Basically gels are semi-liquid carbohydrate which is often sold in “single serving” packets. There are some which you can buy in bigger packages and then transfer to little flasks. It saves a little money and then you don’t have to carry the empty packets home to throw away. You squeeze the gel from the packet (or flask) into your mouth and then drink a bit of plain water to wash it down. I typically prefer sports drinks on the bike because they’re a bit easier to deal with, but during the run in a triathlon a gel is better because it weighs very little and you can run with several in your pockets. On the bike it’s often hard to bring enough sports drink with you for more than a couple hours so often the gel is for later in the ride when you might be getting plain water from race volunteers or if you lose one of your bottles – better prepared than not!

Paul, Hills are always an issue....but if you're willing to drop some cash on light wheels you might be amazed at the difference. Light wheels actually have a greater impact on climbing speed than a light bike. One thing to consider: if you're not using a good sports drink or gel you're going to have problems when your ride exceeds 90 minutes in length. Gatorade or Powerade are awful sports drinks. I'm not sure what you have access to in SA, but I find Cytomax or Accelerade work well for me. As for an actual training program....it depends on what you've been doing up to now. One thing to consider: The body adapts quickly to stress so its important that you vary your workouts....somedays go long and easy, others do short sprints, others do 3-5 minutes at a hard effort 3-5 times, etc...I'd suggest you start by looking at www.TrainRight.com...Its a company run by Lance's coach. They offer serveral training packages worth thinking about. Paul

Don't be rude. If you were interested in helping him you could have posted the URL to the article. If not, you could just told him there was an article on CP.

Look at the loadXML() method. It takes a string of XML and loads it into the MSXML4::IXMLDOMDocument2 object.

I suspect the quality of a Hindi movie is low enough that you could fit 10 on a single DVD! }:)~ Don't take this seriously -- I'm JUST KIDDING!!!!

My girlfriend (and wife come April 5th!) is a pro triathlete. When we do triathlons Olympic distance triathlons (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run) she beats me by about 20 minutes!!! I'd be excited if I could narrow the gap to 15 minutes this year!

I'm going to be in Chile in mid April and wondered if there was anyone who might have suggestions where I might want to go. Are there any CPers in Chile who can make suggestions??? Paul

Watch MSNBC or CNN.....they are much more likely to provide an opinion...but that said, opinions are not news. News is what the facts appear to be to a given reporter without that person's view being injected into the issue. Almost every national news broadcast I've ever seen in the entire world (and I've been to ~40 countries) has just a short report for a given issue or sub-issue. The "big 3" network news is, I suspect, more to your liking -- they like to do lots of fluff pieces on how people are affected by current events. Or you can watch 60 Minutes, 20/20, or Nightline for in depth coverage. I would say that to assume that one data point is a dataset is a narrow view. Even 3 or 4 data points is not an entire data set. My suggestion is to visit the US, rent a hotel room with 75 channels of cable TV, and watch it for a week!

Ahhh.....you've seen the O'Rielly Factor!!! FOX is generally viewed as a right-wing network -- which if I'm not mistaken is owned by an Aussie -- Ruphert Murdock!!!! I have to admit that I've fallen victim to the program as I watch him as one might watch in horror the cleanup of a traffic accident. I hate his way of cutting people off and taking cheap shots but on some RARE occasions he has made good points....I don't usually agree with him, but he is usually well informed.

I'm supporting multiple platforms and want to make sure that the person who creates our CE installation package doesn't put a DLL for a MIPS device on an ARM device.....yeah I know I shouldn't have to do this, but I found that none of the correct files were on the device after a couple hours of trouble shooting. Ideally I could read part of the DLL from the device and determine which platform it is supposed to run on. Ideas?? Thanks, Paul

Hey Folks, My girlfriend (Patrice Carroll) is doing her first World Cup triathlon tomorrow (Sunday) morning. She just called me to let me know that she's going to die at some point during a downhill section of the bike. I assured her that she'd manage to make it through the whole thing in one piece. Anyone who wants to wish her well can email her at TreeBerry@aol.com and/or visit her web site at www.PatriceCarroll.com! Paul

Not at all....but when you get up close -- like being there -- well lets just say my last trip there made me realize its the only continent I want to avoid!! I've been to South Africa and Egypt. South Africa was very interesting, but I've heard its much more dangerous now than it was 10 years ago when I went. Egypt was pretty much the worst country I've ever been to! Yes I went to the valley of the Kings & Queens, the British Museum, the Pyramids.....but I've also been in the country side. The whole place just seemed like it was out of a movie. I can't put into words what I was thinking exactly, but something like -- "I've only got two more weeks left" occured pretty often! Hope I haven't made anyone too mad....;(

I was afraid of that. I was considering the same approach, but wanted to avoid it. I hate having files sitting around on a computer.

I'm having the exact same problem....try as I might, I cannot get my CE application to provide a non-zero exit code. Did you find the solution for this problem? Paul

Well....I'm already using RAPI and it works fine with a PDA. What I was asking was if there is a way to debug DLLs designed to be used in conjuction with CeRapiInvoke(). I could create another DLL project and simply reuse the call but I'm trying to debug the x86 DLL generated by eVC. Paul

Is there anyway to test the DLL generated when creating a method which is to be called via CeRapiInvoke()?? I tried to a a LoadLibrary on it and don't get a handle back.

Yes....as I said, the 'civialian' service was degraded during the Gulf War....

GPS was designed for the US and allies for military purposes. The percision of the measurement has been increased over the years, and eventually a second class of measurement was introduced so that the military could have high percision and others ("civilian") would have lower percision. During the Gulf War, the "civilian" signal was either blocked or percision was greatly reduced (honestly I can't rememeber which after 10 years!) and restored after the War. So...now for something interesting....why does everyone in Europe think that a civilian GPS won't be blocked during a time of war?? Imagine that all of the sudden people start hijacking airplains and crashing them in Paris, London, or Rome and they are guided by the nice new GPS system?? What if the US military decided that the European GPS system was the source of problems for them....I wonder if they would block the signal or would they just shoot the satilites out of the sky?? I'm all got a better GPS, but I also know a bit about its history....I wouldn't assume that a civilian system is going to be able to be available when a war starts.

That is not what I said. Under the rules, it was well within the judge's power to rerun the race as frequently happens -- and had happened in one of the heats of the mens relays (that the Aussies were in I believe) this Olympics. I would say this was a case where such a re-run would have been warrented since everyone BUT the Aussie was impacted by the fall. If people simply sit at the back waiting for others to fall, maybe Eddie the Eagle should come out of retirement since he would have a chance of winning if people could hit jumpers while sliding down the hill! All this said, was very happey to watch Austrailia actually WIN gold medal yesterday. I noticed unlike this other gold, there were people standing at then end of her competition which makes it seem more like a sport rather than a game of chance.

Its quite unusual for the slowest person to win the race....it kind of defeats the point of racing! I don't mind that the Aussie "won". I simply think his attitude was arrogant for a person who was in fact the slowest person in the race whereas the person who was fastest and was taken out of the race by someone else was amazingly nobel despite being a 19 year old kid.