Has anyone out there ever GPS'd a 24 or 12 hour race? Not something you'd think of doing, I know. But after finishing this past weekend's 12 hour race I realized that I could do something interesting with the data.
Pacing is, of course, key in these events. But normally all you get is your 'lap times' from the race officials which include your transition times as well as riding time. If you are like me, you don't want to worry about pushing buttons during a race, so I don't even time my own laps with a watch, let alone try to time my transitions as well.
However, I stuck a Garmin Foretrex unit on my handlebars (weighs about as much as a HR monitor) and didn't touch it during the race. Afterwards I was able to produce the following chart of my *riding* lap times and transition times:
What this tells me is that I rode fairly steadily. Looking at my official lap times (the sum of transition+riding lap time), however, doesn't look quite as steady. I wouldn't have much of an idea if I was just riding slowly or if I just took a longer transitions. Some of my laps were timed at around a half hour, but I never rode that slowly.
I can also figure out how much time I spent stopped (flats, breaks to use the facilities, etc) during each lap.
If anyone is interested in this (I know it's only for the truly obsessed), it's all automatic--you just give TF your tracklog of the race and it spits out the lap/transition times.
This all can be found under the Analysis Menu->Lap Analysis. This dialog splits GPS tracks into intervals by default, but if you switch "Analysis Type" to "Lap" the software will look for the looping structure in your track and break up the track based on when you return to the start/finish area.
BTW - the race was the "12 Hours of Insomnia" in Hermosillo, Mexico, a night-only 12 hour race. I managed to win the solo category. More on the race at:
http://www.topofusion.com/diary/2004/09/06/12-hours-of-insomnia/
