The 4iiii Powermeter That Finds Your Bike
Monterey, California, U.S.A (April 2, 2019) – 4iiii Innovations Inc., together with Chipolo d.o.o., announce their next cutting-edge innovation, a free bike tracking feature to be integrated onto a bike which can be experienced at the 2019 Sea Otter Classic. Chipolo tracking is now offered as a standard feature in the 4iiii PRECISION Powermeter family.
“At 4iiii, we continue with our commitment to add value to our products long after they have been purchased and we strive to protect the investment of our Triiiibe” says Eric Gerstenbuher, 4iiii Managing Director. Effective April 10th, all models in the 4iiii PRECISION family of powermeters, including PRECISION and Podiiiium models, will be empowered to find your bike, fight theft, and grow the tracking network.
“…I think the concept is fascinating. No, this won’t stop a thief from stealing your bike (likely out of your home or perhaps while you have a coffee at a café post-ride), but it will give you one more tool in your arsenal for getting back your bike. And I could see if you were looking at similar power meters options…this could push you over the edge towards 4iiii.” – DC Rainmaker, CES, 2019.
The tracking functionality will show the last known location of your bike within the refreshed 4iiii app. To activate the tracking for a lost bike, riders will mark the powermeter as ‘lost’, then, any 4iiii or Chipolo apps on a smartphone in Bluetooth® range, will unobtrusively ‘ping’ the powermeter on the bike. When a phone successfully communicates with the lost bike it will send this location to the owner.
“Our mission is to give every product the power to be found. And with integrating Chipolo technology into the 4iiii Powermeter we are going one step forward. Chipolo is now available to integrators through the obvıous. app store to integrate into many diverse products.” said Chipolo CTO, Jure Zdovc.
The refreshed 4iiii app leverages the obvıous. platform allowing 4iiii to release future-proofed products that accept new features and functionality by enabling riders to simply upgrade their current product. In addition to the tracking capability, the 4iiii app will continue to offer powermeter pairing and unpairing, work-out metrics, Viiiiva passthrough and filesave, over the air updates, customization of devices and more. The refreshed app is currently available as iOS only, but will be released via Android in the near future. The new Chipolo tracking feature will work on all previously purchased 4iiii Powermeters.
The Chipolo tracking feature on 4iiii Powermeters is enabled via the refreshed 4iiii app which will be available April 2nd through the iOS App Store with the tracking feature available on April 10th to all 4iiii customers, present and future, at no cost.
Download the Press Release
Spotted at CES: Theft Tracking Capabilities for Your Powermeter
We were keeping things low-key. Sure, we were at CES, but we thought we were keeping a low profile, hidden in a booth with Chipolo. And then Ray Maker of DC Rainmaker spotted us and got the scoop:
“Sitting innocently enough in a booth for Tile-competitor Chipolo sits a 4iiii dual-sided power meter. To say it’s out of place in this booth at CES would be an understatement. But, it’d also be missing the point of a fascinating effort that 4iiii has undertaken: Adding theft tracking to their power meters. And it would ignore the almost more interesting work they’re doing just adjacent to that (which will have nothing to do with power meters).”
Read the full article over at DC Rainmaker.
Ray Maker of DC Rainmaker with Ben and Mike from 4iiii at CES
Using Heart Rate with Power Measurement to Track Your Fitness
If you have a powermeter, why train with a heart rate monitor too? Jem Arnold, a registered Physiotherapist, cycling coach, and Cat 2 bike racer, digs into the details of why heart rate (HR) measurement is important.
Photo: Shannon Malseed, Australian Road Race Champion, on Instagram
You might have noticed that while power should always read the same number — 300 watts is always 300 watts — HR can change day-to-day for the same effort. How it changes depends on anything from the temperature, whether you are training indoors or outside, or how rested you are going into the workout.
So what is the value of heart rate if the number is never consistent?
The importance of heart rate measurement
Heart rate is important precisely because it is not consistent! HR is the best metric we can easily measure that reflects internal workload: how hard your body is working to produce the effort demanded of it. Whereas power is a measure of external workload: the energy transferred from your body to the bike.
Power is externally consistent: 300 watts will indeed always be 300 watts. Think of it like supply and demand, where power measures the demand you are placing on your body. Your body then has to expend resources to meet that demand via metabolic energy production, which reflects the supply. HR gives you a real-time measurement of how efficiently your body is able to expend those resources to convert it’s metabolic ‘fuel’ into power.
As we fatigue, our bodies become less efficient at producing power. We have to burn more metabolic fuel (internal workload) to produce the same power (external workload). This is intuitively obvious when we feel more tired at the end of a ride and feel like we can’t produce the same power compared to at the beginning.
How to track heart rate
The fact that HR can vary so widely for the same power is important because it gives you a clue as to the inner workings of your body and how your fitness is adapting over time. I use HR a few different ways, both during my workouts and after, when analyzing my data.
One of the measurable indicators of fatigue is called ‘Cardiac Drift’ or HR decoupling, which is the phenomena of your HR rising over time, for the same constant power output. The general advice is to respect cardiac drift and slowly decrease power over time to maintain a constant heart rate under your target.
If you were to continue at the same power while allowing HR to drift higher, it would result in you working harder (internally) than intended and accumulating greater physiological strain. This would delay recovery time until your next workout and possibly contribute to overtraining.
Here is an example of cardiac drift occurring during a fairly steady aerobic training ride.
HR (in red) begins to creep further above the athlete’s aerobic threshold (highlighted), even as power (in yellow) declines through the ride. The resulting cardiac drift (Power:HR in pink) ends up significantly altering the intended training stress of this ride.
Pulling back to a longer view of a full season, I can look at how average HR changes for a given constant power output, eg. 200 W.
Average HR (red line) decreases significantly over the course of the season, while average power (yellow bars) stays flat as expected within this power band (200 ± ~20 W).
Even more interesting is that aerobic threshold power (blue bars) increases through the season, showing clearly how the same external workload (200 W) costs relatively less aerobic capacity and therefore places a lower demand on internal workload as aerobic fitness improves over the course of the season.
Conclusion
Your heart rate monitor should be a critical part of your training equipment, just as much as your powermeter is. Both metrics can give you a perspective on your fitness, but using both together can give you the deepest insight into your physiology.
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4iiii at Kona Ironman World Championships, a Photo Essay
The Ironman World Championships took place on October 13 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and our team was there to take in the action. We are proud to support many of the athletes competing and we salute of each one of the competitors for completing such a grueling event.
Former professional triathlete, Ironman competitor and 4iiii Product Manager Scott Cooper took these pics of the action in the village, at the 4iiii tent, and out on course.
The entrance to the Ironman Village
This year’s event was one to remember. With a very fast day, records were shattered with the first Pro men ever to go under 8hrs, as well as the Pro female and overall age group records being broken. 4iiii was present with a booth in the expo, helping support our Kona athletes with last-minute power meter checks, battery changes, and tune-ups to make sure they were ready for the race.
4iiii HQ in the Kona Village, where we met a lot of new friends and helped prep our athletes for the event
4iiii Product Manager Scott Cooper (in black) with the Canadian Forces Triathlon Team
4iiii Product Manager Scott Cooper with Bart Coaching Head Coach Bart Rolet
Some last minute tweaks in the 4iiii tent, and this athlete is ready to go and compete. Love the 4iiii Kona crank decals!
4iiii Ambassador Vincent Blais on the run course
Canadian Joe Maley, Military Division World Champion, coming down the finishing chute in the blazing afternoon sun
4iiii Product Manager Scott Cooper with Angella Goran, who will be trying to set the Canadian Hour Record in May. Hopefully, she’ll use her new PRECISION Powermeter!
We saw some stellar results from our athletes, including Joel Maley who became the Military Division World Champion. All of our triathletes used their powermeters to pace themselves through the heat of the lava fields and still have the legs for world-class run splits. We want to thank everyone for stopping by the booth and we look forward to being back on the Big Island next year!
Were you there? Do you have a goal to compete next year? Tag us in your pics and stories — we’d love to hear from you.
Cyclocross: Powering Through the Winter with 4iiii
Photos by Mathieu Charruau
The new cyclocross season has kicked off and we’re pleased to be supporting our teams of winter heroes – on both sides of the pond — for another year of exciting off-road racing.
The popularity of cyclocross racing has been growing for several years and the growth in adventure and gravel riding is only adding to the interest. For youngsters, cyclocross racing is the most accessible and safest form of cycle sport and the list of road cycling champions with a background in ‘cross is endless (Peter Sagan, Julian Alaphilippe, Marianne Vos, and many others).
We are pleased to support two teams this winter – with 4iiii PRECISION Powermeters and Viiiiva Heart rate monitors – as they represent at all levels of the sport from local and provincial level up to national and also world level. Among the 4iiii-supported cyclocross riders is a reigning UCI World Masters Champion. Cyclocross riders are cycling’s tough folks who compete right through the challenging conditions of winter and really put their equipment and determination to the test.
Our Teams Racing in Canada and the UK
Cannondale Echelon is a fifteen-strong masters racing team based in Montreal, four of whom will start another cyclocross season after racing through the summer and in the support races of the recent road World Tour races in Canada.
In the UK, we are supporting the CYCLOCROSSRIDER.com Race Team for the second successive season. The team have eleven riders and is built on the admirable principle of supporting five young riders who combine their racing with academic studies. The team, largely based in the northern counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, has expanded this year and also signed a World Masters Champion. Nicola Davies became World age-group champion in Belgium last season and will race in the specially designed rainbow stripes of a world champion complete with 4iiii logos.
The Right Equipment
As well as remaining dedicated and determined through the hardest time of the year, the cyclocross racer needs to choose the right equipment which is reliable enough to survive the harshest conditions. There is no need to doubt that your 4iiii Powermeter will not take you right through your winter riding because with the help of our cyclocross teams we are able to ensure that all our products are winter-proof and accurate whatever the conditions.
Ted Sarmiento (co-manager of the CYCLOCROSSRIDER.com Race Team) put the 4iiii PRECISION Powermeter to a full test – right through a demanding British cyclocross season – and you can read his review here.
Cyclocross at the World Level
This season the UCI World Cup will be contested over nine rounds and once again started in the USA with two races in September. Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel and Belgian Sanne Cant are the defending World Cup title holders. Last season at least 19 nations were represented in world level cyclocross, confirming that the sport is continuing to expand beyond its traditional heartland of northern Europe.
In early November the Pan-American Championships will come to Midland, Ontario, Canada. The following weekend Peterborough, Ontario hosts the Canadian National Championships.
UCI World Cup 2018-19
23.09.2018 Waterloo, Wisconsin, USA.
29.09.2018 Iowa City, Iowa, USA.
21.10.2018 Bern, Switzerland.
17.11.2018 Tabor, Czech Republic.
25.11.2018 Koksijde, Belgium.
23.12.2018 Namur, Belgium.
26.12.2018 Heusden-Zolder.
20.01.2019 Pont-Chateau, France.
27.01.2018 Hoogerheide, The Netherlands.
Major Championships 2018-19
03-04.11.2018 UEC European Championships, Rosmalen, The Netherlands.
03-04.11.2018 Pan-American Championships, Midland, Ontario, Canada.
30.11-01.12.2018 UCI World Masters Championships, Mol, Belgium.
02-03.02.2019 UCI World Championship, Bogense, Denmark.
National Championship Races for Cannondale Echelon p/b 4iiii and CYCLOCROSSRIDER.com Race Team
10.11.2018 Canadian National Championships, Peterborough, Ontario.
12-13.01.2019 British National Championships, Gravesend, Kent.
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Konrad Manning is the editor of Cyclocrossrider.com, an independent web-zine with a particular, but not exclusive, focus on European Pro Cyclocross.