Getting old sucks, might as well have a nice bike
I have an unexpected goals problem. I had hoped that shaving 1:30 off my Alpe Du Zwift time was a tough, but achievable long-term goal that would keep me motivated for at least a few months. Where it actually turned out to be a totally achievable short-term goal. When I set out on the first attempt, my expectation was an improvement, but nothing near the 3:05 I ended up taking off my…
Last week I mentioned how I stay motivated to train over the winter months, and this post is going to get into a bit more detail around how I apply that plan. Before getting into that, we should briefly discuss why you should listen to me. The truth is, you probably shouldn’t. I’m not qualified in anyway to provide training advice. With that in mind, my goal here is more for me…
Staying motivated to keep fit during the dark, cold winter months is really hard. Even for me, as someone who rides the trainer when the weather says “go outside, you idiot”. The key to keeping motivated, at least for me, is by setting goals; and not the long-term kind. That’s not to say that goals like “I want to lose weight”, “I want to raise my FTP”, “I want to stay fit”…
Last week I was early to a ride, so I decided to do some laps around the the parking lot, figuring it would make a neat Strava segment that I could KOM for a day. When my friend arrived, he saw what I was doing and decided to do the same, which naturally destroyed my chances for the KOM. Even staring defeat in the face, I still went ahead and created the…
I suspect that like many cyclists, I’ve never really spent much time thinking about how, or what, insurance would cover an incident should something serious happen to me on the bike. But a friend of mine, who happens to be a bike attorney here in Chicago, dropped some useful information in our cycling group chat the other day. All of which, was news to me. While I haven’t spent energy on the…
Accepting that I’m not an expert in aerodynamics, it’s quite possible that I’m wrong here (please be gentle, aerodynamic experts). That said, based on my lay understanding of wheel aerodynamics, I cannot see how (except in very limited circumstances) one would benefit aerodynamically from an “aero” gravel wheel. That’s not to say that there aren’t other benefits to a deeper wheel, CX racers will know that it’s quite common for so much…
Single-sided power meters are far and away the most popular kind of power meter. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest are that it’s cheaper and easier to do it that way. Buy a new crank arm with a power pod, and swap it for the left arm on your bike. Done. For an experienced mechanic, this should only take about five minutes. While that is cheap[er] and easy,…
I’m not sure when it happened, but Strava has silently changed the amount they plan to charge me come December from the $23.99 I agreed to auto-pay, to the $59.99 they are now charging for Live Segments + a bunch of rubbish. Legally they are allowed to do this sort of thing, but it’s still shifty AF to change the price by 2.5x and not the automatic opt-in. Clearly they have the…
Yesterday my Garmin fēnix 6 was nagging me about the need for base, which of course I ignored. Hold up, not just because I didn’t want to, but because the Friday morning group ride is supposed to be slow, and laid back. So I figured that it would be easy to ride off the back in something that would approximate a base power output. That was not to be the case this…
Like a lot of people, I track my resting heart rate (RHR) as an indicator of training stress. It’s hard to know whether to CRUSH IT, take a rest day, or get in the space between otherwise. It’s a real number that provides insight into what’s going on, well before I would otherwise notice. With the worst of it over (hopefully), I thought it would be interesting to explore the impact crashing,…