Double Stuff Oreo's
James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead
- Thread starter Norm
- Start date
vanseggern1
Active Member
Mountain Bike Mike
Well-Known Member
My highest ever in the 7 years of data on strava is 82, but the next highest is 65. The 82 came in 2014 when I was getting ready for the nats...I remember my Stages PM was screwed up and giving me absurd high numbers.....Every other year, my best has been in the 60s.and I know that my best race result were in 2016. (2017 being ruined by my crash) so cant put too much stock in this info.
My highest ever was 56 in 2016. I'm at 46 now. IDGAF
rick81721
Lothar
What is all this nonsense. First time I looked at it: fitness, fatigue and form. My highest ever fitness was 94, now it's 9 (I guess not using a HR monitor has something to do with this). Highest ever fatigue was 137, highest form was 50 - and form goes negative. Seems like a bunch of gibberish
im currently at 47 for fitness.
im beginning to think its another number that useless compared to someone else, but may in fact be mildly useful comparing your own numbers over time?
im beginning to think its another number that useless compared to someone else, but may in fact be mildly useful comparing your own numbers over time?
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
for sure, just don't know how its factoring it. i ended up paying more attention to the form (fitness minus fatigue), if it's around zero or a highly negative number, i'm pretty cooked. low digit positive numbers mean i should feel pretty good.
thats a good idea, ill have to pay some attention to that going forward. my form numbers tend to be <0 unless iv been off the bike for serveral days (like 4-5+) in a row, lowest i see for this month is -20, and it seems to correlate with the most spent feeling time of the month so thats a good sign (i think)
it will be interesting to see how the numbers work out based on how i feel, i imagine its going to be different from person to person and how well they handle fatigue ect ect
General question regarding all of these numbers:
Does it influence if you will ride Zwift, take a road ride or take a mtb ride on any given day? I'm not baiting here, but do you choose the trainer knowing that it will result is better number as compared to a mtb ride? I will exclude specific ramp up periods to an event or something, more talking the time between everything else.
Does it influence if you will ride Zwift, take a road ride or take a mtb ride on any given day? I'm not baiting here, but do you choose the trainer knowing that it will result is better number as compared to a mtb ride? I will exclude specific ramp up periods to an event or something, more talking the time between everything else.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
kevy, the fitness/freshness thing accounts HR and Power, so an hour long mtb ride with a higher HR will sometimes be just as draining as a 2 hour, easy ride. not sure why.
i do wonder what influences the numbers more, since 99% of people dont have power on both mtb and road, and the numbers from both devices would be finicky and not the same.
example,
a pretty standard 1:10 loop on my local mtb trails leaves a training impulse of 78 (HR only)
while a pretty hard tempo effort for an hour with pwr and hr comes out with a training impulse of 68 (HR and Power).
The road ride was wayyy harder, all the hr numbers were higher (average and max), more time in higher/harder zones, but for some reason the impulse is higher on the mtb ride. WAT
i do wonder what influences the numbers more, since 99% of people dont have power on both mtb and road, and the numbers from both devices would be finicky and not the same.
example,
a pretty standard 1:10 loop on my local mtb trails leaves a training impulse of 78 (HR only)
while a pretty hard tempo effort for an hour with pwr and hr comes out with a training impulse of 68 (HR and Power).
The road ride was wayyy harder, all the hr numbers were higher (average and max), more time in higher/harder zones, but for some reason the impulse is higher on the mtb ride. WAT
Ok I am sorry about the technical talk. I will stop that for now, with the exception to answer some questions at some point through this post. I'm also going to write this blog as a "living document" through the day. I put that expression in quotes because it is a stupid relic of corporate lingo. All e-documents are living documents. The only things that aren't "living" are stone tablets.
Anyway, sorry about the technical talk death.
I slept until 4:30 and woke up with a mild toothache, not bad. I went downstairs to take some Advil to take the edge off, and the edge just got worse & worse. I stayed up and just started working because reading did not take my mind off the pain. On a reading note, I finished Murderbot 3 and bought The Year of Living Danishly last night. I'll keep you posted on that. I hope to learn something there which I can use to make me a happier person. In any event, by 7:00 I was done with the 34 points of development. Including this week's PTO, I was now at 39.5 hours for the week. So I decided to take the morning pretty much off.
Right around then, the toothache started to subside a bit more. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to infer whatever you want regarding stress & toothaches.
@fidodie - FTP is the same as CP60.
The End Goal
I think @stb222 asks the best question, what is the end goal? Why am I "training" right now? I can try to answer that question for myself but I think each person will have a different answer to that. At whatever age I am now, I feel that when I stop riding my bike I feel worse. 3 days off the bike and I start to feel noticeably bad. I don't know what that is and I have talked to other people about this. It's certainly not a universal feeling. A lot of people feel perfectly fine taking a whole week off. I am not one of them. I think exercise just makes me feel better and on top of that, I enjoy biking. It is the form of exercise that I most enjoy.
That's really only a first part of the answer. I think any exercise starts to get potentially boring. This is one of the big things that stops me from road riding these days is that I have gotten bored of the roads. When you train, this gives you a different perspective but I don't think I'm being honest with myself if I say this is why. I think it's just that I start to feel better & better, then I want to see if I can push myself more, then pushing myself to exhaustion makes me feel even better. This is my answer, at this point.
I also see these cx races as something to do with the people I like hanging around with. @seanrunnette and I have become better friends in the last year and it's a thing to do. It's sort of like when 2 guys go fishing. Are they really going fishing entirely or are they looking to do something together and they come up with an excuse? Maybe it's a little of both. But I mean if you're going to go fishing, might as well learn how to fish properly?
Ostensibly, I guess we are going to Louisville to go fishing.
Today's Ride
Man it's like noon and this entry is going to be too big. I did a Zwift race today and won. YAY:
Oh wait did I mention that @Dominique got on the Zwift last night? About this, I am very proud of her for sucking it up and humoring me. I am trying to get her in the saddle more because she will get sucked into the Fishing Vortex that Sean & I have created. So anyway, yeah, this was set to her weight. I am a fucking MONSTER at D's weight. Come at me!
Also, as it turns out, you can't adjust your weight mid-race. So screw it, I won.
Panic in Puget
I love how these orgs just wake up one day and realize the thing they were supposed to do...well you know, they just never did it. Oh hey, can you help us? So they have this issue he drops on me at 11:00. Like, he never bothered to try this until UAT is almost over. And there's no story. And he comes to me in a panic. And oh by the way, I was hoping to get this done by 12:30.
Ok so spin down until 11:15, shower, get on call at 11:30, and I fix him up for 12:00. Unfortunately my boss and I are the only 2 real experts on this product at this point so ALL ROADS LEAD TO US. This is great in 1 respect, but obviously dogshit in another. This Seattle project is coming to a head and all the shit they swept under the rug is now coming out and they are asking me for help. They tried to throw another 2 piles of shit on me personally then I pointed out that the PM had cancelled 1 story and the TC was assigned the other. That led to silence. Why do people look to blame others as a first step?
In between the above panic and below demo, my parents came by to get Julia. She did not sleep well last night because her mother's AC broke. So she is in a cranky mood today. Yay teenage girls! And she's not even a teenager yet. Imagine if she had a toothache.
Demo in Delaware
The demo I have been fretting went well. And at this point in my day my tooth has ceased aching at all. Those of you who want to draw further theories on this correlation may want to add this to your evidence folder. The demo of the 34 (actually 50, as I had done 16 previously) took like 15 minutes then we let them ask questions and make cosmetic suggestions on the fly. I take this as a good sign, when the demo for a 2 week block of work takes just 15 minutes I think it means you have dumbed it down to the point that they really can't break it too much. The goal here is to make the entire user workflow as encompassing yet as easy as possible. I guess that sort of sums up software development: "Can you make this infinitely useful but where I don't gotta do nothing?"
After the call I had a follow-up with the PM who is going to tell the client they can suck their Thanksgiving GoLive and they'll get it in January. I'm impressed she is pushing back like this.
The TSS Chart
Yes, as @shrpshtr325 gets, this is a measure against yourself. Here is the basis of this chart:
100 points is the effort assigned if you do exactly 1 hour at your FTP. All the numbers are based on that. So my 100 is less power than Utah's 100 which is more power than Pearl's 100. The TSS is Training Stress Score. And it is meant to be a fairly apples-to-apples comparison of you against yourself. @Mountain Bike Mike the chart from yesterday is pulled from Strava, and frankly I do not put a ton of stock in it because this is not necessarily their game. But looking at the chart, the relative trend makes sense against what I have been doing.
I know a lot of people may not like that my number is this high right now. But consider I have put in 14 hours a week this summer and I'm averaging 50 hours/month on the entire year. I know I am fat & slow and a shell of my former self. But I am putting in the effort and the chart reflects that. Does the 86 mean anything? This is debatable. But the trend of where I am now versus where I was 6 months ago is, I think, fair.
@stb222 - if I run through that chart real quick the 3 highest scores I have are the ride with Utah last week, the biggest day at KT, and the French Creek race. So it would make no sense to opt to be inside as opposed to the woods. As compared to the road bike, Zwift is only going to give you what you put into it. You can just as easily watch TV and get jack done. I think Zwift is good for structure & easy spinning. I actually think recovery is better inside if you want to really limit yourself. But as I have alluded to before, if you go "all-in" I think you get better/higher numbers when you are outside.
Oops
Ok ok I said no more training. We left for Canada at around 6:00 and knocked out 2 hours of driving before we stopped for gas and I grabbed a tuna melt on rye for dinner and an iced coffee. D took over from there and we discussed KMC and she was ok with it so I signed up. Sean had asked me about it today so now we have a plan:
Saturday KMC
Sunday JORBA Jam
Not sure if D is going to go because that’s T-minus 1 week to the wedding. Plus her race is 9:45 which makes the 1-day trip tough to swing. We’ll see. Sean goes around 11:30 and I race at 12:30 or so.
I’m aiming for Whirlybird as race #1 still on September 9th.
At some point I looked up and we were heading west on route 90 and I asked D where she was going. After a reroute through some bumblefuck NY towns we got back on 87 in an absurd downpour that dropped visibility to almost nothing for a few miles. Then it ended.
New eta 1:16 am. Gonna be a long night.
11:40 - out of the Adirondacks. Cruising towards the border now. This drive can’t end soon enough. New eta 1:10. Going to submit now as I may fall asleep shortly. So tired.
Anyway, sorry about the technical talk death.
I slept until 4:30 and woke up with a mild toothache, not bad. I went downstairs to take some Advil to take the edge off, and the edge just got worse & worse. I stayed up and just started working because reading did not take my mind off the pain. On a reading note, I finished Murderbot 3 and bought The Year of Living Danishly last night. I'll keep you posted on that. I hope to learn something there which I can use to make me a happier person. In any event, by 7:00 I was done with the 34 points of development. Including this week's PTO, I was now at 39.5 hours for the week. So I decided to take the morning pretty much off.
Right around then, the toothache started to subside a bit more. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to infer whatever you want regarding stress & toothaches.
@fidodie - FTP is the same as CP60.
The End Goal
I think @stb222 asks the best question, what is the end goal? Why am I "training" right now? I can try to answer that question for myself but I think each person will have a different answer to that. At whatever age I am now, I feel that when I stop riding my bike I feel worse. 3 days off the bike and I start to feel noticeably bad. I don't know what that is and I have talked to other people about this. It's certainly not a universal feeling. A lot of people feel perfectly fine taking a whole week off. I am not one of them. I think exercise just makes me feel better and on top of that, I enjoy biking. It is the form of exercise that I most enjoy.
That's really only a first part of the answer. I think any exercise starts to get potentially boring. This is one of the big things that stops me from road riding these days is that I have gotten bored of the roads. When you train, this gives you a different perspective but I don't think I'm being honest with myself if I say this is why. I think it's just that I start to feel better & better, then I want to see if I can push myself more, then pushing myself to exhaustion makes me feel even better. This is my answer, at this point.
I also see these cx races as something to do with the people I like hanging around with. @seanrunnette and I have become better friends in the last year and it's a thing to do. It's sort of like when 2 guys go fishing. Are they really going fishing entirely or are they looking to do something together and they come up with an excuse? Maybe it's a little of both. But I mean if you're going to go fishing, might as well learn how to fish properly?
Ostensibly, I guess we are going to Louisville to go fishing.
Today's Ride
Man it's like noon and this entry is going to be too big. I did a Zwift race today and won. YAY:
Oh wait did I mention that @Dominique got on the Zwift last night? About this, I am very proud of her for sucking it up and humoring me. I am trying to get her in the saddle more because she will get sucked into the Fishing Vortex that Sean & I have created. So anyway, yeah, this was set to her weight. I am a fucking MONSTER at D's weight. Come at me!
Also, as it turns out, you can't adjust your weight mid-race. So screw it, I won.
Panic in Puget
I love how these orgs just wake up one day and realize the thing they were supposed to do...well you know, they just never did it. Oh hey, can you help us? So they have this issue he drops on me at 11:00. Like, he never bothered to try this until UAT is almost over. And there's no story. And he comes to me in a panic. And oh by the way, I was hoping to get this done by 12:30.
Ok so spin down until 11:15, shower, get on call at 11:30, and I fix him up for 12:00. Unfortunately my boss and I are the only 2 real experts on this product at this point so ALL ROADS LEAD TO US. This is great in 1 respect, but obviously dogshit in another. This Seattle project is coming to a head and all the shit they swept under the rug is now coming out and they are asking me for help. They tried to throw another 2 piles of shit on me personally then I pointed out that the PM had cancelled 1 story and the TC was assigned the other. That led to silence. Why do people look to blame others as a first step?
In between the above panic and below demo, my parents came by to get Julia. She did not sleep well last night because her mother's AC broke. So she is in a cranky mood today. Yay teenage girls! And she's not even a teenager yet. Imagine if she had a toothache.
Demo in Delaware
The demo I have been fretting went well. And at this point in my day my tooth has ceased aching at all. Those of you who want to draw further theories on this correlation may want to add this to your evidence folder. The demo of the 34 (actually 50, as I had done 16 previously) took like 15 minutes then we let them ask questions and make cosmetic suggestions on the fly. I take this as a good sign, when the demo for a 2 week block of work takes just 15 minutes I think it means you have dumbed it down to the point that they really can't break it too much. The goal here is to make the entire user workflow as encompassing yet as easy as possible. I guess that sort of sums up software development: "Can you make this infinitely useful but where I don't gotta do nothing?"
After the call I had a follow-up with the PM who is going to tell the client they can suck their Thanksgiving GoLive and they'll get it in January. I'm impressed she is pushing back like this.
The TSS Chart
Yes, as @shrpshtr325 gets, this is a measure against yourself. Here is the basis of this chart:
100 points is the effort assigned if you do exactly 1 hour at your FTP. All the numbers are based on that. So my 100 is less power than Utah's 100 which is more power than Pearl's 100. The TSS is Training Stress Score. And it is meant to be a fairly apples-to-apples comparison of you against yourself. @Mountain Bike Mike the chart from yesterday is pulled from Strava, and frankly I do not put a ton of stock in it because this is not necessarily their game. But looking at the chart, the relative trend makes sense against what I have been doing.
I know a lot of people may not like that my number is this high right now. But consider I have put in 14 hours a week this summer and I'm averaging 50 hours/month on the entire year. I know I am fat & slow and a shell of my former self. But I am putting in the effort and the chart reflects that. Does the 86 mean anything? This is debatable. But the trend of where I am now versus where I was 6 months ago is, I think, fair.
@stb222 - if I run through that chart real quick the 3 highest scores I have are the ride with Utah last week, the biggest day at KT, and the French Creek race. So it would make no sense to opt to be inside as opposed to the woods. As compared to the road bike, Zwift is only going to give you what you put into it. You can just as easily watch TV and get jack done. I think Zwift is good for structure & easy spinning. I actually think recovery is better inside if you want to really limit yourself. But as I have alluded to before, if you go "all-in" I think you get better/higher numbers when you are outside.
Oops
Ok ok I said no more training. We left for Canada at around 6:00 and knocked out 2 hours of driving before we stopped for gas and I grabbed a tuna melt on rye for dinner and an iced coffee. D took over from there and we discussed KMC and she was ok with it so I signed up. Sean had asked me about it today so now we have a plan:
Saturday KMC
Sunday JORBA Jam
Not sure if D is going to go because that’s T-minus 1 week to the wedding. Plus her race is 9:45 which makes the 1-day trip tough to swing. We’ll see. Sean goes around 11:30 and I race at 12:30 or so.
I’m aiming for Whirlybird as race #1 still on September 9th.
At some point I looked up and we were heading west on route 90 and I asked D where she was going. After a reroute through some bumblefuck NY towns we got back on 87 in an absurd downpour that dropped visibility to almost nothing for a few miles. Then it ended.
New eta 1:16 am. Gonna be a long night.
11:40 - out of the Adirondacks. Cruising towards the border now. This drive can’t end soon enough. New eta 1:10. Going to submit now as I may fall asleep shortly. So tired.
vanseggern1
Active Member
Sorry if I missed an explanation of this in earlier posts, but are you primarily able to get away with racing in August (or earlier) due to all the hours you've put in? I would have thought that would lead to burnout when you're looking to still be racing come December, but you obviously know what you're doing. On the flip side, would racing this early be too much for someone training 4-5 hours a week or is it beneficial to get these types of efforts in to maximize the lower hours? Asking for a friend 😉
Izzat an euphemism for spooning? Or more of an "I came for the spooning, I stayed for the fishing," kind of deal? Asking for a friend.
Umm can’t contribute to the training talk, I ride outside for fun and to do stuff and I Peloton so that I can eat things. But since I’m competitive I always try to beat my own records on Peloton.
As for teeth - my wisdom teeth were pulled when I was in college. They were offering $100 to do a post-extraction pain med study (a fortune for a broke college student). All I had to do was take the unmarked pill and rate my pain on a scale of 1-10 every 20 minutes for 2 hours. Well either I got placebo or that shit didn’t work because about an hour in I was crying, marking a 13, and offering to pay everyone $100 to give me something for the pain. But I made it, and they gave me real drugs and the cash, and I went home happy AF.
Enjoy your road trip!
As for teeth - my wisdom teeth were pulled when I was in college. They were offering $100 to do a post-extraction pain med study (a fortune for a broke college student). All I had to do was take the unmarked pill and rate my pain on a scale of 1-10 every 20 minutes for 2 hours. Well either I got placebo or that shit didn’t work because about an hour in I was crying, marking a 13, and offering to pay everyone $100 to give me something for the pain. But I made it, and they gave me real drugs and the cash, and I went home happy AF.
Enjoy your road trip!