Smarter Racing with the Ironman Bike Time Remaining App

The Suunto Ambit comes with an app store that allows you to customize the watch with all kinds of cool data readings.  So, I built an App for the Ambit that calculates how much longer you have left on the bike during your Ironman race.  This is far better than only knowing how long you have been out there or just how many miles you have gone.

The app takes the average speed of your current lap, figures out how many miles you have ridden, then applies your average speed against the distance remaining.  In the example above, I was two hours into a three hour ride, and it calculated that it would take nearly 3.5 more hours for me to finish 112 miles.

This is a much smarter way to race Ironmans. How much time is left is what you are trying to calculate anyway when you look at chrono, average speed, and current speed.  This does all that mental heavy lifting for you, live.  

When you know how much time is left, you get a reality check that this is going to be a LOOOOONG bike ride and to pace yourself.  You also can evaluate the amount of fuel and water you have left, which is where a lot of people get into trouble.  

Below, I took a photo of another screen that is pretty typical of what people usually show.

You can see that I'm 40 miles in, my heart rate is low from stopping to take the shot, and my time elapsed.  

But I can get to the first screen with a single button push, telling me that I will spend another 3+ hours out there to finish 112 miles, it's getting near 10 AM, so let's put on some sun screen.  I used this app during Ironman Texas and LOVED it.  For example, knowing that I only had another 20 minutes left before I needed to run was fantastic!

Here's what it looks like while you are making in app in Movescount, Suunto's web-based software that controls your watch.  Pretty cool - 

Simple inputs tells me how much longer I'm going to be on the bike, based on how far I've gone and how fast my last lap was. If you don't create laps, it will just use your overall average speed.  You can move the sliders around and it will show you sample results on the right.

What is super cool is that any app you use on your Ambit will also graph its results when you download the data.  From my actual race, here is Ironman Bike Time Remaining decreasing from 7 hours at the start to just 2 minutes near the end (in orange).  

You can see how the time would start increasing if I slowed down, but decreased gradually over the entire ride.  If you want to look at the app in more detail, you can find it here. 

What is amazing is this is only one of around a thousand apps for free in Movescount.  And the amount of variables that you can use to make your own apps are mind blowing.  If you want the watch to flash its backlight and beep six times every time you climb a hill that is over 10% grade, but less than 11%, I'm pretty sure you could build that.

For example, here's my effort at building a Normalized Power app (for bike power meters).

I eventually got in over my head with all the complicated math, quit, and then found a better one that somebody else had made anyway.  (Smart move.)

Any Suunto Ambit can do one app, and the new Ambit 2 and 2 S models can run multiple apps AND can also pick up watts from power meters.  Good stuff for sure.

Does this give you some ideas?  I bet it does.  I've got an Ambit 2 S on the way for Emily to train and race with, and I oredered my own Ambit 2 (longer batter life) for the longer events I like to do.  Can't wait. :)

Lots more on the Suunto Ambit models can be found here.