View Single Post
Old 06-24-19, 01:26 PM
  #25  
Doge
Senior Member
 
Doge's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Southern California, USA
Posts: 10,474

Bikes: 1979 Raleigh Team 753

Mentioned: 153 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 3374 Post(s)
Liked 371 Times in 253 Posts
Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
For context I have been riding around 150 to 200 miles per week pretty regularly since 2015, although that dropped off a bit the past 12 to 18 months. Other than a timed solo 50 miler just to see what I could do and a solo century (hit my goal of a sub 5 hour ride), I had no particular goals (I ride alone by choice) and no other 'competitive rides'. And I do hit age 70 in a few months.

I've had Garmin Vector pedals and the typical other electronic stuff pretty much from the start. And I always tracked stuff so the moderate degradation in performance due to both age and a somewhat reduced level of riding pretty much stares me in the face and was a demotivating factor. So starting back in April I have been (for the most part) riding 'measurement free'. I don't even turn on my Garmin 800 when I ride. All I do is look at my watch when I start and when I stop. My rides have few to no traffic stops so I take a guess at time lost due to that (nothing to a couple minutes) and record that time, my best guess at normalized power (so I have some idea of what level of work I am doing), and a best guess at speed (mostly for maintenance purposes). This reminds me of my 'running days' back in the 1970's and 80's.

I have found this to both change my attitude toward riding (in a positive manner) and it seems to have increased my riding as well.

Just a FWIW. Doing this has been a (somewhat) bigger deal than I would have expected.

dave
You can see my posts in the racing forum - power meter training - on this for years. Not only might things be more entertaining, I'm seeing NOT using electronics makes many faster. Measurements have their purpose, but getting on the scale daily, vs weekly is not going to make much of difference. Best measure for going fast is speed. That is so stupid obvious, I don't understand why all the obsession with power, or even HR. How fast did you go?
Doge is offline  
Likes For Doge: