Suunto Spartan Ultra – New Sports GPS

Posted on June 7, 2016 by talkultra

Spartan Ultra collection

Suunto introduces its next generation multisport solution with a new family of GPS watches and a renewed Suunto Movescount.com

                      Press Release by Suunto

The long-awaited next generation of Suunto multisport watches is soon here. Today, Suunto introduces Suunto Spartan Ultra, a premium multisport GPS watch for athletes and adventurers. At the same time, Suunto is renewing its online sports service Suunto Movescount with a range of new features and improvements.

“People have been asking about what’s next after Ambit3 for quite some time now,” notes Sami Arhomaa, Performance business unit director at Suunto. “So it’s a great pleasure to announce our next generation Suunto Spartan solution for athletic and adventure multisport.” The solution comprises of the Suunto Spartan Ultra watches, a renewed Suunto Movescount service and mobile applications for both iPhone and Android.

“In a fast-paced world with an overwhelming flood of information, athletes need better tools to determine how to efficiently achieve their goals,” explains Arhomaa. “People who are driven by the passion to progress want to know if they are doing things right. More and more people are reaching out to communities of like-minded people for guidance and inspiration. With the Spartan solution, we are building on the insights we’ve gained through our constant dialogue with athletes and coaches around the world. The new Suunto Spartan multisport solution will offer customers new community powered tools to progress. We are convinced these tools will help them progress beyond their expectations.”

Suunto Spartan Ultra – the GPS watch for athletic and adventure multisport

Adventure proof

Suunto Spartan Ultra watches are hand-made in Finland and built to last in any conditions. Water resistant to 100 meters, the watches sport an extremely durable color touch screen with a wide viewing angle and great visibility in bright sunlight. The watch is built with a glass fiber reinforced polyamide casing, sapphire crystal glass and a grade5 titanium or stainless steel bezel. For your multisport adventures, Suunto Spartan Ultra offers guided route navigation, barometric altitude with FusedAlti™, a digital compass, as well as a competitive battery life.

Sports expertise and insights

The Suunto Spartan Ultra is a true multisport watch. With GPS, FusedSpeed^TM, heart rate measurement and in-built accelerometer, it accurately tracks your training and provides versatile insights on your progress for a multitude of sports. It offers dozens of preset sport modes, e.g. for triathlon, swimming, cycling, running, adventure racing, and snow sports – including modes for specific types of training, racing and activities. If you are a runner, for example, you can choose a basic running mode that offers the essential information for running, or an interval running mode, a trail running mode, and more. The Suunto Spartan Ultra also provides you visual overviews on your training load, rest&recovery status and your progress to help you plan your training. With the watch you can also track your feeling after each workout.

In addition, Suunto Spartan Ultra monitors your overall activity 24/7 with daily and weekly steps, calories and active time. Pair the watch with Suunto Movescount App to get smart mobile notifications. The watch will also keep you up to date on your personal bests by sport.

Community powered progress

In connection with the launch of the Spartan solution, Suunto deploys big data methods for turning the community generated sports data into valuable training insights. Suunto has been analyzing tens of millions of endurance sport sessions to provide both existing and new consumers with answers to the questions like where should you train and how are you progressing. The first tool utilizing this data are sports-specific heatmaps, available from today in Suunto Movescount. Later, the toolset using the data will grow with tools for peer group comparison and insights.

The Suunto Spartan Ultra collection includes four models: Suunto Spartan Ultra All Black Titanium, Suunto Spartan Ultra Stealth Titanium, Suunto Spartan Ultra White and Suunto Spartan Ultra Black – each available with or without Suunto Smart Sensor for heart rate monitoring. The RRP price of the Suunto Spartan Ultra Titanium will be £585 and Suunto Spartan Ultra £545. Prices with a HR sensor are £40 higher.

Further details of the product will be released in July 2016. The watches become available in August, and the solution will continue to grow in functionality via SW, service and application updates during the remaining year.

Read more about the Suunto Spartan Ultra at www.suunto.com/spartan

CYCLING for RUNNERS – Put the Spring into your training!

Posted on May 26, 2015 by talkultra

It has been a while, intentionally so. Over the latter months of 2014 and the early months of 2015 you will hopefully have been using cycling to provide a break from a very structured running plan. Cycling in addition to running allows you to build endurance but more importantly you can add some intensity through well planned and structured faster sessions with reduced impact.

Our last article, no 7 called March On provided a series of sessions that could be incorporated within your training plan that would lead you into Spring as a stronger and healthier runner.

Spring is here and June will provide new challenges and new opportunities.

Lets have a recap. If you have followed March On, you will have incorporated 2 ‘faster’ cycling sessions into your week (typically Monday and Wednesday) and at the weekend you may have replaced a longer run with a MAF bike session. These cycling session should have been weaved into a carefully thought out run plan. Yes folks, you still need to keep running!

Although many of you may well have tipped your racing toes in an event, June does often signify a change. The racing calendar suddenly grows and a multitude of races are available week-in and week-out. This I hope comes as no surprise? If you have been clever about your training, you will have decided some time ago what races are important in 2015 and you will have structured your plan to make sure that you are in the best shape possible when they come around.

One thing is for sure, as target races loom, the need to be ‘specific’ becomes greater. However, the more focused we become, the greater the risk of injury becomes. It’s so easy to be ‘too’ focused. We all run (no pun intended) a knife-edge between being in supreme health and broken with injury. Be careful!

This is where cycling comes! We discussed in Article 3 (HERE) how cycling can be used to replace ‘recovery’ runs. Although a 20-40min run may well seem like a good idea, does running and adding additional impact really enhance recovery? For me, an opportunity to use non-weight bearing exercise like cycling really does provide a recovery option that allows you to ‘spin’ your legs, flush out tightness and toxins and all in a way that adds little or no stress to already sore and tight muscles. If in doubt, replace Monday and Wednesday runs with an easy 30-60 minutes of spinning (90+ cadence) and see if these sessions enhance your run legs. It’s worth noting as we have mentioned previously, cycling can tighten your hamstrings slightly due to the repeated action (in a shorter circle of motion), particularly when compared to running. So please make sure you allow 10-15 minutes after cycling for stretching.

Another factor to consider now is the endurance element that comes from cycling. Depending on your chosen distance to race (50k, 80k, 100k, 100 miles or maybe more?) you may well be daunted with the distance that you need to cover and more importantly, you may well be thinking, ‘how do I train for something that is going to take me 5, 10, 15 or 24 plus hours?’

If you are coming from a marathon running background, you will be used to the scenario of making your long run 3.5 hours or approximately 21/22 miles. If you try to apply this scenario proportionately to ultra running you are always going to be struggling. That is not to say that you shouldn’t have some big days of running/ hiking (time on feet) but the reality is that for most of us, we may well break!

Step in cycling!

Lets be clear. Cycling is not here to replace running. If you want to be a good runner (ultra runner) you need to run, you need to be specific and you need to practice. However, cycling can be incorporated to provide you with some great aerobic activity for multiple hours without the added and increased risk from continuous pounding of your own body weight through your knees, muscles and joints.

If in doubt take a look at what Francois d’Haene tweeted in 2014. This was after victory at UTMF, 2nd at the Skyrunning World Championships and a stunning UTMB victory.

Back-to-back runs are a popular training method for the aspiring and experienced runner. It’s a great way of breaking a long distance down; lets say you have a target race of 100k. You may set yourself a key target training weekend for 2 or 3 days. For example, a typical ‘long’ training weekend may look like 30k day 1, 30k day 2 and 40k day 3. It’s a great way to adapt the body, the mind and it provides a wonderful opportunity to practice nutrition, hydration and fine-tune your clothing. But you can’t do this every weekend… okay, yes you can BUT at some point it will all go pear shaped. Your body will say enough! What follows will be a period of inactivity, rest or maybe worse, injury.

Cycling sessions can incorporate an element of faster cycling. Maybe you’d like to work the hills a little? But be careful. You are using different muscle groups. Here are some stats from a 2 hour ride. This ride was all about keeping it nice and easy on an out-and-back ride.

We all know that consistency is key in any training plan. Training is not about one run, one session; it’s about all the combined sessions you have done that make up a whole. So think about incorporating cycling to replace some of your long runs.

You can still do a back-to-back session: 5 hours on the bike and the next day a 4-hour run. It’s a perfect combination. Think about it, 9 hours increasing your fitness and aerobic activity but only 4 hours of impact.

If you only have time to run long once a week then look at incorporating a 3 week on and 1 week off scenario. So for example, your long runs may look like this:

Week 1 – 3 hours
Week 2 – 3 hours 45 min
Week 3 – 4 hours 30min

On week 4, forget a long run and add a 6-hour bike. You still get the aerobic benefits but once again, you rest those tired muscles and joints and use them in a different way.

There are no hard and fast rules here.

This post is about making you look at your training from a different perspective. To make you realise that just because you are an ultra runner, it doesn’t mean that you need to be an ultra runner everyday!

Summary

Have a target planned in your diary so that you can be specific with your planning and work back from your key date.
Don’t neglect run speed work and hill training.
Use cycling in the week as ‘recovery’ from harder running sessions (speed and hills).
Incorporate long bike rides in conjunction with your long run training. For example:

Do one weekend in four that utilises long bike rides instead of long running.
Mix and match – Long bike on Saturday with long run on Sunday.
Back-to-Back Mix – Long run, long bike and a long run makes a great 3-day session.

Don’t be worried about thinking out of the box. If you are feeling tired, sore or just need some inspiration – jump on the bike instead or running. It’s all exercise and as long as you are training, you are getting fitter. Just make sure you listen to your body and add rest as and when appropriate.
Rest – it is a training discipline. Don’t think of it as weakness. Planned rest allows you and your body to adapt. It’s crucial.
Use a HRM and GPS to monitor your training and efforts.

Enjoy the process. One thing that is great about sport is the ability to enjoy the outdoors. Cycling or running, take both hands, grab it and embrace it. Just think, you can cover considerably more ground on a bike.

Join us on STRAVA

Thanks to SCOTT SPORTS and SUUNTO for the support and backing

Check out SCOTT HERE

Check out SUUNTO HERE

CYCLING for RUNNERS – Article 4 Winter Cycling

Posted on November 10, 2014 by talkultra

If you are living in Europe we won’t need to tell you that winter has arrived. Temperatures are dropping, the days are shorter, road conditions are unpredictable at times and the urge to get out and do anything (particularly cycling) can be diminished.

Don’t be disheartened though. Remember we are using cycling as a way to enhance our running and at this stage we are very much using cycling as active recovery or a method of maintain fitness while injured.

We all get injured at some point in our running. Salomon athlete, Jorge Maravilla posted this just the other day:

“I’m guilty of constantly thriving for the runners high, but lately my body has denied me. Despite an unwelcomed setback, today I found joy on two wheels.”

We keep saying this, but cycling is just great all around exercise. Jorge is lucky… he seems to have some nice weather in San Francisco. If we Europeans wish to continue cycling in winter we have two options:

Purchase some great all-weather clothing.
Go indoors.

Both options above are valid and we combine both in our training.

Cycling outdoors in winter

The old saying, ‘there is no such thing as bad weather; just bad clothing’ really is applicable for cycling outdoors in winter. However, let’s get one thing straight, no all singing and all dancing Gore-Tex this or Gore-Tex that will protect you from ice on the road and dangerous conditions. Our first tip is assess conditions and be sensible… if in doubt, stay indoors.

Essential kit for winter cycling:

Hat ideally with ear covers that will fit under your helmet
Buff or seamless neckwear product for around your neck
Glasses
Merino base layer
Long-sleeve jacket with a windproof chest panel
Gloves – depending on conditions you may well need options. For example: a Merino liner glove with thicker warmer/ windproof glove for cold and icy winds. Alternatively you may well need a glove that performs in wet conditions.
Long tights – we recommend those with in-built braces as they provide added protection around the kidneys. Also consider tights with foot loops. These loops will stop them riding up. Tights are available with or without at seat pad. We purchase without seat pad so we can wear our normal cycling shots underneath.
Merino socks or similar
Shoe covers to help block out the wind, rain and colder temperatures
Waterproof jacket that can fold up

If you have all of the above you are set for winter cycling. Remember, cycling in winter is much colder than running primarily due to the wind chill. Don’t skimp on layers. In particular, your hands and feet are the most vulnerable areas.

We recommend cycling at all times (even in the day) with a flashing small led light at the front of your bike and a flashing red at the rear. It just adds a little more presence on the road and makes you more visible. It goes without saying that if you are heading out at night, use the best front and rear lights you can afford.

Eye contact is a key element of cycling, especially in winter. When approaching junctions or any areas where cars can impede and impact on your travel, look for eye contact. Lock in on them. Stare at them and acknowledge that they have seen you.

As we mentioned in article 3, when cycling use light gears and aim for 90-cadence. Remember, we are using cycling to either extend aerobic activity or as an alternative to a recovery run at this stage. As we progress with our articles we will discuss how to adapt your cycling sessions so that they can become specific in extended your fitness and/ or building strength.

Cycling indoors in winter

Lets face it, heading outdoors in the cold and potentially wet conditions on a bicycle is not something that you may not wish to do. It’s understandable. It’s not for all of us, especially if your runs are wet, muddy and cold. Step in indoor cycling.

We love indoor cycling…

We know; it’s the equivalent of running on a treadmill. However, just like a treadmill, indoor cycling can provide you with a very controlled and specific environment.

Focused and quality sessions
Improved cycling technique
Time efficiency
Accurate testing

Our first hot tip is don’t use the bikes at your local gym unless you have no other option… why?

Well, gym bikes are just so far removed from your ‘own’ bike. Remember in our first couple of articles how we emphasized how important it is to get the correct bike, the correct fit, the correct saddle and so on… why would you then go the gym, get on a generic bike and then disregard everything you have strived to get right.

The way forward is to purchase a ‘Turbo Trainer.’

Many styles of turbo trainer exist and you can pay as little or as much as your budget allows. We would recommend a middle of the road trainer costing in the region of £100-150 to be the best of both worlds. We also recommend a ‘fluid-resistance’ trainer as you use your bicycle gears to create more or less resistance. For clarification, ‘magnet-resistance’ units often work by adding a lever to the handlebars and you then add/ reduce resistance by moving the lever. We not keen on these though as the resistance seems to be linear and the feel is nothing like riding on the road.

One more feature that we think is worth mentioning is a spring- loaded resistance unit. Indoor trainers can really impact on the longevity of a tyre; a spring-loaded unit will provide a longer life.

How do they work?

A turbo trainer usually consists of an ‘A’ frame and a metal drum. Quite simply, you attach the rear of your bicycle to the frame and place the rear wheel on the drum. This drum provides resistance to the rear wheel and creates a similar sensation to riding on the road. You can add more or less resistance to make sessions as hard or as easy as you require. Tip: The front of your bicycle will feel as though it’s pointing downhill due to the added height of the turbo trainer. Therefore raise your front wheel to make your bicycle level. You can use anything to do this but many companies now sell specific products to do the job for you.

Hints ‘n’ tips

Image copyright – highergearchicago.com

Use a piece of old carpet or purchase a turbo training matt so that you provide some protection between you, your bicycle and the floor. This is really important if you are using a room in your home. (3)
Have some towels handy to protect your bike and to use to mop sweat from your face (4)
Use a fan to cool you down (2)
Have water available (1)
Raise the front wheel (5)
Always use the same tyre pressure and resistance on the rear wheel. This will make sessions controllable and comparable.
Use a HRM such as a Suunto Ambit and/ or rear wheel cadence counter
Use music or a dvd to provide stimulus. We personally create music playlists based on the session we are doing… rocking out on your indoor trainer to AC/DC makes speed and interval work easy! (6)

Indoor cycling generates plenty of heat and even when cycling easy, you will still sweat. Be prepared.

For the first month of indoor cycling you can apply the principles as laid out in Article 3 of Cycling for Runners – keep gearing light and easy, aim for a 90-cadence and use a HRM to ensure that you are not working harder than you should be. Double what would have been your run time; so, if you were doing a 30-minute easy run, do a 60-min easy cycle.

*****

In article 5 of CYCLING for RUNNERS we will discuss spicing up your outdoor and indoor cycling sessions with one session for outdoors and one session for indoors and how to combine this with your recovery sessions.

Enjoy the seasons, enjoy the change in the weather and importantly use cycling to enhance your running.

Be safe…!

Join us on STRAVA