Carbo-Loading XXXIII
 

Happy 2018 all!

Went for a NYD ride with my wife and picked up a thorn in my front tire. Hope it's not an omen for the year. Ride was otherwise nice. Perfect Rose Parade weather.

2.6 miles for a 2018 start.

32 degrees outside, and me not dressed for it, but that is okay :)
https://www.strava.com/activities/1336558656

another day of trainer work. Doesn't look like be outside for a while

The house is incredibly dry right now ... because it's incredibly cold outside. I've been suffering with dried out nasal cavities for awhile, using vaporizers etc ... but nothing is helping and I'm afraid with the holidays I've been too busy to focus on getting a humidifier, so I'm feeling like the dryness is becoming a cold (not to mention we had a house full of people this past weekend, many of whom were sick).

So I'm off to get a humidifier to start ... and we'll see how that goes.

I feel your pain with the dry nasal cavities. I had to buy an air purifier for my desk at work to help with my allergies that resulted in me sneezing all freaking day and blowing my nose until it was scabbing up and painful. I am looking at a tiny desk top humidifier on Amazon to add to it to help with dryness. When I was off work for surgery and recovery my nose got back to normal. I got back to work and almost immediately felt the affects of our office environment. Ugh.

TMI, but I'm dealing with the pain and scabbing now ... it is NOT fun.

Late in December I ordered two vaporizers/diffusers, one for my office (I work from home) and one for my nightstand, and they're not even touching the issue for me. I have a netipot, which provides temporary relief, and I've tried the saline nasal sprays which help a little.

This morning I went out and bought a big humidifier (6 gallons, supposed to cover a 2K square foot house), so I'm hoping for some relief later today.

I'm looking at about March 15th-ish for my first outdoor ride. So yeah...mid march is a ways off for me.


Did 27.5 hours on the trainer in December. My goal is 30 for January.

Got to start going to the gym again. It's pretty much been in the 20s for more than a week. Highs this weekend are supposed to be in the teens, with nights in the single digits. Too cold for even our local bike club winter hikes. Easter weekend starts March 30th. I have Good Friday off and like to take a three-day tour that weekend. Could be tough if this cold lasts into March.


#nothappy

Happy new year!
I see I'm not the only one dealing with dry nasal cavities...we have two humidifiers at home, one per floor; but what's giving me a hard time is the A/C at work :( if only I could turn if off...

happy new years!! the holidays were good to me, gained #13 from it from turkey day til the ball dropped. Not bad since I didn't try to control eating between or spend allot of time on my bike.

Typical January routine, drop weight, don't freeze and eat like a rabbit. Carrot at the end of the stick for this rabbit is a 12hour mtb race Jan 27th

I think I missed December

BUT donuts are so good!!!!! And innocent!!

Good one.

Signed up for two months of Torture Clinic again. Maybe this will help kill the cookies I ate over the holidays!

If I had anything in my head resembling a New Year's Resolution, it would be to "take it easier" this year compared to the previous years. I continue to be poor at moderating intensity, so I've actually been consciously making an effort to just you know, slow down. I'm not in a race with anyone, no need to hammer every single ride. And the TSS/Fitness&Freshness/etc isn't helping (maybe?) because it can't tell the difference between a Z2 effort and a heart rate that won't elevate because I'm physically exhausted. That said, I'm at -14.8 Form right now on the Stravistics Multisports Trend, and that actually jives with how I feel physically, so maybe it is working. I dunno. I'm basically setting kJ goals on the fly and ignoring every other metric.

But check out how the cutting back is going, LOL

https://i.imgur.com/PJueFQb.png?1

P.S. I've already eaten two donuts today.

Remember what happened a couple years ago. Definitely need to moderate a bit!

Got my new rear wheel from Colorado Cyclist last week. Mounted a tire and my cassette Friday night, have done two rides now totaling about 110 miles, so far so good. Runs dead true, spoke tension is very even based on the ping method.

Gave a Niner RLT RDO a quick test ride this morning. I think I like it. Ultegra 8000 and hydro discs were excellent. This bike was a 56cm, my Roubaix is 58. Definitely noticed the shorter reach. Will arrange a bit longer demo shortly.

If you have your FTP set correctly in STRAVA those metrics should be close to what you would see if you use a program like Training Peaks or Golden Cheetah however if they are not, then well, it's all garbage.

Recently noticed a person post a ride to STRAVA and it said the intensity was 96% but the average wattage was only 175W for the ride.
As the kids these days would say... PoundSign EpicFail.

I suggested that she should revisit the FTP setting she had on STRAVA to match that which I had her set in her Garmin and poof... It was then a 79% ride which closely matched what I had for her in Golden Cheetah. The same metric, Training Load in STRAVA or TSS in Golden Cheetah also matched at 82. (1:20 ride including warmup and cooldown)

Of course, for the metrics like fitness to be correct you need to load all of the workouts or again, it's just a random number generator.

I've not managed a structured FTP test in so long I can't even remember it. They're painful, they suck, and I just don't wanna. I haven't done a "wide open" ride in almost a year, because I'm just so damn tired all the time-- and digging for the motivation to hammer it out for an hour, solo, for no reason, often ends up in me just doing a 30 miler around the valley. This was the last one (that I recall) where that intensity number got up above 85%.

Tuesday Morning Power Hour; 98% intensity

I'm trying to keep the typical ride in the 60-70% area, and throw a higher one in there once or twice a week. I should have no problems with data-- HR data for ~750 rides, power+HR for ~400 rides. But all the data in the world can't cure stupid.

Then there's the issue of doubt: I replaced my Stages PM with a P2M in August, and let's just say the numbers are... different. The P2Ms (I have identical meters on both bikes) consistently give average power readings about 20% lower than the Stages, for identical routes of similar RPE. So it's kinda like starting over. I reset the FTP to a number about 20% lower, as I'm going forward assuming the P2Ms are accurate, and the Stages just read high. Because what was reported early 2017 a 75% effort was ~220W, and is now ~185W.

FTP tests are PoundSign Awesome as are 40K Time Trials...Hurt now and puke later

Consistency needs to be the order of the day.
My Stages meter ran ~8% higher than the Powertap pedals I am currently using. In addition, the PowerTap pedals also ran about 5% higher than a PowerTap wheel on an FTP test where I had them both going with two Garmins and none of those matched what the Computrainer read. 3 devices 3 numbers.

Stick with one power meter is what that test told me. All data is then relative to each other.

As long as you choose the highest reading meter :lol:

I went for a night ride one time and forgot to zero my power meter and hit over 360 watts for a 20 min. section of road and I about busted a vessel patting myself on the back.

Yeah, no, fake news.

maybe I'll invest in a power crank/pedal this year....

So you then went into Golden Cheetah and lowered your CP and FTP settings....

Why would I do that? I don't care enough. :)