Tag Archives: Garmin

Walkies

I’ve taken to going for quite a long walk on a Saturday afternoon – a good 3 hours or so as a minimum, provided the rain stays away.   To be honest, it’s just been that the weather has been brighter than the rest of the week, but the winds have been unpleasantly high for actually riding the bike – so it’s been nice to just get out on foot, walk around in the fresh air and get some sunlight on my face – I swear it’s as good as a dose of Prozac as far as mood improvement.

Today’s was another 9 miles or so (strange that I ride the bike in km’s but tend to walk locally in Miles, isn’t it…)   Blowing a complete hoolie all the way round, and far colder than the Garmin Recorded (probably because it was stuffed deep in my jacket pocket out of the wind!)

 

Smiles not Miles – Week 3 Day 7

Another day of Indoor riding – blowing a complete hoolie outside, and intermittent really heavy showers just seemed completely unappealing when I’d spent all week trying to get rid of a cold.

So, it was out with the trainer and on with the RLV software.   I ended up riding the Tacx T1936.34 – Mont Ventoux 2008 disk, or at least the “main feature” – i.e. the gentle spin down from Sault – gorges de Nesque and the ascent from the Bedoin side of the climb, followed by the descent off the mountain down to Malaucene.

There’s a GPS track route here, and the data from my Garmin on Strava is here

And just for Gits and Shiggles, here’s a Video…

Back Roads to and from Snaith

Nice little run today, mainly keeping to the back-roads where possible – it all went a little Pete Tong towards the last 10 miles or so – straight through Knottingley and Pontefract, but hey-ho…

Intention being to get in 40+ miles at a moving average of 15+mph – 65.6km @ 2:37:15 moving time = target achieved 🙂

Strava stuff here

A ride of Three Halves…

Yeah, Okay – I’m normally better at maths than the headline implies – it’s called mis-quoting for comic effect.

Though, it’s also a fair description of todays ride.   I decided to just have a “tempo” roll around on the local TT course, and in the process log a warmup ride, a course for the TT and a warmdown ride, which I can use on the Tacx Bushido when the weather comes down…

I set my stall out to basically ride the loop in “evens” – i.e. 30 minutes for a 10 mile TT – just so it was easy to scale to different speeds etc. on the Bushido.   I wasn’t counting on the 20+mph headwind on the final hill knocking the stuffing out of me, and i’ve ended up with 30:44 instead.

Arse.

Anyway – here’s the Strava stuff for it

Warmup – Time Trial Course – Cooldown

TTS 3.9 – Finally, Something Right

Yep – it actually looks like Tacx’s outsourced programmers have extracted their collective digits and fixed a problem, without creating another one.

Today, I managed three separate rides, one a steady state ride from the VR DVD “Argus Tour 2010” – where I did a simple 6 miles of the route, pausing occasionally, deliberately stopping the wheel, and seeing if the regular “Lost Connection with Brake” message came up.    Nope.    Woo-Hooo!!!!  Details of the ride on Garmin Connect Here.

Second Ride was one of the Ergo Rides – very strange, you follow a pro-rider or two, and the trainer gives you a resistance level that matches the power ratings that the pro’s SRM system recorded on the ride.   Of course, for them it’s a nice gentle recovery spin, and for me, it would have been murder.   So – there’s the option to “turn down” the wattage. I rode this demo at 60% intensity of what the Schleck Brothers did.     Now – to be honest, I’d NEVER been able to run one of these ERGO videos without an almost instant crash.   The entire 6 minute worked flawlessly, and I’m actually looking forward to trying some of the other ergo video’s when I get rid of this cold!  Anyway – ride details via GC are here.

The Third ride was another VR DVD ride – a simple descent of the Gerlos pass, from the Grossglockner DVD.  This was a cracker of a warmdown – as I mentioned above, I’m actually full of cold – and I just enjoyed the fact that the machine was stable, and I made it all the way down the hill.     No crashes, no snags, no hiccups, just get on and ride.    Like it should have been 4 months ago when I bought it, but it hasn’t been until today!   Again, details from this ride are on GC here.

All the rides were exported as .HRM files, and quickly converted via SportsTracks3 and a couple of Plugins into Garmin compatible .TCX files, for export into Garmin Connect – I have standardised on GC for the simple reason that my last 3-4 years worth of rides are in there, so I don’t really want to abandon it…

 

Third part of the Indoor Etape Du Tour 2010

Managed to get the third and final mountain in this little indoor cycling trilogy “in the can” today – and surprise, surprise – as soon as I stopped pedalling, the damned software threw up its “Lost connection with Brake Messsage”

So –  I bloody well ignored it, and rode the rest of the route anyway.

All in one peice, HRM file adjusted only to get the Altitude correct – apparently, Tacx export routines start the export at 300m above sea level, whatever the actual altitude is.  This left today’s mountain 566M short of its true stature, and that kind of wrankles with me…

Anyway – ride report is here

Over-Thinking things…

Well – i’ve had a day off today – spent it catching up with all the “domestic” stuff plus a little side project with photography. I’m a moderator on a photography Forum (yes, there is a life outside of Blogging, MFP, Garmin Connect and the riding the Bike…) and last year I decided to mark my Birthday with a “Travelling Camera” thread – I boxed up a plastic fantastic Holga film camera, 5 rolls of film and a bunch of prepaid return envelopes for the film. I then called for volunteers to shoot some pictures on film – a new experience for some of the members smile Anyway – to cut things short, the second roll of film finally popped through the letterbox yesterday – so I just HAD to develop and scan the pictures, didn’t I laugh

To be honest though, I’d had three pretty tough (for me) days on the bike – I’ve been trying to up my mileage, and the last three days have seen me manage 92 miles – not bad for someone who was averaging maybe 7-8 miles a day last August!

Anyway, while I was waiting for the negatives to dry, I spent a while on the computer, going over my calorie burn figures etc. and had a little bit of a scary thought. I’ve been booking down the calorie burn from the Garmin, as an addition to the figure given to me for food rations by MFP. The problem is, as I understand it, the Garmin’s figure is the TOTAL # of kcals burned in that 105 minutes. Which means If I add in this total to MFP I’m double-counting my BMR for that 105 minutes. It’s not been over critical, as frankly, I’ve not been eating back most of the exercise calories – however – as the time on the bike is increasing, as is the number of kcals burned, obviously i’m going to have to begin to do so – otherwise i’m going to end up with the dreaded “bonk” 40 miles from home…

Also, it helps explain the “hole” in my figures – I’d calculated my food shortfall calories, added in my riding calories, totalled the figures up each month and divided by 3500 – the figure my Dr. told me constituted a lb. of body fat. And whaddya know – I was losing a bit less than I should have all the time. However, re-visiting the figures with the “BMR Adjustment” applied, and the overall accuracy improved quite substantially. At the moment, I’m not going to worry about this – it’s quite a chunk of extra math/spreadsheet work, but as the miles increase, and the time on the bike goes up, the “buggeration factor” will become more material.

To put a few figures on it – yesterday’s ride was 1h45m – and booked as 2116 kcal. My BMR per the MFP tools is 2239kcal/day or (2239/(24*60)=1.55486kcal / minute – or 163 kcal for the ride duration. So – I should have booked the ride as 1953 kcals instead.

So In summary: What We have learned today:

  1. It was sunny and dry, and I should have gone out on the bike.
  2. Old School film takes too long to dry, and leaves me too much time to think about things.
  3. I need to keep busier, or I end up over-thinking things. laugh

 

Brrr !!

Cold, Crisp, Clear and Sunny – but bloody perishing by around half-three!   Added yet another extra detour into my local loop – more miles, more climbing, and a couple of stinking hills just at the end of the ride.   Lovely.   I’m sat here this evening like 291lb of hammered dogmeat!

Ride statistics via Garmin Connect here.

 

Epic Fail on the Weather Forecasting Front

Went out convinced that I’d get away with a ride in the dry.   After 3 miles, it was beginning to get a little misty, then fortunately, it started raining instead.   5 miles into the ride, and it was raining hard enough that i’d be wet through even if I turned around and went straight home.  So,  I thought, give the normal loop a go, and cut it short if you feel cold or unhappy.    And, amazingly, the sealskinz socks, neoprene overshoes and myriad layers of Roubaix lycra conspired to keep me warm for the entire 23 miles of my new extended loop.   I’m calling this yet another mental milestone – if I’ve got the application to still keep going even if the weather’s not too kind, I must be getting more positive overall.

 

Ride details from Garmin Connect Here, don’t laugh, It was cold and wet and I wasn’t taking any chances on the speed front!