First use of Cronox 3.0 Timing System:
This evening I took my Cronos 3.0 timing system to sprints with me and we set the system up and started putting it to work. After a few hick-ups at the beginning we managed to get it setup correctly and got to work putting it to the test. In this session we do flat sprints in the underground car park of a local supermarket so it is well lit, dry and the wind isn’t too bad either which will be amazing over the winter months when the weather is wet and miserable all the time here in the UK!
We did our normal spring session of 6x25m sprints followed by 6x50m sprints and recorded our times in a book as the app is a bit awkward to use as it keeps swapping the order of the people going all the time which is not ideal for the way we train. Unfortunately about 3 sprints in I broke the sprint stand and managed to hyper extend my bad left knee when I fell! I also hyper extended my bad weak right elbow too so I was in a bit of pain! Luckily I had cut down my sprint stand so we were able to use my stand instead of my friends which I well and truly broke!
I managed to complete all but the last 2 sprints so it could have been much worse! But I figured that it was better to not push through the pain as I have to race on Saturday!
The timing system worked flawlessly other than the app being a bit odd as stated before but as we were recording the times it was not an issue. I have now created a google sheet so that we can record out sessions on a weekly basis so that we can chart our progress over time.
As expected I was consistently slower than my friend but now we have times I will be able to push myself to try and catch him up! Below are both our fastest times for each distance starting with both left and right foot forwards and the bottom row is the difference between my friend and myself:
| 4.109 | 4.088 | 6.760 | 6.703 |
| 3.903 | 3.909 | 6.162 | 6.191 |
| 0.206 | 0.179 | 0.598 | 0.512 |
As you can see I am slightly faster starting with my right foot forwards and I am 0.180 seconds slower over 25m and 0.510 seconds over 50m which is about what we see on the track out of the gate as well!
The timing system really is an amazing tool and I think that not only will it prove to be invaluable for measuring and improving our training efficiency it will also pus us to give 100% to try and bet our times all the time as well which will definitely help with motivation and raise the quality of our training.
When I got home my knee and elbow were really sore so I took some ibuprofen, slapped on some Voltorol and then got my knee ice pack out of the fridge and went to the computer and created a google sheets document and added all of our data into the spreadsheet. I have also shared the google sheet with my friend so that he can also access the results going forwards. As we record more workouts the data will become more and more useful too so the spreadsheet will be more and more valuable. Once we have more sessions we will also be able to create a chart to track our progress over time too which will be really useful!
I am also going to create spreadsheets to track my other sprint sessions on separate spreadsheets so that I can have all my data to hand. I am also interested to see how the timing system can be used ON the track to work out which lines are fastest as well but I will have to wait until my knee is healed before I do that but it will be interesting to see if it works or not!
After the session I found that the sprint stand still needed a bit more cutting off of it as our front pedal was below level all the time so I will cut it down a little more tomorrow to see if it is better once it is shorter.
After one session I am already sure that spending the money on the timing system was a great investment and I think that it will be an invaluable tool in my preparation for the Worlds next year!