Training with a helmet cam, garmin and powertap!

Yesterday's training session was a repeat of the hill reps I did last weekend, only this time the weather was more clement.

• This time I could start my ride when I wanted to rather than be dictated to by the weather.
• This time I could have the Garmin 305 in plain view rather than hidden with silica gel in a baggy in my pocket, safe from the rain.
• This time I could afford to test out my new helmet cam..only in my case it was handlebar cam.
• This time I looked a total twat with 3 gizmos on my handlebars..totally embarrassing..a bit like having an array of pens in a jacket breast pocket. Luckily I saw no-one I knew, so hopefully no-one I knew saw me! (apologies for the soft focus on the pix)
  
• This time I would manage all 5 reps..no excuses!
  

The day started off with a visit to the Telstra to get them to change over my mobile's voicemail properties..it was set to automatically go to voicemail after 2 rings leaving me struggling comically in a vain attempt to find the thing and answer it..something I never succeeded in doing. That should save me a heap of money.

Then back home to get ready for the ride. While pumping up the tyres, I found that the front wheel had one of the faulty valve tubies in, so a quick change and with no spare tubes left, a visit to the Croydon bike shop on the way to the hills was an essential stop off.

I set the camera going when I was ready to start the efforts at Inverness road, but left it going for 4 efforts/recoveries plus a side trip to the bottom of the Sheffield road hill, but until I learn how to edit out 49 of the 50 minutes, I'll not be posting it anywhere!

The results were good despite the grey curve of a Shimano cable in the bottom left of screen. Of interest is the amount of rocking my bike does at the low cadences I was doing up-hill..emphasising the tendency I have to rely more heavily on my right leg. The downhill visuals looked good even at my speed..wait til Alex has a go or either of us on a curved road.

The whole point of getting the camera is to record our excursions onto Belgium cobbles, so it looks like that'll work ok. I'm not sure whether we're allowed to actually ride some of the famous stretches of cobbles. I was watching a vid of Stuey's 2007 victory and I'm fairly certain at one point I heard Phil/Paul saying cyclists had to ride the bike path. More research needed there.

The drama of the day .. there's always a drama of one sort or other...happened on the 4th descent. The camera was off by that time..not that it would have shown anything because it was my ears that alerted me to a problem which was the noise of a flat tyre..flub, flub.. so quick stop, check..no, weird, both ok .. re-start.... noise still there.... gaze down at front tyre..sheeee-it huge lump off to one side. Emergency stop! to discover that a section of the bead on the tyre had lifted away from the rim..clearly I'd not seated it properly when changing the tyre before the ride.

The thing that got me most was that it had taken 90 minutes to become obvious. So it was wheel out, flatten the tube, re-seat the tyre and use my last CO2 inflator thingy to pump up the tyre.... I don't ride with a pump as I haven't a hope of pumping the tyre up to anything near what it needs to be.

I decided not to risk the last rep..going up'd be ok, going down might stress the friendship..bale time. Home via the same bike shop to stock up on gas inflator things. Memo to self..check the front tyre before your next ride.

The vid was fun to look at after the ride, but during the ride I enjoyed watching the changing grades of the hills on the Garmin. Previously I'd not really bothered to set it up as something to look at during my ride..lets face it, it drowned in the rain in Sydney before I'd had a chance to get to know it properly. This time I set it up to show me (amongst other metrics) % grade. It seemed to lag behind what my legs and lungs were telling me a bit but I discovered for instance that the final pinch before I get home has a max gradient of 8%, ranging from 4-8% during its ~200m length.

Today's ride is a 2-3 hr "social ride"..well it wont actually be social since I'll be riding solo, but I will be doing the Beach road/city circuit ..maybe taking in the Eastlink bike path (the new toll road opens to the public today) and will be interested to see how some of the hills stack up gradient -wise. I know Lawrence wants me check out the Heathmont hill and there's one part of Warrigal road that always bites me in the bum.......