Technology Cycle: The Tech Tools Professionals Use Personally.

• Author: Gilmore, Trevor
• Position: Tech Talk

I could write another article about how technology is upending our profession, but, hey, it's October as I write this and that means beautiful weather in the Bay Area. Which means most weekends you will find me on my bike, cycling up Diablo, Hamilton, Tam, or perhaps through wine country or along the coast. And while I use plenty of tech on the job, I wanted to introduce you to a few gadgets and apps you might want to incorporate into your life outside of the office as a reminder that tech tools aren't just for your professional life.

By day I'm a finance geek, but by-early morning, night and weekend I'm the president of Dolce Vita Cycling, a competitive cycling team based in San Francisco. Our motto is to live the sweet life, and we have 40 committed weekend warriors who race their bikes all over California during race season (January-October). Many of us race side-by-side with professionals, yet we are mere working stiffs by day.

Cycling in its purest form is mechanical by design; yet technology has quickly become woven into the core of modern cycling. Much like technology in most areas of our lives--why have a thermostat in your home when you can have Nest? Why rely on talk radio to provide you with a traffic update when you can have Siri recommend the quickest route and the best avocado toast on your commute?

Our team is run from Slack (slack.com), a cloud-based set of team collaboration tools and services, which helps us tremendously--since organizing the thoughts and ambitions of 40 cyclists via email or text is like herding cats. We have channels for endless topics, and all our files are easily shared. It becomes a self-service utility after onboarding. De rigueur with tech startups, Slack has its use in any organization that needs a collaborative platform to execute on both daily drudgery and big projects.

My coach, Sofi Marin of Achieve Personal Training, plans my workouts and organizes my ever-expanding cycling data on Training Peaks (trainingpeaks.com), a platform for athletes. Training Peaks uses data from my Garmin 520 bike computer, which in turn uses data from my heart rate monitor, power meter, cadence sensor and speed sensor to relay my workout results.

In the app, I can comment that I'm feeling "strong" or "weak," admittedly after I see the workout analysis. If the results indicate weakness, this must be a weak day and I'm probably tired from work (a good excuse at any time); alternatively, if I hit a 10-minute power peak...