Monitoring Runners Online

In a world first, the progress and fitness of a runner in the "Gold Coast Half Marathon" in Australia was shown live on the Internet on July 4, 2004. Two Gold Coast companies, Alive Technologies and Bond Wireless collaborated to provide this unique perspective on the race. The system was developed by Gold Coast company Alive Technologies initially for cardiac rehabilitation monitoring, but they have identified broader applications for sports and fitness monitoring and training, and saw the "Gold Coast Half Marathon" as a great opportunity to trial the system. The system uses the Alive Heart Monitor a Bluetooth GPS and Bluetooth mobile phone worn by the runner, transmitting via GPRS to a web server application. The runner's progress may then be monitored through a web browser in real time. Bond Wireless provided a high bandwidth server for the webcast. The runner wearing the system was Nick Hamilton, the research and development manager for Bond Wireless. A replay of the half marathon shows the runner's position on a map of the "Gold Coast Half Marathon" course in real time, with a graph of his electrocardiogram, heart rate, speed and altitude.

Nick Hamilton raced away at the start, keen to set a fast pace with his heart rate shooting to 200 beats per minute at a speed of 15 kilometers/hour. After 6 kilometers he found this pace a little tough and eased off slightly to around 12 kilometers/hour, reducing his heart rate to around 185 beats per minute. He was able to sustain this until near the end of the race where a quick sprint again sent his heart racing, achieving a time of 1 hour and 46 minutes for the 21,097 kilometers event. His heart rate was still 125 beats per minute 15 minutes after the finish.

Credits:

Run The Planet thanks the Alive Technologies website (www.alivetec.com) for the permission to reprint the article "Gold Coast half marathon runner alive on the Internet". Alive Technologies is headquartered at Arundel, on the Gold Coast in Queensland (Australia). The company develops wireless health monitoring systems for screening, diagnosis and management of chronic diseases, and for consumer health and fitness. Applications include the management of atrial fibrillation and heart failure, cardiac rehabilitation and fitness monitoring. Bond Wireless (www.bondwireless.com) provides award winning wireless applications and solutions to enterprises to improve business processes, communicate with customers, and reduce operating costs. Companies can communicate easily, instantly and securely via their cell phones/mobile devices globally utilising Bond Wireless's messaging platform and innovative wireless solutions such as SecureTrans, SMS Print and Campaign Messenger.