IGVENTURE

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Landscape painting by Beth Robertson Fiddes.


As long as I have the free time I'll keep on posting up, plus its a good way to create something. I find myself looking to be entertained by FB or other posts on this site. This just becomes a bad habit of laziness as I get into a rut of doldrums. I say get off your ass and create something or do something constructive like beat your children.

Winter horse latitudes...wtf? That will never become a colloquial expression, it just doesn't roll off the tongue well. I love these expressions that get handed down over the years. It brings some flavor to conversation and at the same time tells a story. You know stuff like... dang, Capers was three sheets to the wind after Norm's party.

Today was a productive day, even though I didn't go to work. I went to HG to have some work done on my MTB. Jim took my lefty fork off so I can send it out to Mendon Cycle for service. This is the time of year to do shit like this. With snow coming this weekend I hope to be on my xc skis, so I won't miss my mtb. Since I was going to be out in Sterling I brought my road bike with new powertap and did a FTP test in the Great Swamp. I think FTP stands for go as hard as you can for 20 minutes...so thats what I did.

I'm not sure if my avg. power was 271w or 272w...can someone tell me the correct number.
Avg Power: 271 W
Max Power: 499 W
Max Avg Power (20 min):272 W

After the FTP test I killed some time to make it 3hrs of saddle time, keeping it under 200 watts. That just seemed like the right number for me. I'll have to do some research to put some zones together.

Ok thats enough talk about numbers.

Robin, it was my 17 yr. old who told me about free pancakes at IHOP. Maybe Evan is reading your Tweets?!!!

Capers, I am hooked on PS & Pickers. The fact that they run them continuosly doesn't help, its hard to walk away from them. I remember a couple years ago we were hooked on the Office. We had like every episode on DVD and would watch 5 shows in a sitting. I love Michael Scott.

Thanks 26er, i am more confident in climbing tech stuff then descending it. Riding with you, Woody, Kirt and Utah have had a good influence on me.

Chillin, its good to be back. I gots to get to Allaire for a ride with you and Mitch.

The thing I love about old cameras is that they reflect the style of and era. These vintage box cameras did more then take photos they defined fashion for a certain period.

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Welcome to the dark side my skinny white brother.

Take 272w x 95%. 257w, that's your FTP.

Take your weight in lbs, divide by 2.2. That's your weight in kg. I'm going to assume its 68kgs

Take 257, divide by your weight. I'm going to assume the result is 3.7ish watts/kg.

That's pretty good. You need to be 6.7w/kg to win the TDF, so you have some work to do. But according to whatever, your w/kg is cat 3 material.
 
Solid numbers Iggy....although you continued a 3 hour ride after an FTP test? Usually I go home and throw up. 🙂
 
UtahJoe said:
Solid numbers Iggy....although you continued a 3 hour ride after an FTP test? Usually I go home and throw up. 🙂
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Same thoughts...if you could do another 3 hours, you probably could have gone harder...No?
 
Thanks for doing some math for me Ilya, looks like I'm more then halfway there at winning the TDF. Alls I need is some epo and I'll be set. And you got my weight correct, 150lbs.

Yeah, I did another 2hrs after the FTP test at zone 2 easy aerobic pace for a total of 3hrs(warm up + FTP test+ aerobic ride). After the 20 min interval I felt like I was punched in the face. It took me about 5 minutes to shake it off and go on to ride. However test like these are my weakness. Its like my brain and body say FU this is as hard as I'm willing to work so I just settle into a pace. I find it very difficult to go apeshit on a bike and destroy myself for 20 minutes. This is the reason I feel more comfortable at endurance racing, where the intensity is measured over time.

Maybe I need to drink a redbull and smack my nuts with a ballpeen hammer before this test.
 
Lots of different ways to crack a nut. The 20 minute FTP test tends to be the most popular method since it only takes 20 minutes or so*. Really the 20 minute test is a proxy for doing a full 1 hour all out effort because not many people are HTFU'd enough to do a full hour. For me the important thing is that you do it in a consistent way each time.

You should want to curl up and die after the test or you probably could have gone harder.

Now tell us about Beth Robertson Fiddes? I looked at her online portfolio. nice work.

*TARWAPM talks about an all out 5 minute effort followed by a rest interval prior to doing the 20 min FTP test.
 
Its fine, you will know better how good of a test it was when you do things like 20min intervals based off of that FTP number. Often times I do 20min intervals at ~95% of my FTP, 2-3 sets. So when you start doing intervals or workout based off this FTP number, you will get a better sense of how accurate it is.

.
 
pooriggy said:
It took me about 5 minutes to shake it off and go on to ride.
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Delish said:
You should want to curl up and die after the test or you probably could have gone harder.
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These aren't really inconsistent statements. How long does a "curl-up-and-die" feeling from an effort ever last? A lot of that is mental. After a number minutes (5 would be short for me, but I can't speak to Iggy's mental toughness -- he may be one of those "f*ck pain" type dudes.) your body CAN move again. Maybe not with the pop it had before, but it can go again. It's your mind that tries to tell it not to. And how many of us really listen to our minds anyway?
 
I'm gonna disagree with everyone because I'm a jerk.

Q: When do you post your best power numbers ever?
A: In races.

This is almost always accepted as true. How many people post their best power numbers in a race and then curl up on the side of the trail or road? None, that's how many. So I would proffer this as evidence that you don't really need to feel like vomiting when you put up your best power numbers. I would suggest that you're actually in solid shape, and your recovery time is really good. Ok so it hurts, then you shake it off and go on.

My best 20 minute power was in an A ride once when I got a flat. I changed it then spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch the group. I did eventually catch it. After I did, I sat in and hid, but I was able to stay with the group after that. Every CP5 or below PR has always been seen in a race.

Also, the 20 minute test is this sort of kinda-vague notion that gives you a baseline for stuff. If your focus is going to be on endurance, you're going to be more concerned with your CP180, not so much your CP20. Your CP20 can give you a *rough* estimate of your CP60, but if you train just your CP20 then your CP60 and CP180 isn't going to benefit as much as if you just train your CP180.

Follow me?

Simply stated, test the CP numbers that make the most sense for your target races. Then work on those. Sure, you raise your CP180 by doing 20 minute sets. But you also need to spend a lot of time working on those 3-4 hour tempo rides if your target races are 3-4-5-6 hours long.

And of course now you'll see how much your power STB when your nutrition sucks. Hour 1 will be 260 watts then hour 3 will be like 220 and will feel like 2000 some days. Also, use it to correlate your HR to power, and note how your HR responds on those bad days when you screw up your nutrition and your HR soars but your power plummets. This is quality data to know when you're on a bike with no PM and stuff starts happening. You'll need to recognize it early and address it.

So CP20 is useful but only as part of a larger scope. Sort of like how a doorbell is usefull but you should probably make sure you have a door and at least a living room.
 
Yeah, I don't have the data to prove it but I would agree that my greatest power is exerted in races or the HG A ride. I find it much more difficult to turn myself inside out while riding solo doing an FTP. But i must say I do try as hard as I can when I do this test. I was literally cross eyed from effort at several points yesteday with eyes tearing and snot running out my nose.

Norm I am going to have to read your post several times to process that data fully. But I think I got it.

That painting caught my eye on FB. Like this page on FB to broarden the array of images you see in a day. On any given day I can scroll through FB and check out nasty booty shots from Vreeland or take in culture from Made-In-Slant.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Made-In-Slant/147293415319518?fref=ts

Does anyone else subscribe to interesting art related sites on FB...please share.
 
I've always enjoyed your posts Igg... but we know life gets busy too.

that is a cool painting...I never think to follow art on FB.

Perhaps one of my Cranford peeps saw my tweet, and then told Evan in class? LOL. I actually saw it on the morning news first...the free pancakes were the talk of the classroom yesterday - there's an IHOP in Roxbury, so all the kids hit it. Sadly, the IHOP by me on 202 closed...sigh. Not that I would have had time to stop...but maybe next year.

It was also international Nutella day...did ya know that?! Germy posted on my FB that he doesn't like Nutella. WTH?

oooh, bell just rang. I think my ears might bleed if I hear one more "what's the storm going to do tomorrow" comment/question.
 
pooriggy said:
Does anyone else subscribe to interesting art related sites on FB...please share.
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I visit so many art and design websites on a daily basis, I couldn't possibly list them all. There's just too many. Here's a few I was looking at today.


http://ffffound.com/
http://www.designworklife.com/
http://butdoesitfloat.com/
http://wowgreat.tumblr.com/
http://www.thedieline.com/
http://designspiration.net/
http://lovelypackage.com/
http://www.behance.net/
http://www.draplin.com/
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/
http://grainedit.com/
 
Norm said:
This is almost always accepted as true. How many people post their best power numbers in a race and then curl up on the side of the trail or road? None, that's how many. So I would proffer this as evidence that you don't really need to feel like vomiting when you put up your best power numbers. I would suggest that you're actually in solid shape, and your recovery time is really good. Ok so it hurts, then you shake it off and go on.

My best 20 minute power was in an A ride once when I got a flat. I changed it then spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch the group. I did eventually catch it. After I did, I sat in and hid, but I was able to stay with the group after that. Every CP5 or below PR has always been seen in a race.
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It's not surprising (to me) that your best 20 min effort came when you were a) solo and b) had outside motivation beyond an arbitrary wattage number. I could argue that you could have gone harder than you did during your hardest recorded 20 min effort if, say, the A ride had been just a hair faster. But this sort of discussion is about as useful as trying to figure out whether a unicorn can run faster than a minotaur.

I agree that best power numbers usually come during races. BUT, race efforts but race efforts are so very different than 20min FTP efforts. Unless you a are in a solo suicide mission breakaway you always have surges and recovery periods during a race. "Curl up and die" of course is not literal.

I guarantee my best power numbers have come during the last 2 laps of a 'cross race but have never raced with power so can't prove it. And when I've done it right (you can tell because my mouth turns into a rectangle), I can hardly stand up or see straight after the race. There is no way I could ever push myself that hard outside of the framework of competition. But even then, as 1Speed points out, it's only for a few minutes before you get up, drink beer and wish you owned a SSCX bike so you could jump in the late afternoon race.

Remember the Radiolab on Limits? Essentially you can go way harder than your conscious brain thinks you can and way harder than you could ever push yourself outside the framework of a competition.

I agree that CP20 isn't intrinsically any more useful of a number than CP5 or CP180 or whatever. It's that 20 minutes is a reasonably long interval that is reasonably easy to test consistently over time.

I don't get any excitement comparing w/kg numbers to other people but my notion that Iggy could possibly had left something in the tank was partially due to the 3.7w/kg number and partially because he had the legs to do another 3 hours. That number seems like it's too low based on what I know about his fitness and real world power. Could easily be power meter calibration differences or something else. Again, consistency of test method and device (read: precision) is much more important than the what the actual number is.

By they way, having ridden a lot with Iggy I know he can punch pain in the muthaf*&@in face and keep going so that probably explains the 3 hours ride post FTP.
 
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Wow Capers, that is some good shit. I really like FFFFound, Wowgreat and butdoesitfloat. Its easy for me to kill some major time looking at this stuff, but as discussed I find its better to take it in with smaller doses. One can be de-sensitized at the awesomeness due to overstimulation.

Well I have some good news peeps. Evan got into Montclair State, yes he is going to college next year. Its not Princeton or Harvard but it was his first choice, so he is happy about this and so am I. Its far enough for him to be away from home, affordable and a good school for those pursuing a career in teaching, which is what he wants to do.

All the dabbling he's been doing with alcohol and drugs should have wised him up enough to be able to handle being away from home with little supervsion. Plus I've already told him if he screws up its Union Co. College. The first semester is always the hardest, I'm hoping that he meets some buddies to hang with that will help him stay focused and stay in school.

I went xc skiing this weekend, This is what it felt like.
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Saturday night the topic of the band Kiss came up while out drinking. I"ll share a story I remember from my childhood.
We were in the 7th grade in an abandonded stadium in my hometown of Roselle NJ. This was a dark, concrete structure in Warninaco Park that has since been torn down. Kids like us used to go in there to party. On this particular day we went there to see Russell DeCarlo blow fire. Of course this is something we'd seen Gene Simons do, so it was only a matter of time before one of us had to try it. Well I wasn't stupid enough to try it but Russell was. So he takes a can of Ronson Lighter fluid and shoots some on a stick and makes a torch. While about 6 of us are watching he shoots a healthy blast of the lighter fluid into his mouth, rears back and then shoots this shit at the flame. The inside of that dark stadium lit up with fire and made a sound like an exlposion. All this happened without any flame burning Russell. We were in total awe, it was fucking awesome.

Just to be sure I'm gonna tell Evan not to mess around with lighter fluid when he goes away to school.
 
pooriggy said:
Wow Capers, that is some good shit. I really like FFFFound, Wowgreat and butdoesitfloat. Its easy for me to kill some major time looking at this stuff, but as discussed I find its better to take it in with smaller doses. One can be de-sensitized at the awesomeness due to overstimulation.
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Yeah, sometimes I catch myself browsing through inspiration at warp speed, not giving anything the attention and contemplation it deserves. Short attention span and the internet are very conducive to instant gratification. There's just so much stuff to look at.

Lately I'll find one piece that speaks to me that particular morning and just leave it open on my second monitor all day.

FFFFound is my favorite place to start out. although amidst all of the awesome, there is also some really dumb shit in there as well.
 
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