Running with Power

For the last six months I have been trying out a new gadget for running. It's called Stryd and it's a power meter for runners. Cyclists have been using power meters for decades to optimize their training and racing so I was intrigued by the prospect of applying the same advantage to running.

Why Power?
Whether training or racing, running is all about throttling your intensity: too intense and you will burn out too early; not intense enough and you won't achieve maximum results. There are a few possible metrics to help you throttle your intensity already:

• By feel: Feeling is a notoriously poor metric of intensity as it is very inexact. Even seasoned runners' feelings are biased by mood, time of day, stage of the run, and myriad other subjective factors.
• Pace: Pace seems like the right metric since, after all, the goal of most running training is to be able to run faster. In flat environments under controlled conditions, pace is indeed pretty good. However, once you introduce varying terrain into the mix, pacing goes out the window. Try to maintain your flat pace up a long, steep hill and cry as you eventually have to slow to a walk. Try to maintain your track or street pace on a sandy beach and cry as your legs turn to hot butter!
• Heart rate: The answer to the varying terrain conundrum was long thought to be heart rate - as you climb that hill, slow to the point that your heart rate remains the same since heart rate reflects your overall level of effort regardless of topography or surface. This works well in theory but heart rate is a very laggy indicator. It takes heart rate many seconds - sometimes more than a minute - to catch up to the intensity of exercise, which makes it very inadequate as a running metric. Running by heart rate is like driving while looking only in the rear-view mirror.

Enter power. If you can measure power, you have an exact metric that provides real-time, instantaneous feedback on intensity. Measuring power on the relatively simple mechanical device of a bicycle has been easy but running humans are much more mechanically complex and measuring power on them was elusive - until now.

A brief explanation of running with power by Dr. Andy Coggan, the OG of power training:

There are now at least two running power meters on the market; I backed one of them, Stryd, on kickstarter because I liked their approach. It is a wearable 3D accelerometer that, with knowledge of the runner's mass, calculates work done per unit time (power) in each dimension. It also includes a barometric altimeter so it knows with precision how elevation is changing throughout a run.

The potential benefits of such a device are significant: training smarter with precise intensity, "normalizing" hills during runs, optimizing running form for efficiency, and running perfectly paced races. How well does it deliver? Following are my conclusions from six months of use:

The Good

• Stryd "just works" right out of the box. Put it on, enter your weight, and you are off to the races. Running with power is indeed transformative: pick up the pace or encounter a hill without slowing down and watch your numbers soar instantaneously. Try out modifications to your running form and see in real-time how they affect your power output. THIS. IS. HUGE.
• Stryd integrates with the tools I already use. It connects to my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch and is worn on the chest as you would wear any heart rate monitor (It also measures heart rate so simply replaces the heart rate monitor I was previously using.). This means that I can keep using the hardware and software tools I already know and love with Stryd.
• That said, for those who don't already have other hardware and software, Stryd's Power Center website and mobile app are quite good on their own.

The Bad

• Accuracy is not as good when running downhill. Because runners actually use power to brake some while running downhill, our power can still be quite high - vs. cyclists, who can coast downhill, using ~0 power. As such, Stryd underreports power when running downhill.
• If you want access to ALL the data that Stryd records (like power separated into all three dimensions), you have to pair it with the mobile app (because sports watches like my Garmin only support a single power metric). For some like me, who prefer not to run with a phone, that's a negative.
• There is a dearth of power training knowledge and programs out there. Running by power is still so bleeding edge that there aren't a lot of established "best practices" yet. For some like me, though, that's actually a positive, as we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of pushing new boundaries!

The Ugly

• Because most sports watches don't include power as an option for running data, you usually have to "hack" the device for it to work with Stryd. For example, I actually have to use a cycling profile to use Stryd with my Garmin Forerunner 920XT. After my device syncs I then have to go into Garmin Connect and manually change each Stryd activity from "cycling" to "running" and I miss out on some of the running dynamics data - even though the Stryd records that data, it just isn't displayed because Garmin thought the activity was cycling, not running. While this aspect of using Stryd was annoying at first, I don't even notice it now and I'm sure that it will go away as companies like Garmin and Polar modernize.

The Amazeballs

• The most pleasant surprise of all with Stryd has been the team! They are amazingly customer-centric, responding in minutes to any challenges or questions we early adopters have, engaging us in rich discussions about the data we collect, and even involving us in the decision-making process for future. Their product improvements come frequently, often as a direct result of user feedback. If you want to see some of this consumer engagement in action, check out the Stryd forums.

A couple of week ago, I even had the honor of being Stryd's facebook group featured user. This meant that I posted every day about different ways that I used Stryd to run with power. I'll replicate some of those posts here on this blog in the coming days.

Google Glass

Google officially shut down the prototype version of Google Glass (the Explorer Edition) yesterday. Following are a few thoughts based on my year of being a Glass Explorer (beta user).

First, some context: early in 2014 I received a prescription for eye glasses for the first time in my life. I was told that my eyes were pretty good but that I might like having some glasses around for night driving.

After I got over the crushing blow to my ego by this affront to my once-perfect eyes, I actually became a little excited about entering the four-eyed world. Would I look smarter with glasses? More sophisticated? Cooler? I didn't know but I was intrigued.

To those readers who know me personally it will come as no surprise that I am a tech gadgetophile. From cars to sports watches to speakers, my chief criterion for just about anything I have or use is how much I can geek out on it. Thus my search for technologically advanced glasses led me straight to Google Glass.

Glass takes normal glasses (Originally they were only available with non-prescription lenses but they added prescription lenses at almost the exact time that I received  my prescription - could it be fate?) and adds a heads-up display (HUD), camera, microphone, speaker, and touch pad. It connects wirelessly to the phone in your pocket and acts as a more convenient interface for everything you would normally do on your phone.

The Good
Glass is very handy for conducting the basic triage that you would normally do on your smart phone: reading emails or texts, sending short messages, etc. When your phone receives an inbound message Glass makes a sound and you simply touch the frame or tilt your head back to see the message on your HUD.

This sounds like such a #firstworldproblem but Glass really does save me a lot of pulling my phone out of my pocket. The end result is that I spend less time with my head down looking at my phone and more time with my head up taking in the entire world - I like this aspect a lot.

I find myself messaging more when I'm wearing Glass. For example, if I'm on my way home from work and I have a question for Katie about whether or not I need to pick up something on the way, I just tell Glass to send her a message and the voice recognition is pretty fantastic (I swear it's better than basic Android voice recognition but I have no idea why this would be the case.). Without Glass I wouldn't be able to send any messages while driving so would have to pull over somewhere and whip out my phone or, more likely, just guess the answer.

In much the same way I also find myself taking many more pictures with Glass than I do without it. Glass has a "take a picture" button but you can actually train it to take a picture any time you make a big, exaggerated wink. This has really transformed my picture-taking: instead of having to take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, hit the Camera app, and then take a picture (again, #firstworldproblems!), I simply wink.

I take more pictures, the pictures I take are more candid/less staged, and I also take pictures for more purposes than I did previously, e.g. snapping a pic of a billboard that's quickly going by on the highway to remind me to follow up on something related later. The camera isn't amazing but it's full 720 HD for both pics and video and the optics are much better than I would have expected.

The killer app for Glass by far is driving navigation. It takes everything that's great about Google Maps navigation and puts it on your HUD. No more glancing down to look at a GPS or your phone; it's right there in front of you showing you where to turn without obstructing your view of the road. Considering that the main reason I was supposed to get glasses was for night driving, this is a huge win.

The Bad
Unfortunately that's the only killer app for Glass. Most Glassware apps are just lightweight versions of apps that already exist on phones. For Glass really to flourish it will need an ecosystem of apps that are not "ports" of pre-existing apps but rather are only possible on this unique platform.

Glass should serve as a good bluetooth headset for calls too but it falls short in this area. I made a few calls with it but the microphone isn't great (The other side often reported having a hard time hearing me, especially if I was in the car.) and the bone-conductive speaker, which ensures that no one else hears what you are hearing, often ensures that you can't hear all that well either. You can plug in an earbud but I found that I almost never took the trouble (another #firstworldproblem - wow, I'm a real brat!) to do that.

Similarly I also never took advantage of Glass for sports. There are Glassware apps that will connect to my sports watch and display my heart rate, pace, etc. on my HUD. Rather than getting my nice prescription lenses all sweaty and dirty, though, I would only take advantage of this by swapping in the more ruggedized sunglasses lenses. This is possible but it takes several minutes and a special tool. If these lenses were more "hot swappable" then I would get more use out of the sports apps.

The final "bad" aspect of Glass is the controversy that surrounds it. Many people freak out when they see Glass because they think it's recording them without them knowing it. This fear is rationally unfounded as A. a conspicuous light shows on Glass whenever it is recording and B. its battery life wouldn't allow it to record much anyway! It would be much easier to record people without their knowledge by using a mobile phone or a GoPro camera than with Glass. But people don't understand Glass so they fear it - understandable but it still brings about some awkward experiences with individuals who are uncomfortable or with businesses that expressly ban the devices.

The Ugly
The worst aspect of Glass to me is that it doesn't "just work." As someone who is often running late, a real benefit of Glass is that I should be able to put it on, use the touchpad to access my calendar, click the event for which I'm late, and have it navigate me there (or just say, "OK Glass, get directions to XYZ.") without any fuss. When it is already connected to my phone, this works like a champ. Maybe it would be better if I wore it all day every day but, because I only wear it occasionally, I often have to spend a couple of minutes reconnecting it by Bluetooth to my phone when I first put it on, which somewhat defeats its convenience.

Also, as I hinted above, the battery life isn't great if you want to do anything other than just the basic messaging. Using Glassware apps, especially those that are always on in the background, really saps the battery life. Battery technology has advanced a great deal in recent years, though, so I would expect a next generation to be better in this regard.

Final Thoughts
So is Google Glass a success or a failure? As a mass market product, it would definitely be a failure. It simply doesn't "just work" enough to be consistently useful. However, it isn't a mass market product. It's a prototype in an open beta and trying to figure out what it could/should be. To measure its success in this light I suppose we will have to see how successful the next generation is as a mass market product.

It is clear that wearable technology as a trend isn't going anywhere so we've got to try-fail-learn if we're going to produce something truly transformative. When I decided to give Glass a try I was inspired by the "jewel" that Andrew "Ender" Wiggin wore during the sequel novels to Ender's Game - an inconspicuous, intelligent, connected device that augmented his capabilities in real-time. Glass definitely isn't there yet but I think it's a decent first shot on goal and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

I Out-Googled Google

Last week a friend, former professor of mine, and leading authority on computer security posted on Google+ a recommendation that people who have Google accounts should enable two-factor authentication. Basically this means that, if Google doesn't recognize your device or location, it asks you for confirmation via another medium (phone or text) in case your account has been hacked, phone has been stolen, etc.

I use Google a LOT: Gmail, Google Voice, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, etc. etc. Although I wasn't wild about the idea of adding a small hassle to my Google login experience, I figured it was worthwhile to prevent what would be an absolute catastrophe if my Google account were compromised.

So I went to my Google Account page and checked the box for two-factor authentication. The website then walked me through a few steps explaining the process and setting it up. When it came time to enter my phone number, I wavered a bit. Would it be a problem if I used a Google Voice number for my Google Account verification? It wasn't clear to me from the website if it would be or not. I didn't want to use my AT&T mobile number in case I changed it in the future and forgot to come back and update my two-factor authentication.

It was a bit of a quandary. I tested the notification with Google's "test run" tool, though, and it worked fine with my Google Voice number so that gave me confidence to proceed with that number. With a big warning that I was about to be signed out of all my Google accounts, I clicked the final Submit button.

When I tried to log back in, as expected, it said it was sending me a text to confirm my authenticity. The text never came. I waited . . . and the text still never came. When I checked my phone, I had been logged out of all my Google services there too and it was clear that, as I had originally feared, I was in a bit of a Google catch 22.

I searched through Google Help and it turns out that they have a way to let you back into your account if you find yourself locked out - whew! It would take up to 24 hours and would be a huge inconvenience, but not the end of the world. I set it in motion immediately. Then I received something unexpected: a call.

It turns out that, even though I was locked out of Google Voice, Google Voice was still forwarding phone calls to my mobile number. It was probably forwarding text messages too, but I had long since disabled that feature as I preferred to receive the messages just in my Google Voice app. Doh!

Once I discovered this fact, I was able to change my second authentication factor to voice instead of text. This worked like a champ and I was able to log in to my Google account - briefly! Then the Google account reclamation mechanism that I had initiated earlier kicked in and locked me out again for several hours until I finally received an email from them to reset my password.

So in the end it caused me nearly a full day of inconvenience and and no access to my Google accounts. While it was technically my fault, I would have hoped that Google would have anticipated my predicament a bit. At the very least, a warning to proceed carefully if using a Google Voice number would have helped. More helpful yet would have been some automated identification that the number I'd entered was a Google Voice number.

Even though I now have figured out how to get by this catch 22, I have irrationally disabled two-factor authentication anyway. The trauma of what happened has left me craving the safety of the previous status quo. Again, I don't thing Google has done anything technically wrong here, but I hope they'll take this experience as data about their usability and the effect it has on adoption of their features.