rudi-h

where are you guys watching these races... is it just me or did SS cut own on its coverage of the classics big time?

this is getting a bit petty don't you think... who knows, the unfit newbie on his ebike that you despise might just end up being the same guy who goes out of his way to build/maintain trails every second weekend... compare that to a serious dude training for epic who would typically be way too obsessed with chasing strava segments and hitting weekly TSS targets to ever touch a rake or a shovel to fix a berm...

care to share more info on the torque-training topic? All of the training systems that i know of (trainer road, training peaks etc.) strictly work on power output. id be interested to see how torque comes into the picture.

i get the point... i've never been to copenhagen, but most cities where bicycle commuting works well are quite flat and the city designs lend itself to living, working and playing in closer proximity to what we typically have in SA. i'm guessing the same holds there, probably an easy sub 30 min commute for the majority of those 65% bicycle commuters?

imagine a world where every single one of us took an ebike to work... a city with bike paths and trails everywhere (yes, even gnarly ones with jumps and berms and shi_t) so that you can hop and smile your way back home after work. trails that are safe to use day and night (because they get used by everybody), a world where you don't need to drop your car somewhere and call uber every time that you feel like drinking a beer people waving, smiling and greeting each other as they fly by each other 8AM on their morning commute instead of vloeking the douchbag pushing in front of you in morning traffic... a place with no taxis or hooters or idling for hours and sucking up fumes ______ Now lets face it, normal bikes have been around for 100+ years, yet the amount of people actively using bicycles as a means of either transport and fun/recreation are confined to a select few lean and mean blokes (many of us) that have become too damn scared to ride our bikes anywhere but 50km outside of the city perimeter in some "safe" spot, and god forbid riding alone or out at night. How do we get from this fking mess that we live with now to the picture above? E-bikes are currently the only likely transport technology (fast enough, cheap enough, capable to cover distance, fun enough and doesn't leave you in a puddle of sweat after you've cycled 1km up the road) that has the ability to even attempt this change. And the only way that we ill ever get a large scale take-up in ebike use is to make ebikes sexy, make them efficient, make them fun, make them cool AND make them inclusive. That would mean that we might have to drop our "tough-guy" / "purist" / "hardman" / "HTFU" and "earn your downhills" sentiments that many of us cyclists associate with and welcome those e-bike users to our trails and races... Who knows, in 20 years you might thank yourself for your progressive new mindset and one day when you're 75 and no longer capable of pushing out 350W on the hills, you still might enjoy riding your favorite trail...

Hi David Once again no criticism, just comments: The algorithm does not work very well for sub-FTP intervals, i.e. longer stretches of increased power. In the example below, I did a 38 minute block of pretty hard work, where my avg power was in excess of ~250W (to me this is Zone 3B or SS). This below pic shows what it looks like in intervals.icu. It says recovery for efforts that were full on Z3B intervals. For the entire 38 minutes of hard riding, Intervals.icu only gave me credit for 5 X intervals all below 1 minute, where in fact I basically was balls-to-the-wall for 38 minutes. Just an idea, perhaps one can have a slider function to adjust the sensitivity of the inteval intensity. I.e. if you know you did an long effort where you tried your best to keep constant wattage over longer periods of sub-FTP efforts, but could not keep it perfectly constant due to the terrain, then it removes some of the spikes and bumps and calculates your intervals over longer periods. If you did short HIT sprints, then you might want to increase the sensitivity? In terms of editing, it works well if you want to edit only one interval, but if you have many in one ride, one would need way of saving your data as you go along. Thanks again for the app

not according to my lbs... they said that they tried all of the distributors, but maybe they just didn't try hard enough

if only one could get 28mm tubeless tyres in SA

Here's an example. This was last night, I did ERG mode intervals on my kickr. Only issue is that every now and then the kickr loses connection to my garmin, causing a temporary dip. Look at interval #4. It's a 8 minute interval @ 290W, but it only picked up the last 6min50 because there was a short dip after the first 1min10s. PS this is not intended as criticism, I like the "product". Just posting some data if you'd want to evolve your algorithms.

HI Mark / MDW i just read through your post on the first page. One of your statements seem odd and could bring question into what seems to be very informative and credible info. (PS I'm not saying you are not correct, I'm just interested in an explanation) You mention that weetbix is high GI and that 32GI sports drink is low GI, so help me with this: From the product info (website), 32GI endure sports drink (I assume this is the one you are referring to in your post) every 100g contains 88g carbs of which 74g is from sugar. These are in the form of fructose and maltodextrin. From my understanding both of these "sugars" are complex sugars, so it is basically a string of glucose molecules combined in a chain which requires enzymes to break the bonds, hence the "slow release" effect when compared to glucose-based drinks such as energade. Wheetbix (if used without additional sugar) is a full-on starch with 68g of carbs per 100g with only 4g from sugar. Carbs that are not sugar (starch) are by definition more complex molecules than maltodextrin or anything else classified as "sugar" and would require even more time to break the molecular chains? To the layman which I am, it would seem that weetbix would be lower GI than 32GI endure...

Hi David Great app and I'd love to use it more! Only comment is that I think your window for identifying intervals is a little short, i.e. you don't allow for longer intervals. I do a lot of 8-10 minute threshold intervals and sometimes perhaps 30-45 minute sweet spot intervals. Because the algorithm only looks for short intervals, it would break down every "long" interval into a number of sub-intervals with very little recovery time, especially if you're out on the road and lose a bit of power for a few seconds down a hill. Example, I did a 10 minutes hill interval on the weekend where I averaged 300W. Your algorithm broke this down into 3 separate intervals of ~330W with a number of "recovery" sessions inbetween. I never dropped my power below 250W, so the "recovery" between these intervals were not recovery at all. Perhaps an option to select multiple intervals to combine into 1 would be a great new feature.

*little hi-jack i've been a proud owner of a fenix3 for 18 months now. 2 issues: 1) about a month ago it stopped uploading wirelessly. I need to plug it into the computer with the usb cable to upload workouts... anyone exprienced the same, and how can this be fixed? 2) the tri-belt that i bought... the plastic part with the sensors pulled out of the elastic strap. i guess i can get it stitched up, but wondered if this is a common problem *hi-jack off

So I can't comment on ITB, but I managed to cut my running injuries down to nothing despite increasing my running volume over the past few years. I'm 35, weigh around 90 kg's and have been running for 13 years now. Not particularly fast or spectacular, I try to maintain a level of fitness so that I can run 5min/km over a 10km distance pretty much all year round. From time to time I'll be a little faster and from time to time i'll be a little slower. Best time on a 8km timetrial is 35m25, fastest 10k is 45ish and my fastest 21 is around 1h47. that's just to put my (limited) talent into perspective of the advice below, so basically, don't listen to me if you're a sub 4:20 min/km runner, I've never been at your level! Even when I just came out of my teens, I had issues with shin splints, sore knees, achillis tendons you name it. Over time I learned to manage this and I've got 4 rules that proved to be the the silver bullet (at least silverest bullet) in terms of preventing running injury for me personally: 1) Don't ever run hard consecutive days. If you do run two days in a row, make sure one of the two days is either a short interval type session or a easy paced run. Never run 3 days in a row and never more than 4 times in a week! 2) Pick up your cadence. I used to have what I believed was a comfortable running cadence at ~155 spm. I then bought a Garmin and the app basically told me that I'm running like Shrek. Sceptical at first, I increased my cadence to the ~180 spm mark that Garmin suggests which felt terrible at first. I have since gotten used to the cadence and other than just the injury issue, I also found that my running times are faster, because I simply cant run at a high candence if i'm slogging below 5m30 / km. 3) Do a little bit of leg work. I try to do at least one session of body-weight squats a week in combo with sets of push-ups and pull-ups. The whole routine takes like 12 minutes and I literally just do 8 sets of 10reps body weight squats. No weights and i don't bend my knees more than 90 deg. 4) Go to the fisio around every 8 weeks or so. If you have a good one, they can tell you when your muscles are tensing up and whether there are injuries on the way. Not sure which of the above 4 are the main contributors to me not getting injured anymore, but i've been injury and pain free for the better part of 3 years now.

did it in 2h54 last year... power data attached. I over-cooked the first half by trying to stay in the front of C batch and had a NP of ~300W for the first hour. If you ride more conservatively, you can do a sub 3 with quite a bit lower NP. I weighed 90 kg's at the time. PS a friend of mine weighed 9kg's less than me and had the exact same NP, he came in 9 minutes faster from A batch. So i guess you can say that on the 94.7 route you can work on a minute per kg less for the same power output. Oh yes, and this average power is quite a bit higher than I had on training rides. I typically average about 200W average and ~240 NP on a hard-ish 3h training ride, so your body can do a bit more on race day.

hijack on i've got a santacruz 5010c. its a great bike and i love it to bits, but i must say i've started to develop a real itch for a ti frame hardtail... i ride a bit of everything, so I was thinking to trade my bike in for a slack geometry hardtail with at 140mm fork to handle everything from a non-technical multi day stage race to rough stuff like the odd enduro race or even a mild DH course... questions: 1) How does the ride quality of a well specced AM hardtail (like most in this thread, specifically post #548 from Hairy above) compare with what I have now? Will I miss the rear shock or feel that the bike is less capable straight away? 2) Does one go with plus size, or are these machines a dying breed? 3) Where does one buy a boost ti frame in SA, and how many options does one have? I like the Van Nicholas frames quite a bit 4) Is there any way or place where one can test ride a machine like this? hijack off

yoh, lots of bullets. maybe it's just me but i'm not getting it... how many events are there and when do they take place? is it 5 events on one day? maybe you should attach the table referred to in bullet # 13, it's not on this post or on the event page.

how does this change the number of hours that you need to spend in your running shoes... I try to optimize training and I typically only manage 6 hours a week in a manner that is sustainable. I've always believed that to get the most "fitness" out of the 6 hours that I exercise a week, I need to do intervals, speed sessions, hills etc. to make it count. I must say that I do agree with the "take it slower" approach to prevent injuries and overtaining, but how many training hours would one have to add to your week to maintain a similar level of fitness when you drop the intensity by so much.

my recent frustration with road bike wheel problems... 1) used to ride a raleigh RC3000. probably did 20000km on the bike with no issues... at some point the rear wheel went out of true and can't get it sorted. Had it to cycle lab 2 times and to another local shop. I had my own hand at truing it (got pretty good because had to redo it after every ride) but no matter what I do it won't stay trued. If i true it perfectly before a ride, it's out so far that it rubs against the brake pad at around 40km. At 100km its so far out the tyre touches the seat stay 2) new bike is a merida scultura 5000 disc. snapped two spokes in ~1700km of riding this year. Also had the wheel rebuilt by cycle lab, so i'm assuming they would have applied to correct spoke tension etc. not as irritating, because the discs makes that I don't have brake pads rubbing against a wobbly wheel, but still annoying to have to do work on a brand new bike this whole spoke issue is new to me, anyone have similar issues on road bikes?

i use arena open water goggles and i kinda like them. they don't sit inside your eye socket, so you don't look like someone has tried to vacuum your eyeballs when you take them off. also like the slight dark tint to the lenses for those early morning swims when the reflection can be quite harsh. so yes, to me the "open water" type goggles are more comfortable and worth it

ban this, ban that... stay off this, get of that... pedal assisted bikes are arguably the most efficient and sustainable form of transport invented to date and it turns out that it can be just as good (arguably even better) than a conventional bicycle for recreational purposes too. so why ban something that doesn't make noise, doesn't damage trails, enables friends, families (and even physically challenged/disabled/injured people) to ride together, is safer than conventional scooters/motorbikes, is environmentally superior to pretty much anything else and fun to ride? cars and motorbikes have had the same problems since inception with some being faster than others and we seemed to solve that problem just fine with some basic rules, traffic signs and mutual respect... So... basically what Defender said + maybe something like having "passing zones" in races where non-technical sections can be marked specifically to facilitate the possible increase in passing rates on races.

Washing machine was maybe was a poor analogy, but I do think in 30 years from now when ebikes will inevitably be as common or even more common on our trails and streets as any other bike, well say: "remember those crazy days when we weren't allowed to ride our ebikes on the trails..." and i get the point of being unfair to "athletes", hence the importance of splitting the "competing" crowd from the fun riders. How many of the 2000 people that cycled transbaviaans with me 6 weeks ago really call themselves "athletes"... Although there weren't many weekend warriors around, most of us were just there for the experience, enjoying the scenery, the great soup at bergplaas and throwing in a bit of suffering and friendship in the mix along with some terrible 1AM jokes about chafing body parts... I live in a small town, so by far the hardest part of an event like that (and sometimes a barrier to entry) is getting people of similar ability to train and ride with you... I was lucky to get an entry from a varsity friend that had a team member pulling out this year, but if that didn't happen I wouldn't have been able to ride the race, purely because I don't have riding buddies that are/were up for a race of that distance. Unfair maybe, but I won't mind the slightest...

i'm no ebike fan myself and may I never have a big enough brain fart to buy one personally... but protesting ebikes in races (cycling events really, we just seem to call them races in SA) is almost like protesting washing machines back in 1908 when they were first invented... like them or not, ebikes have undisputed merits and they appeal to some in a way that bicycles can never match. Most significant advantage is that family members and friends of different physical abilities and fitness can enjoy time together in nature while each person can dial the "toughness" of their individual workouts by setting the level of assistance. So why should someone and his/her boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/dad/mom/friend not be able to enter a ride together, have the weaker athlete (or both) ride on an ebike and then set the appropriate level of assistance so that both can have a good day out? You might say, then don't enter races and ride elsewhere, but lets be honest... Races are by far the most safe and fun riding that you can find out there. The roads are marked and marshalled, trails are maintained, land access has been arranged, water points are available and the route is safe, so to tell people they should go ride elsewhere with their ebikes is a bit shortsighted. Maybe a few more ebikes are exactly what we need to change marginal events into something that is more sustainable in the long run? Of course you need to maintain the concept of "human power only" for competition and prize purposes, but why can't you also enter sabi classic or sani2c with an ebike? Are the rest of us really going to be that much worse off?

i never used to use any technology... i trained for and completed an ironman one year without a watch at all, not even an old casio. Didn't even have a bike computer on my bike at the time, so I literally just did what "felt" right and did not measure any stats, no HR, no time splits, no intervals, didn't track weekly hours, distance, nada, nothing... did it work? I guess it wasn't terrible, but I must admit that I didn't nearly get to optimal levels of fitness, recovery, speed etc. strange thing, is I'm not even sure if it was more fun... I've since gone from zero measurements, to having it all... I bought a Garmin fenix, stages PM on my bike, running pod and running HR belt etc., so I can literally measure everything and I make an effort to ensure I have my HR monitor on, log my rides and runs etc. every time. I won't say I'm obsessed, but I do find great enjoyment in the measurable improvements that the statistics provide... I get motivated when I manage to increase my cadence, drop my HR, improve and map my FTP, check my training against the performance graphs that stravastix / trainingpeaks provides etc... so for me, I won't be losing the watch any time soon.

as dave said, it's just physics... The main reason for needing energy to run is to move your body vertically with each step. (when running on a flat surface at a constant speed.) Your leg that makes contact with the ground moves your entire body by a vertical distance. If you have a running HR strap, this is the "vertical oscillation" measurement that you see in your running stats. To roughly calculate the energy you expend, you need to multiply the following terms: weight X vertical oscillation X cadence X constant The constant will be a conversion factor to get the measurements above into the unit of calories and is the same for both you and your wife, so for comparison you can ignore it. For you it will be something like this: 90 kg X 11 cm X 160 spm = 1584 For your wife, maybe something like this: 60 kg x 10 cm x 180 spm = 1080 The fraction according to your garmin is 786/563 = 1.4 times more calories. The fraction according to the calc above is 1584/1080 = 1.46 times more calories. It does however seem that the Mrs is running a bit closer to her max compared to yourself (looking at the HR zones), thus her body is likely pumping a bit more blood and her body is generating a bit more heat, which would mean that she expends a bit more energy than you. The fact that the numbers don't line up perfectly is due to me making incorrect guesses of weight and vertical oscillation, the terrain may not be perfectly flat and that the HR thresholds on the watches are not perfectly calibrated. But I'd say the difference measured by the Garmin is about right.

Running or a tri HR belt gives you a lot more than a footpod in terms of run dynamics, but a foodpod is good for running indoors. The wrist sensor on my watch used to underestimate my speed on a treadmill with around 15%... aint nobody got no time for that!!