Power numbers on Reservoir street climb

Last nite I went and did the Monday Night Ride. Once we got on reservoir, george and I took off. I was for 7:50 on the segment, but I didn't go all out. I pulled for most of it and felt good. I ended up just shy by 3 seconds, which I could have done if I sprinted the last 200 meters. Looking at my times for this year, the power output seems to be in the same range.

The fastest time is from earlier this year on MNR with a couple of guys taking turns pulling. We also had a nice tail wind, which made a big difference. From what the data shows, times faster than 8:30 is consistently over 200 watts for the segment. According to Strava, my best 8:00 min avg power is 266. Last nite's effort was 261 avg for 7:53.

I know the goal is attainable, so it's just a matter of training and a proper warmup.

Looking at Watts and Weighted Avg Power

Now that I've ridden my regular lunch route a couple of times, I decided to look at my data. Here is a chart with the average watts, weighted avg power (WAP) watts, elapsed time in seconds and elapsed time in hr:min:ss.

	avg watts	WAP watts	time secs	hr:min:ss
5/21/2014	180	198	3722	1:02:22
5/20/2014	174	192	3877	1:04:37
5/12/2014	189	216	3650	1:00:50
5/5/2014	183	214	3793	1:03:13
4/11/2014	188	214	3687	1:01:27
4/10/2014	194	214	3703	1:01:43
4/8/2014	182	204	3795	1:03:15
4/6/2014	174	200	3946	1:05:46

So far my fastest time is 1:00:50 for an average of 189 watts or a WAP of 216. According to cyclemeter the wind that day was 10mph WSW. The day with the highest avg watts was 194, WAP of 214 and wind of 22mph SW.

If I compare the time for tuesday and wednesday of this week, there's roughly a 2min difference. The wind on tuesday was 22 mph NW, and wed was 5 mph E. The thing that interests me is the relationship between watts and time. Alot of bike manufacturers throw around numbers claiming their new aero bike saves blah watts and gives you a blah second advantage.

In reality, riding in the real world things are constantly changing, so "watt saving" doesn't translate to actual seconds faster. The only sure fire gaurantee for going faster is getting fit, loosing weight and proper training. The data I have so far doesn't prove anything, but it is interesting to see how power varies. As I get more data for my lunch route, I can do more analysis to see the correlation between time and power.

Wheels and Wheels

Between the 2 road bikes I own, I have 4 sets of wheels. The first sets are for my Specialized Dolce. It came with stock bontrager wheels, which were heavy and didn't roll very well. When I changed my cassette to 11-28, I got shimano R500 wheels for it. Between those two wheels, the R500 are definitely lighter and roll better. I don't remember the exact price I paid, but it was around 300-320.

When I bought my giant avail, it came with stock giant wheels. With in the 6 months, I broke 1 spoke and it had to be trued twice. Last year, my in-laws gave me Mavic Aksium wheels for my birthday. The wheels cost 329.00 with shipping it was 350.00. Before I got the mavic, I didn't feel comfortable going faster than 50mph. Above 45mph the stock bontrager and giant wheels didn't feel solid on turns. As a result, I often got dropped on long descents on group rides.

There's a couple of things I like about the Mavic wheels. The first is they're bomb proof! I haven't had to true them at all. I've hit plenty of bad potholes and they handled them quite well. With the other three wheels, it would go out of true. The second thing is the lower rolling resistance. The third is the bladed spokes for extra aerodynamics. The forth is they're much lighter than the other three wheels.

If I had to compare the giant wheels to Mavic, I would say the giant wheel set is like a beat up old Pinto. It works and it's cheap, but it requires more maintenance and it's slow. The mavic aksium is like a Honda Civic. It's reliable, affordable, well built and well designed. It's not an exotic like Ferrari or McClaren with lots of carbon fiber. I can't justify spending over 800 on a set of wheels, so high end carbon aero wheels just aren't in my immediate future.

The bottom line for me is Mavic wheels are bomb proof and a great value.

Comparing Polar H7 vs Wahoo Tickr

Recently I bought a Wahoo Tickr heart rate monitor to replace the Polar H7 that died on me. I actually own 2 Polar H7 HRM, but I haven't had much luck in terms reliability. The first one I bought worked for about 10 months, then it started to malfunction. The symptoms were no bluetooth signal. I sent it in to get it serviced, which took about 2.5 weeks. I decided to order a new Polar H7 before I sent in the old one for service. That first unit ended up malfunctioning again after 2 weeks, so I sent it back again. The second time, Polar gave me a replacement, which seemed to work. A month after that, the soft strap started not working. I figured this out when I tested each sensor with both old and new straps. Once I realized the strap was bad, I ordered a new one and threw the bad one away.

Another 2 months after that, the second H7 started to go bad, so I sent that in for service. Even after getting it back, it still didn't work. I gave up and decided Polar's HRM isn't reliable over time. It works fine for the first 6-10 months, but soon after that it fails. Since I had great service from Wahoo for my speed/cadence sensor, I thought I'd give Wahoo Tickr a try. There's a couple of things I like about Tickr. The first is the 2 lights on the front that tell you the batter is good and sending bluetooth signal. The second is the strap is different than Polar soft strap. With the polar soft strap, the electrodes are bonded to the elastic strap, which over time gets stressed and worn out. In 16 months I've killed 2 polar soft straps. The wahoo strap has a different design, which I "feel" could improve reliability. The electrodes on the Wahoo strap are bonded to a material that doesn't stretch, which means the likelihood of it getting damaged is less likely. In terms of comfort, it feels about the same as the Polar soft strap. The second thing I like about Wahoo strap is it's easier to buckle compared to the Polar soft strap. A third benefit is the Tickr supports both ANT+ and bluetooth. When new firmware is available, you download it to the sensor. Polar H7 doesn't do that.

So far the Tickr hasn't had any issues. Only time will tell if Tickr will last longer than Polar H7. One thing is clear though, Wahoo's customer service is better right now.

Power meter

Over the holiday I decided to get myself a power meter. I spent many months researching power meters and read about Stages back in Feb 2013. Early in the season I upgraded the FSA crank to Shimano 105. The change is noticeable. The FSA crank isn't nearly as stiff as hollowtech crank and also it's heavier. Part of my reason for changing cranks is that Stages didn't support FSA cranks at the time. Fast forward to December. I pulled the trigger and ordered it. In late Jan I got the crank and installed it.

Now that I've been using it for a few weeks I'm quite happy with it. The installation was a breeze. I spent more time cleaning and oiling my bottom bracket than installing the left crank arm. I've noticed a few things about my power output the last few weeks.

The first one is correlation between cadence and power. My natural cadence is around 100 rpm. When I tried to follow sufferfest ISLAGIATT cadence, the power output was lower and more erratic. I've known that I prefer spinning to mashing, but it was great to see real data. At 100-105 cadence, my power varies .4watts, which is decent.

Overall, I've quite happy with the stages power meter.

Sufferfest

The last last few weeks, the weather has been cold and I've been on the trainer. The thing is, I used to hate the trainer. By that I mean this. I counted every minute and wished I was done. I tried watching daily show, colbert report, bones, top gear and a bunch of other stuff, but the most I could do was 25 minutes. Every minute felt like torture.

Since I have Strava premiun, I decided to give sufferfest a try. Two friends suggested. The first one I tried was rubber gloves. I had no clue what kind of suffering it would dish out and to my surprise, I managed to finish the whole thing. When I got done, I shocked myself by hitting a max heart rate of 194. Prior to this, my max heart rate with HRM was around 185. At the YMCA, I've gone over 190, but I thought it had a large margin of error. Life cycles and spin cycle HRM aren't that accurate.

After rubber gloves I tried fight club and revolver. Both of them are geared towards sprinters, so I don't really like them. Last week I decided to get rubber gloves due to poor streaming quality from Strava. The next day I also purchased the long scream and ISLAGIATT.

Watching sufferfest videos, I'm getting a better workout and have done several hour long sessions the last 2 weeks. I don't love the trainer yet, but I no longer hate it. That in itself says a lot about sufferfest videos.

Mavic wheels

Now that I've been riding the Mavic Aksium wheels since March, I can report they are faster. I've gone down the same hills enough times to know at speed they give me an extra 2-3mph. When group rides go down route 62 from princeton center, I no longer get dropped. Instead, I'm right there with the group. Usually I have the wheel inflated to 100-110. When the wheels are under inflated, I notice the crappy roads less. On smooth roads, the Mavic are faster than the stock Giant wheels that came with the bike.

Is Mavic Aksium wheels a good value? I would say yes. Given what I paid at Nashbar and the miles I've logged so far, they've been great. A couple of times I hit a pot hole pretty hard and the wheel didn't go out of true like the Giant wheels. The stock tires that came with it are junk though, but I don't mind that. Once the tires were slightly worn, I replaced them with Gatorskin Hardshell 25. I like the extra air that 25 provides. Oddly, I feel the 25 are faster than 23 tires. The first 1000 miles were on the stock mavic tires and they got 2 flats. If the roads were in better condition, it probably wouldn't matter as much.

Overall, I'm very happy with the Mavic wheels and how they've performed.