.

There’s not a lot we need to say about our newest sponsor. When logging miles and miles and miles, what’s more important than your feet (ok, saddle excluded)? The cycling shoe market has gotten increasingly crowded over the past decade, but very few companies have a history of technological innovation that spans nearly half a century.

Since its inception in 1960 Sidi is responsible for the 1st nylon sole (pre carbon), the 1st micro-adjust buckle, the heel cup system, and in 2010 cycling shoes instantly dropped 60 grams with a new aerospace sole material with zero loss of strength, durability, or stiffness. After 50 years of innovation, Sidi still stands above the competition as the market leader.

If you haven’t heard of Prologo you’re soon to be in the minority. Prologo is a relavtively new company that has experienced a meteoric rise to prominence over the last few years, which they accomplished the old fashioned way. They developed a superior product and were able to get people to try it out. It didn’t take long for word to spread, and they have become the most in-demand saddle at every echelon of racing. They now hold titles in the Tour de France and the Olymipcs as well as the numerous successes by Alessandro Petacchi and Erik Zabel.


They have become a prominent name in Europe and have aggressive plans in the US. We look forward to riding their saddles this year and letting you know what we think.

In the coming days we’ll be introducing our growing list of new and continuing business partners. We couldn’t exist without the help of these sponsors. The fact that we’ve had so many new companies agree to join forces with us as well as our existing sponsors that have all increased their participation in 10DL, is a humbling and exciting statement that we’re very proud to make.

Goals for 2011:
1. 10 Degrees Latitude North America – 1000+ mile multisport event from Washington to northern California

2. Deer Creek Challenge – slated as the toughest century ride in the North America



3. Summit of Mt. Evans – America’s highest road (the final 27 miles are the easiest!)

4. Summit of Long’s Peak – For Colorado mountain climbers, this is one of the toughest 14,000ft ascents in the Rocky Mountains.

5. Various local triathlons – let’s see what the season has in store!

I took the new Suunto X10 on a trip to Portalón, Costa Rica. The trip was one one-part real estate recon and one-part adventure travel. The watch was useful for both. For the adventure travel part of the trip, I traveled on horseback through the rain forest near Manuel Antonio National Park. It was the perfect place to run the watch through the paces. What follows is a review of this watch with pictures of the Google Earth integration. This Fall Suunto debuted their new flagship GPS product – the X10. The X10 is the replacement for the X9i.  This is proo positive that GPS technology has come a long way in a short time. It is now commonplace in the lives of so many people, and Suunto is leading the way in the GPS watch segment. Just a few years ago, the GPS watches that were out there were expensive and the quality was poor.

Suunto X10 Specs:

1. GPS Route Planning
2. 50 Routes, 500 Waypoints
3. Syncs with powerful Suunto Trek Manager Software as well as Google Earth
4. Altimeter, Barometer, Compass

TEST 1: Accuracy
Could it acquire and maintain a good satellite connection? Would this connection be compromised by the dense cover in the rainforest? I must tell you, it did not disappoint.  I was able to maintain a good connection throughout my entire ride.  There are three modes that determine how often the watch seeks a GPS satellite signal: Manual, 1 minute, and 1 second. Battery life is reduced correspondingly. The owner’s manual estimates a battery life of 16 hours, and 6 hours for 10 minutes and 1 minute respectively. I operated in both modes repeatedly and battery life exceeded these limits by 20% or more in all cases.

TEST 2: Interoperability
My favorite feature, by far, is the interconnection with Google Earth. The process was a super-easy, plug-and-play interface. With the press of a button, my entire trip was uploaded from the watch into Google Earth. See below. Aside from the map data, the watch also maintained time series data on speed, elevation change, distance traveled, etc. Any feasible data relating to my trip was captured and available through the Suunto Trek Manager software. This is, by far, Suunto’s best attempt at software design.

SYNOPSIS: Useful
A GPS wrist top computer has traditionally been a tool used by mountaineers. The X 10 has taken a large technological leap that brings it well within the realm of the casual fan of any outdoor activity: cyclists, trail runners, kayakers…the list goes on. The Google Earth interface makes it extremely easy to share via email, facebook, or your own personal blog or website. User-populated sites such as Mapmyhike/mapmyride/mapmyrun etc. are the perfect venue for these new Google Earth files. Information such as topographical data as well as distance, and elevation gain becomes easy and fun to share with others. Ohh, and don’t just take our word for it, this watch won the Gear of the Year Award by  National Geographic Adventure.

OTHER REVIEWS

Check out the pictures below for GPS maps of the trek — pretty cool!

Join us for a journey of a lifetime,
Neal, Adam, & Amy
10DL Founders

Rudy Project continues their recession-busting sales promotions.  This year has been a huge year for them, and they’ve proven their resolve time and time again to avoid the normal pitfalls that traditionally hit the industry in the down years of an economic cycle.  Click on the link above to take advantage.

We are extremely excited to have these folks on board.  Rudy Project has long been a leading manufacturer of sunglasses for athletes and more recently has entered the world of helmets.  They are now our exclusive helmet and sunglass sponsor!

This company does not tread silently.  They have been making a huge industry splash lately, garnering Outside Magazine’s coveted “Gear of the Year” awards and “Killer Value” awards for both sunglasses and helmets.  Additionally in the last year they’ve been featured in dozens of publications from triathlon to golf to eyecare.

We have more exciting product news from Rudy Project that we will be featuring in the coming days. 

Congratulations to a few good friends of ours who competed in the Nashville Country Music Marathon and ½ Marathon this weekend.  This year’s race reportedly had over 30,600 finishers, the largest total in the race’s 10 year history.  Take a look below at the starting line from this weekend.

½ Marathon:
Suzy Demirjian                       2:28:28

Full Marathon:
Brian Sewell                            4:07:07
Chris Bove                              4:18:08

Through word of mouth, we’ve heard that number more of you also raced this weekend.  Shoot us an email and we’ll get your name on the website.  Congratulations to all of you who finished.  What an awesome accomplishment! The folks who put on the Rock & Roll Marathon series do a phenomenal job.  They place live bands all over the course.  It makes for a fun experience and definitely lifts your spirits in the doldrums of miles 20-26.  If you’re thinking about your first marathon or 1/2 marathon, you should definitely look into one of these events.

Rock & Roll Marathon Series

• Phoenix (full & ½ Marathon)
• Nashville (full & ½ Marathon)
• San Diego (full marathon)
• Seattle (full & ½ Marathon) – Inaugural event June 2009
• Virginia Beach (½ Marathon)
• San Jose (½ Marathon)
• Chicago (½ Marathon)
• San Antonio (full & ½ Marathon)
• Las Vegas (full & ½ Marathon) – Inaugural event December 2009

I formerly served for Navy EOD. EOD stands for Explosive Ordinance Disposal. Bomb disposal is the process by which hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. The emails I’ve gotten from old friends and the questions I’ve gotten from new friends has gotten me thinking about the seven years I spent with some of the bravest, toughest, kindest, and most loyal men to honor our country with their service.

Here are a few videos from YouTube to better answer the questions that have come my way. The first 3 are from a Military Channel special, and they feature several men I worked very closely with. The fourth video is just a fun compilation.

Enjoy!

Rob and his partner, James Hooper were recently honored by National Geographic for their 14-month expedition that took them from the North Pole to the South Pole.

I will not attempt to eulogize Rob here.  Instead I will point you to several inspiring websites that paint a picture of his life, his death, and a few of his adventures.

Rob’s Website

Rob and James’ Site

National Geo Adventurers of the Year

1/12/09 News Article

Wikipedia

Here is a video from Bicycling Magazine by Executive Editor Bill Strickland.

Neal and I took a break last weekend from all the current economic chaos to relax and refocus. 

What better way to recapture this perspective than to climb to the top of the second highest peak in the Continental United States?  Mt. Elbert (14,440 ft.) is 65 feet shorter than the tallest peak in the continental US, California’s Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft.).

It was an amazing weekend mountain climb.  We arrived at the trailhead at around 10 AM on Saturday morning.  Neal had planned the route on his Garmin and in our Suunto watches, so we were set to go.  The sky was total bluebird and it was unseasonably warm (45F).  We started out in base layers and packed 2 extra layers in our 30-pound packs.

We hit the tree line around noon and ran into a solo climber who had summited and was making his way back down.  He gave a very positive report of the terrain and weather as well as what turned out to be an overly optimistic estimate on our time to summit.  He guessed we were about 2 hours from the summit.  It turned out to be 4!

As someone who has climbed the 7 Summits and made a living as a climber, Neal was very patient with the skinny kid from Ohio who was making his first summit.  We reached the summit shoulder to shoulder.  It was amazing to stand at the top and absorb the 360 degrees of panoramic beauty.  That being said, there wasn’t much time to absorb it.  Wind speeds were 20-40 mph on the summit, and wind chill temps were in the single digits.

Special thanks to Suunto, Gu Nutrition, Eider Apparel, Deuter Backpacks and dear mother nature!

Here are the details:

• Mount Elbert
• Elevation 14,440, tallest mountain in Colorado, 2nd tallest in continental US
• Hiking Distance From Trail head: 9.5 miles round trip
• Elevation Gain: 4,700 feet
• Latitude/Longitude: 39.11780 N / 106.4447 W

…Wouldn’t you like to get away?  Some times you wanna go…

• Wilier – Cento Uno
• Bellwether – Brilliant new line for 2009
• Cervelo – P4
• Gu – Roctane!
• Giro – New 2009 Helmets
• LAS – New 2009 Helmets
• Colagno – CX-1 Frame
• Garmin – 705 (officially launches in January)
• Wilier – Cento Crono Tri Bike (officially launched June ’08)
• Cytomax – Functional Beverages such as MuscleMilk
• Zipp – 404′s/808′s/1080′s redesigned for 2009 (even FASTER!

Interbike was a great success this year. For those of you who aren’t aware of the event, Interbike is the largest bicycle trade event in North America. It is one of the most important events of the year for retailers, manufacturers, and and other industry folks. Over 1,000 brands are represented and 85% of all business within the cycling industry happens over these three days.

We were there for a couple of reasons. Our first objective was to personally thank all of those who took a risk and supported us last year. We’ve built great relationships with each of our sponsors, and it was great to see them for the first time since returning from Europe.

Special thanks to:

• Wilier – Gianmarco
• Bellwether/Profile Design - Barry
• Gu – Holly
• Cadence – Matt/Mike
• Suunto – Martin

Our second objective was to foster new relationships for the future. We met some great people this year, and we’re really excited about the future. Stay tuned for new sponsor news.

• Nottingham to Cambridge
• 70 miles
• 100 sheep. 25 cows. 1 pony on a leash (see video)

Today started out a bit rocky but ended on a high note.  We’ve been in the UK for nearly two weeks now, and the longest rain we’ve biked through has been 30 minutes…until today.  I guess we’ve been pretty lucky so far.  Today was a different story.  The skies opened up, and we were wet.  We’ve been wearing an Aqua-No Jacket, and today we even threw on the Aqua-No booties.  They did a good job, but were no match for the deluge that hit us.

Then at lunchtime, and without warning, the rain broke, and the skies were blue and beautiful.  The rest of the ride was quite enjoyable despite a stiff head wind.  Cambridge is a fantastic city.  It’s probably my favorite so far.  Neal’s mother Laura arrived into town and was there to greet us with a smile when we rode up to the hotel.

We are staying at the Crowne Plaza in Cambridge.  The hotel is absolutely beautiful and service has been first class all the way.  We were met by the duty manager Carlo, who had heard about our venture.  He wanted some pics of us with our bikes out in front of the hotel for some PR opportunities and local press releases — we’ll upload those when we get them.

Below are videos from the ride and photos of Cambridge.

A shout-out to Gu Energy Gel, especially our good friend and fellow athlete Holly Bennett, Marketing Manager. To keep us going during our 4-8 hours rides we consume 1 gel per 30 minutes and Gu H2o hydration in our bottles. The stuff works great and they are constantly innovating new flavors like Blueberry Pomegranate. It’s delic, who knew?!

• Newcastle to Leeds
• 90 miles
• 5100 feet climbed
• 4000 sheep; 200 cows; 7 horses

The winds were strong early on, but eased after a few hours.  We fought a similar terrain profile as yesterday for the first 30 miles, but the middle 30 miles of our route was on a highway with more consistent grading and low winds.  We spent a lot of the time riding in the emergency lane, which, despite the heavy traffic, turned out to be ok.  We didn’t get to enjoy our surroundings, but we spent nearly the whole time above 20 miles an hour.  So that was a mental victory we needed after the last day and a half.

These have been heavy endurance days for us.  Our support team has been great.  They insisted on meeting up with us more often today.  I think it was as much to gauge our mental state as physical.  There’s no way we could succeed without them.

Thanks for all of the emails of support from sponsors, friends, and family.

A shout-out to LAS Helmets, especially Alex Perez, Sales Manager. Three factors went into our selection of LAS for our helmets. They are light, aero and aerated. Ohh, and cool looking, gotta have that! The aluminum upper ventilator shovels air into the helmet and adds an extra layer of protection for our noggins.


Another shout-out to the Best Western Merrion Hotel, especially the manager Mark Wakeley who made us feel so at home. This hotel is smack-dab in the center of the city and the breakfast bar is delicious.

The last 3 days has been nuts. The smartest thing we did was to plan in a prep day here in the north of Scotland. The trip from the states was not without its challenges. Several times I thought that all of the planning was going to go out the window at the hand of US Air. Never the less, 36 hours later, we arrived! This is an endurance event isn’t it? Why shouldn’t the trip over have a little endurance aspect to it as well??

Wish us luck. We’ll talk to you all tomorrow.

A shout-out to Betty Hill Hotel, especially Gordon Carr and his family who operate this family run hotel. Our first 2 nights in Scotland have been spent at this wonderful B&B, known as much for their restaurant as their lodging. They’ve been great and very supportive. We took up most of their front entry way putting our bikes together, and spent the rest of the day making final route preps, communicating with sponsors and loved ones. The lodge was filled with people here to fish and enjoy countryside. The locally sourced food is delicious and the common areas have breathtaking views of this northern sea-side paradise.

I was there for less than 48 hours, and Neal and I spent a good deal of that time training. We got in two decent swims on Saturday, and then we both participated in an open-water “race” put on by the Dolphin Club. We had to check in for the race by 6:00, which meant that the alarm clock went off at about 4:30! We took a boat from the club to the San Francisco Bay bridge, and once dropped off, it was an all-out sprint back to the club. The front group was ultra-competitive, with the winning swimmer completing the 2 ½ mile course in under 40 minutes (current assisted). Neal wasn’t too far behind at around 45 minutes, and I straggled in about 3-4 minutes after that. Many thanks to all of the volunteers who rowed beside us making this event as safe and as fun as possible.

We took a few minutes to bring our core temperatures back up to human levels, and then bee-lined for the airport. It was a fast and furious weekend, but all-in-all a great time!

Yesterday Neal and I jumped in for a 2 hour swim. We were a little disconcerted to look down at the Suunto and see that the water temperature had risen to a balmy 63 degrees over the last week! Aakk! We’re getting coddled here in the states! Mark Robson and the rest of the gang over in the UK will have some ammo to lob at us now that they’ve been organizing Dover swims that are still in the 50′s. In our favor, though, is the fact that we were swimming up stream against a mighty current. The stone bridge supports pictured are about 10-15 yards in width. Without exaggeration, it took 2 1/2 minutes to pass the supports. I think I was moving backwards at times. I literally felt as if I was working out in one of those endless pools. Every breath I took, I was looking at the same stone as the breath before. Take that, Brits! (Disclaimer: There are no head currents during the Channel swim so this workout actually gives us no describable advantage).

Incidentally there have been several conversations across both swimming and multi-sport message boards regarding watches. My 2 cents: I love the Suunto. I have the T6. If you are looking for a simple, no-nonsense watch this is probably not the watch for you. The T6 is good because I can use it with everything. Temperature is great for the water. It syncs with an HR belt to keep track of my heart rate and can be set to keep me in zone. It syncs with my bike and measures speed/distance etc. It syncs with my GPS and can track speed/distance/altitude etc. This feature is more useful for mapping out hikes or mountain bike trips. It also syncs with a “Foot Pod” and tracks speed and distance of the run workouts. All workouts are saved to the watch and can be uploaded to a computer in seconds with a maneuverable and graphical output for easy analysis. I’ll try to put a full review together in the near future.

Historically, Vetta has been a big player in commuter-level cycling computers. The V100 HR is a great leap into the world of serious athletes. It is feature rich enough to satisfy your every want and need, yet ease-of-use makes it a fantastic piece of equipment for the weekend warrior.

So lets take a look at the features and how well it works

First Look: Right out of the box I was impressed. Construction quality was solid. It felt substantial and well made as did the accessories. A flip through the manual suggested a very feature-rich device.

Installation was a breeze: Both the speed and cadence transmitters are small and sleek. I also like the fact that cadence is wireless

Put it to the test: One of the most common complaints about the V100 is battery life. The issue is a technical one that’s caused by the unit not turning off when you are done riding. I spoke with Vetta and they assured me that the culprit software issues were fixed early on, but the reputation has stayed out there. So obviously I’ve paid careful attention to this after each ride. To date I haven’t had a bit of trouble with this. At least in my unit, it seems the problem has been fixed.

I’ve had the V100 for several months now and it works great. The heart rate monitor and the cadence have worked perfectly. I love the screen. It’s compact yet it contains a ton of information. The three button-interface is very easy to navigate through at speed. Speed and distance accuracy is nearly perfect. Battery life has not been an issue.

A positive review, with 3 gripes:

• The first is a gripe I have with 95% of the computers on the market so I can’t fault Vetta alone for this. The wireless speed transmitter is not powerful enough to work from the rear wheel. This forces you to install it on the front wheel and therefore becomes useless on an indoor trainer. (Note: the V110 solves this!)
• The manual makes a valiant attempt to be thorough, and in fact, it is thorough. The problem is that it isn’t completely clear. Maybe it’s just me, but it reads as if it was written in a different language and simply copied into some freeware translator software. Another issue is that it doesn’t read smoothly. I was trying to learn how to use the different features and screen modes. I had to read through pages several times to understand certain details. One example – they spend some time discussing the IDS and STP screen mode, but they don’t reveal what IDS and STP stand for until 4 pages letter. (it’s Intermediate Distance and Stopwatch btw).
• Occasionally (maybe 3-4 times) the unit fails to turn on for some reason. I turn the wheel and nothing happens. I press the button on the transmitter. Still nothing. The first time this happened I spent about an hour trying to figure out the problem. I was 30 seconds from throwing the thing away. I took the battery out of the head unit, reinstalled it and it worked perfectly. The next time this happened, I went straight to the battery and fixed the problem right away. This only happens when starting the unit. Once I’m riding, I’ve never had any issues with losing signal. Odd.

Conclusion: The V100HR is a great computer for both serious athletes as well as the weekend warrior. It’s easy to install and easy to use. It has tons of features that work together seamlessly. In my experience it has debunked it’s critics and has been a dependable cyclocomputer.

Sure ’nuff. He’s in Alaska for 9 days heli skiing! He’d better be taking advantage of the open water swimming up there. If he can do the 38F water temps in the Prince William Sound in February, then he can certainly handle the 55F water temps in Dover in July.