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The much-disliked company Phorm, who develop probably illegal systems for probing web traffic using deep packet inspection with a view to selling on internet users' browsing habits, have been hitting rocky times lately.  With no commercial partners currently working with them in the UK, Phorm have moved further afield and explored markets in Braxil and South Korea.  In both locations, their plans appear to have hit the buffers (according to postings at the No DPI forums).  Faced with a bit of a crisis, they appear to be trying to raise a spot of cash, accroding to The Register (Phorm issues shares to raise cash • The Register). What's interesting there is the named markets currently being explored are Brazil and China.  Now there's a market the might succeed.  In the meantime, I wonder who would buy the projected shares in light of the woes that Phorm have been suffering of late?

This evening's club event was the Club Time Trial Championship, held as usual over two laps of the Astwood circuit.  We had a pretty good turnout at the event (including at least one newcomer on a road bike), and though I felt a bit tired and unenthusiastic I felt pretty good at the start.  Unfortunately things most certainly did not go according to plan!After a lengthy period of hot and sunny weather, it was quite heavily overcast and rather windy.  The opening leg to Chicheley was harder than usual, due to the head wind, but as usual once round the sharp turn after Chicheley, the leg up to North Crawley was quite brisk.  Coming out of North Crawley I rapidly picked up speed again, and indeed was feeling rather good as I caught and passed Gilbert, who'd started three minutes ahead of me (#12 - #13 was Tony, #14 was the tandem pair).  Passing the turn to Cranfield University, I was momentarily distracted by a small car that pulled out in front of me, but on this occasion the drive rmanaged to get up to speed without holding me up. Unfortunately at the left hand turn towards Bourne End and Astwood, disaster struck.  Since I was approaching the corner rather fast (about 27mph, I think), I thought it prudent to brake as I entered the turn.  At this point there was a "clonk" and I lost all front stopping power and found myself heading rather fats towards the verge.  Somehow I avoided the low kerb and found myself bouncing along the grassy verge.  Which might have been OK, except there was drainage ditch which propelled me upwards and off the bike. Picking myself up, I checked myself and the bike.  Gilbert stopped to check I was OK, which was much appreciated - he accompanied me back to Astwood as I rather gingerly returned to the finish area.  It turned out my front brake's bolt had come loose (something I've never had happen before), and when I applied the rake it had shot out of the front fork.  Still, not other damage seemed to have happened (pending a close look at the bike).  Physically, I received a large bruise on my right shin and my wrists took some of the impact (as I write the following morning, they are rather sore).  So apart from those injuries and one or two smaller scrapes and bruises, I seem to have escaped without major injury. Oh, well. there's always next year...

This year, as I enter my second half century, I've seen consistent improvement in my time trialling performances. As I write, I have ridden my best times at 10 miles (21:05, my best since 2002, and my second best time ever), 25 miles (55:29, my best since 2004) and 50 miles (1:57:45 and again, my best since 2004). So, what's this down to? The sceptics out there seem to reckon it's due to my new time trial bike, built around a Cervelo P3. I suspect it's more down to changed training practices. Back in mid-2009, I figured I needed to re-evaluate my work-life balance, since my working pattern was leading to ever-later finishes each day, and directly impacting on my ability to schedule training sessions. And as anyone should realise, the key to decent performance is a detailed and thoughtful training schedule. Indeed, way back when I was setting my personal best times in 2002-4 I was rigorously following Pete Read's Black Book, which is actually a fixed schedule of sessions based on heart rate monitoring. On the basis that a change is as good as a rest, I've been dabbling with power-based training for my time trialling habit since October (after last year's Duo Normand, in fact). I've reviewed the hardware I selected over at the Team Grumpy website - the Polar CS600X cycle computer with the WIND power meter attachment. Thus far, I've principally used the device on the turbo trainer bike. Despite frequently offered advice that the power system doesn't work on a turbo trainer mounted bike, it does seem to deliver pretty robust data. I also plumped for the Polar G3 GPS device. This bit of kit picks up the GPS satellite data and relays it to the CS600X head unit. My main reason for investing in the G3 was that I'd not need to get speed sensors for all my bikes. I'm pretty pleased with the G3, it seems to generally work well, once one has figured out the hopelessly inadequate documentation. I don't particularly like the Polar Pro Trainer (PPT) software that came with the CS600X - I have continued using the training software that I've used since about 2003 (VidaOne Diet and Fitness - formerly known as MySportTraining), but need to use PPT to get the GPS data downloaded. Both the Polar and VidaOne applications lose out quite markedly on the matter of displaying and analysing power data. After a spot of Googling, I came across an Open Source project - Golden Cheetah - which produces releases for Windows, Mac OSX and (most importantly) Linux. This offers a neat set of analytical tools which mean that power metering can be really very effectively used to deduce the effectiveness of training sessions. I have found Hunter and Coggan's book Training and Racing with a Power Meter to be realy invauable in making sense of a lot of the graphs and charts that GC can use to display data. The book's just come out in a second edition. GC aims to display data derived from a number of devices (and their individual file formats). Unfortunately the Polar CS600X produces two files - the first containing the session data in hrm format, and the GPS data within a second file in gpx format. GC imports GPS data in the Garmin tcx format. In itself, this isn't a major problem (for example the GPSies website offers format conversion, except that the session and GPS data remain in separate files. Fortunately Rainer Clasen has developed a series of perl scripts to do a number of tasks with such data files, including merging datasets - see perl Workout library. These do an excellent job, though you do need to know a little command line work. I got the scripts installed with a minimum of perl expertise (and I mean minimum!), though there were one or two snags in the files I was seeking to merge that required a little help from Rainer (for which, many thanks). Now I'm able to merge hrm and gpx files into a tcx format file, which imports well into GC. Next on my plan is to take power-metered bike(s) out on the road. I have fitted a second Polar WIND power sensor to one of my road bikes, and over the last week I've been evaluating the kind of training I can do with the extra information at my fingertips. Whereas on the turbo I principally use the power data to analyse my training sessions after completion, on the road I tend to keep an eye on the power output. In part this reflects the nature of the sessions - extended efforts on the road vsintervals on the turbo - but also that the readings are a little more stable than on the turbo. Neatly, GC has a Google Earth display which shows the GPS track of the ride, coloured to show 30s average power readings along the ride. Now, I'm not convinced of the importance of the power colouring, but seeing the route is quite useful. Despite all this movement towards power-based training, my main emphasis has remained on using power metering to analyse the training sessions rather than dictate effort applied. In particular, I've been using it to estimate my threshold power in order to monitor my progress through the training schedule. Instead, I rely mostly on the physiological readout of my heart rate. What remains is to incorporate all this information into a much more structured scheme over next winter in preparation for the 2011 season.

After some parents were ticked off by social services for allowing their kids to ride their bikes to school, the Daily Telegraph has a Yes/No opinion piece (Should the Schonrock children be allowed to cycle to school alone?).  My sympathies lie with the Yes opinion writer.  It seems to me as a non-parent that kids are too looked-after these days.  Back when I was a kid, we used to roam off at weekends, get up to all sorts of scrapes, fall down hills and into gorse bushes, fall off bikes, fall into streams and the like (yes, I know it all sounds a bit Just William).  All part of growing up, discovering one's limitations and the like. Anna Maxted's 'No' argument begins with an explanation of the emotional response to an awful event happening to one's children:

Most parents are accustomed to that involuntary lurch of fear in their chest. It occurs when one of their children narrowly escapes death. In my case, it was the day on Hampstead Heath when I let the five-year-old push the baby along in his buggy. We heard screams and turned to see the buggy hurtling down a steep slope and smash violently into a metal fence. By great good fortune, the baby’s head missed the bars. Mr and Mrs Schonrock, of Dulwich, west London, are immune to such fears. They face the threat of being reported to social services for allowing their five-year-old son and his eight-year-old sister to cycle one mile to their private school every morning, alone.

But how does she know the Schonrock's are immune to such fears?  Perhaps they believe their children have received adequate training and preparation.  And in her example, why did she permit her five year old take charge of the baby (indeed she acknowledges here responsibility later in the article)? Where I live, we no longer see children out and about on their own, you just see them being ferried around in cars.  Is it wise to protect kids right through to adulthood?  How dangerous is childhood (and how dangerous should it be? On the other hand, perhaps my non-parental status influences my opinion...