Inspired by John’s update, I thought it was worthwhile to keep the blog rolling.
“Fun” with power meters!
One of the good (bad?) things about cycling is that it’s so hard to get a completely quantitative measure for your fitness. Track athletes can trade 400 splits, swimmers can brag about their 200 fly time, and rowers can gauge their fitness by … er… whatever crew people actually do. Cycling is different. It’s a lot less clear exactly where your fitness is in comparison to others because of the huge number of variables that influence performance (terrain, quality of road, tire pressure, hydration/nutrition, restedness, and whether or not you gave an arm and a leg just to buy that Zipp wheelset that looks so damn good). In short, it’s not easy to see exactly where you stand.
I’ve been using a heart rate monitor for a couple years now. While it’s certainly more useful than just going by RPE alone, in actuality it tells you nothing about how powerful you are. I just borrowed my dad’s Power Tap, which is a wheel that has a power meter built into the rear hub. In two days, I’ll be doing a 40-minute all-out time trial to see actually how much wattage I can produce. The prospect is at the same time terrifying and exciting. In all, it’s pretty cool to be told by a computer where exactly you stand.
On a (barely) related note, I just might start calling the ark the “wattage cottage.” Yeah, I know I’ll probably be the only one. That’s okay. I’m used to that.
Why would anyone want to bike up Mount Greylock?
I actually don’t have a good answer to that question, but if you’re reading this then chances are you also have a distorted sense of what counts as “fun.” Therefore, you should all register for the Greylock Hillclimb. I’m missing convocation to go, so “doing schoolwork” or “studying” are poor excuses (as always).
Not to be trumped by John, here are some more awesome cycling videos.
2) The only thing more awesome than racing up a 3000 ft. mountain? Racing down a 5000 ft. mountain…
without roads.
