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Has it taken a knock? It
Has it taken a knock? It seems quiet further up the cassette, is it possible the mech hanger is bent?Given how new this stuff is, I’d just take it back to the shop where you bought it.
@Neil – is that tiny
@Neil – is that tiny south-westerly road through pentraeth forest passable on 23c tyres, or do I need to box round it on the B5109?What a brilliant answer!
What a brilliant answer! Cheers, I’ll start poring over the maps and will come back to you if I’m unsure.Thanks again.
What a prize turd.
What a prize turd.Will do. Once I’ve
Will do. Once I’ve determined the FTP and relevant CP numbers, I’ll work out the numbers I should be hitting for the intervals on my sufferfest vids (Angels climbing intervals are 8 minutes, and Downward Spiral is just that, so should provide a spread of interval times) then use those for now.Incidentally, I approached one of the “fitness coaches” at the gym, and asked if they had a “trainingpeaks account for the wattbike?” His first response (I’m not joking) was “training what?”. His second answer was “I know the wattbike is like a computer”. Bless him, don’t think he’d had any training, and didn’t seem to know of anyone who had.
Righto, so this cold has
Righto, so this cold has found its way onto my chest, so no training today. However, I did test everything. Went to the gym, set up a user and recorded a session (only a couple of mins easy pedalling) onto a thumb drive. Installed Wattbike Expert in a Winxp virtual machine on the mac, imported fine. The only bad news is that my pedalling technique, it turns out, is shocking!Thanks for the help everyone.
farrell wrote:I screwed my
I screwed my back due to a combination of wearing socks, a ringing phone, a run down the stairs and a sister that though furniture polish was a good idea on a laminate floor.If you remember Wizbit then it might make sense when I say that my legs went “ha ha this a-way” and my upper body went “ha ha that-a-way”.
My oh my!
(Sorry!)
Just look at the adverts you
Just look at the adverts you see to become an instructor – they have the distinct air of just inviting anyone with a license to complete a course. I suspect the course focuses on teaching more than on the actual driving skill of the instructor-to-be.I was given loads of room by a student under instruction a little while ago, I had hoped to catch them at the lights and thank them (bit of positive reinforcement doesn’t do any harm), but it didn’t happen.
I think maybe you’re right
I think maybe you’re right about asking WB about the data question. Unfortunately I might have a little more time than I thought to sort all this, as one of the babies picked up a cold in creche that he has kindly passed on to me – the 2nd in a month! (How do pro athletes train and cope with lurgy from the kids – use nannies?!)As for the pedals, well they have a strict rule against pedal changes on the spinning bikes thanks to some dimwit cross-threading during a changover and thus writing off a crank, so I imagine they would feel the same way about a £1k specialist bit of kit.
Anyway, thanks for the help all. Time to find out just *how much* more power than me that the pros produce…
mooleur wrote:You can grab
You can grab session data if your gym have the bikes hooked up to software (you should be able to request this if they don’t already, as a lot of folks will more than likely want to use their session data regularly) – I’m not sure about using the data for other apps like Garmin Connect but you can import the file to Training Peaks at least; http://wattbike.com/uk/wattbike/training_peaksBUT I think you need to be under a coach or premium (don’t buy premium it’s a rip off) edition of TP. Might be worth asking your Gym guys if they have a coach edition training peaks that you can register under.
If you can’t get the session data into your preferred software platform I would just make sure you note down all of the session information, grab things like average power, length of intervals, you can then type them in manually to your application of choice – not ideal but at least you’ll have some of the numbers. 🙂
On testing, I only do one every 6 weeks and thats between 12 and 20 hours of training a week (though I usually use my 10mile timetrials as one so thats once a week normally) – unless you’re hammering it, don’t worry about Friels advice to do every month, that’s just crazy talk 😛
One note of warning, the stock saddles that WB come with are POO, maybe coax your gym into getting their “sport” version for one of them for the more serious athletes :)
Hmm, I can just see the gym staff being a bit ‘meh’ about records of session data, or perhaps more accurately a bit ‘eh?!’ when it goes over their heads. Their high turnover of staff is, I think, not a coincidence, and the good ones don’t seem to stay that long. Therefore I’m inclined to just rely on what *I* can do to give me what I need. Given that the Wattbike expert software is free, will that do what I need for tracking tests and fitness gains, or is that more for the realtime visuals rather than analysis and trends after the event? If it will suffice, then the next question is whether I the Wattbike Expert software will import a session file. I’m thinking I could use a USB drive to record the session then upload when I get home. Then again, if everyone starts doing that, I’m unsure if malware could get transmitted via the WB, and then the fun will really start…
Failing that, I might have to try going the whole nine yards and hook up a laptop to record the session onto WB Expert in real time. Only issue with that is that my laptop is a Macbook. I have VMware Fusion hosting a Windows VM, but I might have to sort out bootcamp, depending on whether the app likes the virtual bridging for the USB port to the VM.
Re the saddle, from the quick glance I had at the weekend, the saddle looked like a road bike saddle, perhaps they are already the sport version you mention? I’ll make sure to take a pair of good shorts!
One other thing (sorry!) – my road pedals are Speedplay, so incompatible with the WB setup. Is that SPD or SPD-SL as standard on the WB? I realise I can turn the pedal over and use trainers, but I’ve tried that in spinning classes and found that, when giving it the beans, I can feel the pedal pressing through the trainer soles and it gets painful eventually. Besides, if the whole point is to measure power, then use of flexible gym trainers seems self-defeating. Now it’s not entirely bad as I’ve been thinking about a new pair of shoes anyway, so I can relegate the current pair to WB duty if necessary, but what cleats do I need? I then need to ensure that my (Spesh Body Geometry Expert Road) shoes can take those cleats.
Thanks for all the help so far everyone!
Ok, so I was expecting the
Ok, so I was expecting the bit about establishing my FTP. Reading the Train With Power pdf, I note that Joe suggests just using the kit first so you get used to the screens and the readouts before doing anything serious. I’ve got the measurements from my bikefit, so I’ll take a tape measure to try and replicate that. So:1. This weekend I’ll try and bag one of the bikes (I don’t know how popular they are proving to be) and just use it for a sufferfest workout. I’ve done that enough times on the turbo or one of the Gym’s spinning bikes. I’ll use Angels or Downward Spiral, and already know how hard I can go. It’ll be interesting to see what power I can produce. (Bets anyone? First person to say less than 100 is banned from the internet! 😀 )
2. The week after, I’ll try the 20-minute test. I like the idea of testing critical power at CP0.2, 1, 6, 12 and 30, but I’m not sure when I’ll do those. With only 1 wattbike session per week, there’s a risk that I could spend all my time faffing with tests and none actually training. That said, I really like the idea of being able to train each critical power duration with accuracy.
Joe suggests testing every 3 to 4 weeks, but I’m not getting enough miles in for testing that often to be worthwhile, I don’t think. However, he also suggests testing towards the end of a recovery period, so I’ll just try and arrange further tests around those.
Do I need to workout how I’m going to export data from the wattbike? My garmin is the 200, so isn’t ANT+ compatible.
Best you get cracking to make
Best you get cracking to make sure they offer you another for next season then! 😀I’ll read the review, but this pesky work laptop won’t let me near anything that says ‘blog’ – I’ll catch it later.
Ok, I’ve just downloaded the
Ok, I’ve just downloaded the pdf file “Training with Power” from Joe’s website. For the trainingpeaks stuff, isn’t that assuming that I can download a log file from the wattbike to upload to TP? Or can I just manually input some numbers into TP for it to do the maths bit? I don’t know whether they’ll like me plugging a USB stick into the wattbike or something… still, what they don’t know etc!I should add that I haven’t even been training with HR – the opportunity to ride my bike is usually an escape from complexity for me, so I just ride, go hard when I feel good, try to pedal in nice circles, and try to beat my own times on climbs. The difference here is that we put the twins into the Gym’s creche on a saturday morning, but their insurance doesn’t cover you to leave the premises – hence, the best use of time while onsite (I currently do weights and cardio) will be to learn to actually ‘train’ (and train with power) rather than ride.
The gym is a David Lloyd, I don’t know how much training they’ve been given on the product.
“combine these long efforts with stuff that’s gonna improve your bodies lactic threshold. ” – By this do you mean combining the long efforts with shorter ones, or is it not that simple?
I have got a cheap HR monitor somewhere, should I be using that as well? I need to replace the batteries but that’s easy done.
Sorry for all the stoopid questions!
I used to have a bad back. I
I used to have a bad back. I practised martial arts to improve my core strength etc, but I still had to do about 5 hours a week of stretching, plus have a custom lumbar support made for the car. Then I got back on a bike after several years away… And it stopped. Seriously, my back is miles better. The Physio reckoned it was related to being just slightly stretched out, but for prolonged periods. A decent bike fitting is essential.As for the shocks etc from the road surface, well you’re aiming to avoid them anyway, as much to protect the bike as anything else. Even when I don’t get chance to avoid or bunnyhop them, I usually get chance to lift up and “unweight” the bike.
Plenty of climbing within
Plenty of climbing within striking distance of Ruthin (and decent little cafe to come back to!). I’ve got a GPX of an 81 mile ride if you like – Prestatyn Conwy down past Betsy Coed, over to Ruthin and back up to Prestatyn. Just over 4000 ft, so decent but not that lumpy.
