Two Wheel Blogs

Judging by the way I feel tonight I must have had a good ride.

Lucky for me I had my SRM bicycle powermeter to tell me it was so. I would never have known it was a good ride without it. It hurt a lot. I spent a lot of time going slow, recovering.

Tonight I really brought the pain. The group I started out with put me on the path to that special lung searing, leg burning place. For the rest of the ride I repeatedly surged power and held it as long as possible. I wanted to push past the edge.

Higher VI was what I wanted to see tonight. All this winter trainer riding has left me with a really decent Functional Threshold Power, but I don't have many matches in the box. Too many times digging deep and this old goat explodes.

Exploding goats. Not a pretty sight.

Here it is.

Golden Cheetah is a Free/Open Source (FOSS) power training software application. Wow, this is great and they are already far enough along to provide some usability it seems. Check out screen shots. I have been dreaming of something like this for some time. Unfortunately my C skills are pretty weak right now so I don't think I can help directly. But mucho ataboys for these guys attempting to do this.

but trying.

I don't know who said that but I live by those words. If I don't know something won't work I'll just go ahead and try. Worst case, I fail. Well, worst case I get myself killed, but I don't usually try stuff like that. I'm not only 2 old 2 go slow but I'm 2 old 2 be that stupid.

Anyway, when I try something and fail it's an opportunity to learn something. It's an opportunity to learn:

1. it can't be done
2. I can't do it, or
3. I can't do it that way, so maybe I should try some other way

One thing I've been wanting to do lately is to install one of my SRMs on my Surly Karate Monkey. I really wanted - still want - to know how much power I'm putting out and how much TSS I'm accumulating out there in the woods. Estimating it is OK, and it appears I'm fairly accurate with my estimates judging by performances predicted by my Performance Manager chart; but still it's just an estimate. Why estimate power when you might be able to get real data?

Speaking of power meters, the SRM is the Rolls (or Mercedes depending on how you view cars) of PMs and within the SRM family there is the Amateur model and the Pro model. The difference being the number of electronic strain gauges involved which effects the accuracy. Or is it precision that is affected? At any rate, is the Amateur model usable? Anyone with experience out there who can tell for sure? What are the real world differences?

This looks pretty cool. I am getting curious about the Ergomo. The Powertap still represents the best value in a PM I think but the Ergomo has it positive points. A couple of things that I like are that I could use my Ksyriums with a PM if I had the Ergomo. Screen real estate is also better on the Ergomo. All the parameters are visible at one time. Not so with the PT, you have to scroll through quite a bit of stuff to see AP, Cadence, HR, and interval time. This can be annoying.