Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Saturday 27 December 2008

International traveller

My Friday morning ride was in Italy, my afternoon ride was in Aus, Saturday morning I was in Austria,and in afternoon I was in Aus again. Aah! the power of a Tacx iMagic/Fortius trainer.

While in Italy I was riding the relatively flat part of the Giro del Mortirolo..along the shore of the Lago d'Iseo (Lombardy)in fact..all 22km of it and while in Austria I was riding the uphill chunder called the Grossglockner, which is not so very far away from St Johann in Tyrol of World Masters Road champs fame. Actually I only rode the first 13km up hill slog called the Heiligenblut, which I think translates as holy blood....hmm more like buckets of sweat for me.

The iMagic was a bit of an indulgence when I bought it, although I had a feeling I would respond to the challenges it would throw at me and I was right..I can see that this year's winter training is going to be alot more successful than previous efforts. Mind you its a contrary beast, although I'm beginning to know its drama queen ways. The software is really touchy ....you cannot plug in anything once you've turned the computer on, if you do it throws a nervy turn and you have to turn off and re-start the whole thing from scratch.

Today though I ignored it..I needed to work on real life hills and my sun tan. On Boxing Day, once I'd worked out the reason for my recent crap form (back tyre rubbing on chain stay) I decided it was time to put down a time for the 1 in 20..a WMAS8 time in fact (well WMAS8 minus 4 days). So I put in an honest effort and came up with 21 minutes 26 seconds and at the top I had to stop and recover before continuing. Today I cruised up in 21.49 with an avg HR 6 less than the big effort...think I'm gonna hafta to threw myself a challenge...hmmm...might aim for 20 minutes 30 seconds.Quote Robert Browning..."Everyman's reach should exceed his grasp" end quote.

Feeling pretty chuffed with myself after that I decided to do the usual descent with a challenge at the end...to get over the Sheffield Road power-almost-vertical-but-very -short chunder grovel. If I couldn't succeed my penalty would be to carry on down and go up Inverness Road instead. ..which of course made sure that I succeeded!!! The graph demonstrates beautifully the fact that HR lags effort(HR is red, watts is yellow)..its easier to read if you click on it and no I'm sure I didn't get to 210bpm!!!:


The way I went is north to south and from the groovy hoon once over the top, I think the next challenge is going to have to be going from south to north and I'll have the garmin in the back pocket so I can compare the slopes.....

4 comments:

Judith said...

Never had you picked for a "technology gear" freak, but there is a pattern, the power meter the garmin the computer....makes me wonder what I am working all of this bloody overtime for....I am seriously thinking about SRM but it is a lot of money.....and I never really used my Polar Power readings, just HR and cadence and speed.....what a dilemna.....

Judith said...

PS Have you ever read:-http://cyclingtipsblog.com/
It is pretty interesting and I was reading the stuff about Power Meter...my saga goes on....

sparkes said...

Liz, I bought a Garmin originally for the good MTB but now have a powertap disc on it so what do you recommend? putting it in your back pocket for different rides doesn't matter what bike just to get route and hill info?
Tanya

Liz said...

Hi Tanya.. actually I used to put the garmin in the back pocket even when I was using all it's functions ever since it died a big death during the 2008 extremely wet road nationals. So yes in the back pocket to work out where you went and climb %....gives you great bragging rights WRT your hill climbing prowess! I put it in a baggie complete with one of those silica gel things to keep it dry (rain or sweat).