I’m compliant with Rule #74: no Garmin, no cyclometer, just an uncluttered cockpit. I’m not anti-data, if I could generate some awesome data I’d like to know about it. If I was racing I would train with data. I just got bored with looking at the numbers and not doing anything about them. When my Cateye cyclometer/heart rate monitor demanded yet another bi-monthly battery change, I took the whole thing off and never looked back. Total milage, elevation gained, I no longer care about these numbers.
Can you ride without data? Does a ride even happen if it doesn’t show up on Strava? Bretto brilliantly introduced the V-meter three years ago. It was an idea that flew in the face of all the new technology we needed on the bike. Push on the pedals and if in doubt, push on them harder.
I did buy into a heart rate monitor or two in my time. Early on we used them like kids used the early alcohol breathalyzers installed in bars. That was an ill conceived notion if there ever was one; it’s a damn bar, only young drunk males are going to use breathalyzers and it won’t be to see if they are too high to drive. Rather, they are going to use it as a drunkometer, to see who can get drunker. For us it was young males on bikes, I’m gonna peg this HRM, see, see, I can get a higher number than you because you suck.
Without data I know when I’m going faster than 65 kph, things do change at those speeds. And I know when I’ve done a 160 km ride only because it’s a route I know from past centuries. I do live on an island. But I still make deposits at the pain bank at regular times. Being too big to climb and living on the side of a volcanic island has made every ride something. When I was younger I couldn’t enjoy a forty-five minute ride, I actually wouldn’t go on one. What was the point of such a short ride? Now forty-five minutes can mean forty minutes of steady climbing and five minutes of descending. That’s a ride.
Getting shelled by your friends tells you something, something you already knew, they are faster. Riding with friends who are faster is the best training aid. I figure it’s a quality training ride if I barely make it home. Do more of those, keep doing them a little harder.
Keepers Tour 2012 was doubly fun for the training required before the trip even started. We all need incentive to crank up that kind of fitness. I’m sure the 200 on 100 Cogal riders felt the same way; this ride is going to hurt but it will hurt less if I murder myself in the months before. The Spring Campaign is looming and I’m already devising training rides that will either make me fit or ruin me, or both at the same time, which is what usually happens.
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@sthilzy No, it was sometime last May.
If strava and powermeters were around when that guy made that Video, he'd be all over them.
Yep, if you aren't riding so hard your brain is about to explode out your ears, you aren't using Strava properly. Best interval training tool ever.
@minion is he riding a Cyfac?
I live by the V-meter and even had one built into the paint scheme on my bike.
I like the Garmin 500 (get the black one) but I think it's only 1 in 3 rides where I ride with it at all. After a day of staring at a computer screen, it's nice to be fully analog for a change.
@Marcus
I agree with him...
Training with power has made a huge difference to me in the relatively short time I've been doing it.
I have a measurable way of showing how much I have improved, and I have a way of communicating with a coach in another country somewhat more accurately than simply telling him I felt good today.
Yes it's true that it doesn't teach you how to find your way through the pain cave but it helps you avoid burning a match that you might be grateful to have later on.
Would I use it if I wasn't racing ? Probably I wouldn't have started, but now I can't imagine not using it at least as part of my Bike #1. I think even in casual riding it has its uses and it makes people better group riders.
For example you see how foolish it is to get out of the saddle and stomp up a little rise doing do 500 watts for 20-30 seconds, then coast over the top and down the other side to bring your thumping heart under control.
Or, when you get to the front if you think "I'll sit on the same speed" it doesn't allow for perhaps a small incline or a change in wind direction so actually you do end up surging in effort, if not in speed. With a power meter you can think "I'll sit on 200 watts" and it keeps everything nice and steady for the whole group.
As for them being expensive, a Powertap hub is under US$1000 - in the scheme of stuff we buy for our bikes it isn't that much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH6YqAMKxD4
I think this has been posted before, but seems apt on this thread.
I'm with Minion, love uploading to Strava to check the readings on my V-meter - serves to fine tune the calibration.
I don't know. I use a power meter at the beginning of long rides to hammer down. When the fatigue spreads and keeps you down, I put away the numbers and keep trying to hammer down.
@Puffy
Is that Paul Kilometrage, the well know Irish curse of COTHO? I'll fuck off now.
Exception should be made for older bicycle cyclists who have had their heart re-plumbed by a surgeon. A heart monitor lets you know the engine is still running and the tachometer is not still in the red zone AFTER you've reached the summit and want to scream down the other side. Very useful information!