Day 162 - Rest Day

I'm taking a much needed rest day today. My leg muscles need some time to repair and a day or two out of the saddle will let other sensitive areas recover from the pounding I've given them these past few weeks; it does all start to mount up and there is no fun cycling when you know you can go faster and take steeper hills but the body just says no. Coincidentally, browsing through this week's Cyling Weekly, my eye caught a quote from Beth Crumpton in the Pro Rider fitness tip of the week .. "Rest is as good as training and afternoon naps can do you the world of good!". So there you go. If you're asking whois Beth? .. you can check out her blog here http://bethcrumpton.blogspot.co.uk/.

I did manage to get out for a ride yesterday morning, but it was a tough one. Avoiding the severe hills, there being no way to avoid them all together here in Devon, I completed a 10 mile loop of Colyton and the seafront. Amazingly, Strava, which has recently usurped Endomono as my favoured training 'buddy', logged me achieving PRs for two sectors: Cowhayne Lane to Boshill Cross (01:56) and the Seaton seafront stretch (57 sec) ... I think this is more because it only has a month's worth of data and not all160 days that I've been riding this route! It is still nice, however, to get these reports, it is like getting a virtual pat on the back and don't tell Andy, but he's only lying in 4th against my 2nd placing in the AVP club rankings - that's something at least to be pleased about!

I've been looking at what should be my challenge for 2014, now that, in spite of how I may be feeling today, I've started to reach an elementary level of cycling fitness. I've spoken of the club's 100 mile ride later in September which would really be a great achievement for my first year. While I've not done this yet, the question is then how to top this. Well, yesterday the ballot for the 2014 Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 opened and yes, I submitted my entry! There is no guarantee that I'll get a place, but it is this intent that is starting to shape my 2014 challenge and that is to ride in an organised distance event.

Vauxhall Corsa's ingenious built in bike rack

I have also been looking at the local cycling clubs and in addition to the Axe Valley Pedallers, who I am already riding with, I have been checking out the Sid Valley Cycle Club. Seaton lies between the river Sid and Axe, with the Axe flowing into the sea at Seaton and the Sid, some 10 miles west along the coast, at Sidmouth. The Sid Valley Club is affiliated with British Cycling and as such is more involved in organised events. They, for instance, are marshalling on the Tour of Britain in September and complete longer group rides at the weekend, something I'm thinking I'm going to need practice of before taking on my 100 mile challenge. What I also really need is a more suitable vehicle to transport my steed to these more distant venues. Believe it or not, this petrol head has even been eying up the Vauxhall Corsa's interesting built-in bike rack. Could my next car be a Corsa!

Day 149 - Garmin Edge

On Monday, I waxed lyrical about my need for a technology solution to capture my cycling stats and how I was investigating what the leading provider of GPS systems, Garmin, had to offer. Whenever seeking any item of technology, it is critical to first specify your requirements up front, as I find it is so easy to get carried away and buy something with bells and whistles that I'll probably never use! I found a great wiggle comparison blog which I have placed a link to below, together with an excellent table that author Daniel has pulled together.

http://blog.wiggle.com/2013/05/03/which-garmin-edge-should-i-get/

My requirements were very simple. I wanted the simplest, smallest and lightest unit possible, clear uncluttered screen showing duration, miles covered and current time, which would be visible in all daylight conditions and had a long battery life. Using Daniel's table and a few review sites, the decision was easy, I went for the Garmin Edge 500 in black and grey to match my Specialized. I finally took delivery from my favorite on-line supplier, Chain Reaction Cycles, this afternoon. It was very easy to set up and while having no time this evening for a proper ride out, I did apply the fixings to the handle bars and performed a simple test. What is just perfect, is the ease by which I can upload to Endomondo and Strava. So far, I am very impressed, and am really looking forward to giving it a live test tomorrow.

Garmin Edge 500

While I did not get out this evening, I did get an opportunity to take an early morning ride. I was out earlier than normal, just a few minutes past 6:00 am and I could not believe how quiet it was. Not a soul was about. It was, however, like riding in the path of a hairdryer. Warm, wet and windy! Endomondo reported a humidity level of 99% and I don't doubt that. My glasses were streaming, water cascaded from my helmet and I became soggy from the outside in .. not the usual direction believe me. We still managed a respectable 10.5 miles including the long climb up Gully Shute & Hillhead into Colyton, a route I've not taken for some months and which I recall was, back then, a painful experience. 

Back on the home stretch, I secured a PB on the Seafront Sprint jumping to pole position ahead of my fellowAVP team mates reaching an average speed of 26 mph. My first Strava challenge completed!

The route art today is Yogi Bear on a skateboard :)

Stats: 10.49 mi, 52m 27s, Avg 12.0 mph, max 26.4 mph, 581 kcal

Day 147 - Strava

After being up to my elbows in grease yesterday giving my steed a little TLC, I've moved on to technology today, in a big way - what after all would you expect ;)

Two techie matters have occupied my mind of late. Firstly, I've been using Endomondo since Week 1 of my Tour. I selected this performance tracking application after a quick review of what I knew was on the market at the time and over the 5 months since, it has served me very well. Then, in last week's Cycling Weekly, I spotted an article where local authorities were attempting to get Strava, another cycling app, to take routes off their time challenge site which were encouraging unsafe cycling along e.g. narrow towpaths! I then noticed that two of my fellow cyclists, one on the Thursday night ride out with the AVP and another of my FB friends, were both using Strava. I had to take a closer a look.

In my view, Strava is not as intuitive an app on the smart phone as Endomondo but it does look slick. This is true of the web app too. What I particularly like is the lack of adverts even for non-pro users. I disliked the ads that MapMyRide filled my screen with and paid a nominal fee to remove these from Endomondo. Strava definitely has more of a competitive approach to its set up. Whatever route you take, Strava will provide a set of split times for previously identified sectors and then captures your performance to compare against every other user who has ridden the same route. This then gives you a relative position against your peers. It could get competitively addictive!

Something else Strava offers, is the ability to create a community for your Cycling Club to group and compare performance stats. It also makes available a couple of HTML widgets to share this information on members' personal blogs. I'm in techie heaven ... you can see these now added to the right margin (unless you are reading this at some time in the future and I've removed them!). The Axe Valley Pedallers (AVP) community was already set up so all I had to do was to join. On doing so, I saw that there were only 3 others who have done likewise .. so not all are obviously that blown away by this technology - hey ho, welcome to my world!

The challenge I have now, is that if I were to switch to Strava, I would lose all my training history with Endomondo, which I am not going to do. So for the time being, I am dual running with both apps to enjoy the benefits each community offers and will see how practical this is over the longer term.  

The second technology matter relates to the hardware. I've been looking, since that first week, for the best way of attaching my smartphone to my bike, so that I can visually track my progress in real time. I've tried attaching it to the handle bars but this has proven messy and visually unsuccessful. I have also had issues with the apps multitasking with, e.g. Text and Camera, such that I'm always relieved on returning returned home to find that my route has been saved. Years ago, I used a smartphone, with mixed success, as a SatNav device for my car. When I tired of this, I bought a TomTom unit. The quality and ease of use was a measurable improvement and the same again was true when I upgraded to a car with an inbuilt SatNav system. The lesson learned here is that something designed for a single purpose is usually better at it than one purporting to do many. So you can guess where I'm going here ... yes I'm looking at what Garmin are offering by way of dedicated GPS Cycling Computers. What I have also discovered, is that a Garmin unit will also allow me to upload my cycling data to both Endomondo and Strava, may be this will be a solution to both my technology challenges. More on this later in the week.

Back to the purpose of me having a bike ... riding it. I did get out today. Not this morning, an early business call put paid to that, but a post work evening ride, something which has become more frequent of late. My route was the favoured 3 hills to Colyton circuit with the addition of a reverse ride along the Route 2 wetlands cycle path. I'd not done the cycle path in the north to south direction before and I found it a much better direction from a scenic perspective to cycle. The 13.7mph headwind from Colyford back to Seaton was amazing, it took quite some effort and I would have welcomed a Tasmanian Richie Porte to pull me along!

Stats: 10.23 mi, 49m:01s, Avg 12.5 mph, Max 30.7, 543 kcal