Cyclist (Panning)

[TCampbell]

He is hardcore. He even shaved his legs hahaha.

He is pretty hard-core. He's not on any teams and he doesn't compete, but he does ride... (he probably rides quite a bit more than people who are on serious teams.) He does not actually shave his legs... he's just doesn't have hairy legs.

So about a week ago, he actually got written up in a CNN article: Fitness tools that tap the power of your friends - CNN.com

CNN was doing a story on modern fitness apps. They contacted one company who (and we had no idea they were watching this) pointed him out as a customer because he was the #1 rider on their app (worldwide) out of over 4000 riders. He noticed in the first month that he used the app that he was the #1 rider and the #2 rider wasn't even close to him. Then a few riders decided to "go after him" by massively increasing their mileage. He answered by upping his mileage... and the "race" was on. It was quite a friendly competition. He would write encouraging comments to everyone who responded by riding more and they'd write back.

While they wrote about his competition with the rider in Japan, they didn't write about another guy that I found a bit more inspiring... one rider go the app because he was seriously overweight and wanted to get his health back in check. Leon would write him with encouraging comments and the guy would write back grateful for the encouragement from someone like him. The guy lost a crazy amount of weight (I don't remember how much, but it was impressive.) I thought it was pretty cool.

Wow, now that's a picture worth a thousand words. Awesome story. Was the app in question strava or map my ride? Fitness and weight loss was my reason for starting. I fell in love on my first ride. Amazing workout and the pounds just drop. I hate the gym and after all these years I found cycling finally.

Leon started using RunKeeper which tracks activities and then posts to lots of different social media sites. He picked up on RunKeeper because it integrates with the Withings Scale (that's kinda how all this started.) Then he found iSmoothRun -- similar to RunKeeper except in addition to tracking activities and posting to social sites, it ALSO has the ability to "read from any device" (Bluetooth, ANT+, etc.). His bike has "ANT+" based sensors which track speed, cadence, and he wears a heart meter chest strap which is also an ANT+ transmitter. He bought a tiny little ANT+ receiver that plugs into the bottom of his phone and there's a protective case which houses the phone mounted to the bike (you can see it up near the handlebars in the photo). While he rides, this app is collecting his speed, cadence, heart-rate, and also GPS data throughout the entire ride.

While he doesn't use Strava or Map My Ride, iSmoothRun will let him post to any of those sites. He now uses RunKeeper as his "database", but iSmoothRun keeps everything integrated.

Though the names imply that they're for runners, they actually work for quite a variety of fitness activities. Leon just uses them for riding.

He was using iSmoothRun with RunKeeper to track rides and the ride results were posting to Twitter. A site called World-Rank.in picked up the tweets and started following and ranking him (at first he thought it was spam... but found out they're legit.) World-Rank.in tracks various fitness activities and "ranks" you against others performing the same type of activity.

The one thing he didn't like about World-Rank.in is that it's not "historical". It only shows current rankings and it resets every month. So if you want to know who was the leaders were last month or the month before, they don't show that (at least not in any way we were ever able to find.)

In the winter months up here in Michigan, outdoor riding is simply not an option. So he uses a TacX virtual realty trainer (you put your bike on it's frame, it connects to your computer and you go for rides inside... and they're pretty amazing.)

 

[pixmedic]

from the looks of it, the Tour de France is imminent!

 

[CherylL]

Great job on the photos! Thanks for posting your settings & details.

 

[jowensphoto]

Very good!

 

[ronlane]

Nicely done. I would agree that #3 is the best of them all.

 

[The_Traveler]

very, very nicely done.
I get to shoot bicycling a lot (son is Cat 1 rider) but always end up with partly blurred legs even shooting at much higher shutter speeds.
How did you freeze legs?