Fast & Fun weekend

I still haven’t managed to have a meaningful ride on my 2018 bike. But I have spent several minutes gazing longingly at it hanging on one of my shed’s walls.

I put on the ASSIOMAs and took some photos on Friday and then put them back onto my TT bike straight afterwards. Yes Sunday was the dreaded FTP test day. Well, sort of. And I had done my previous tests with the ASSIOMA so it seemed to make sense to continue the trend and use the same PM.

With running going rather well for once, cycling has taken very much a back seat over the last 2 and a bit months, no particular reason; I just lost a bit of cycling mojo and it has been raining a bit. Having struggled on some easy KICKR sessions over Christmas I realised that I could be entering dangerous bike performance territory. OK maybe I was fatigued but my performance was WAY down. Perhaps 20%?? That was my worry.

As a prelude to the test, I had a very easy finish to last week to try to get a half decent parkrun aswell as an updated FTP.

As part of testing a bit of kit I did a 30 minute FTP test with the kit varied (without stopping) half way through.

To cut a long story short the weekend’s TT FTP test came out at a loss of 10% compared to my levels of Octoberish. Probably about right.

Perhaps a relatively fast 5k parkrun the previous day was an inhibiting factor on the FTP? Probably. But I wanted to set a marker there as well. Which I did. The parkrun was probably the best I’ve done for a year so, all in all, I was pleased with both short days.

I was also able to watch a couple of old Episodes of “The Brittas Empire” … which, I was relieved to find, is still funny in a sportry kind of way.

Gadgets

The half-hearted FTP test was also a bit of a play with some PM gadgetry on oval chainrings that I might speak about over the next few weeks if I am allowed to. We shall see.

The parkrun had me STILL trying to figure out, once again, whether or not I like Garmin Running Power. Even with STRYD as a speed source I was coming out with +/-40w variations to Garmin Running Power on what was a constantish pace on a relatively flat course.

Whilst the Dura Ace wheels are pretty much good to go, I have a mini project with a loan Mavic wheel I have. I finally got around to changing the tubular tyre once I had acquired some new tape. I don’t like tubs. Then I had to check I had the right brake pads for the carbon rims (I did). Then I did some research on disc wheel covers. I already have some wheel covers but I might buy another, different set, that I have seen very cheap on fleabay and report back to you on the differences. The ‘disc’ wheel will then have to have a compact 10-speed cassette put on – which is easy enough. But the issue I know I will have is that the space between the brake calipers won’t be wide enough for the wheel. So I’m going to have to spend about 30 minutes filing down the brake pads. Nightmare. With my luck something will go wrong and break, it always does.

So once I have those Mavic wheels on the TT bike I am sure the weather will brighten up later this week. I shall then be faced with the dilemma of trying out a new bike with spinny gears up the ‘hills’ in Richmond Park OR taking the Mavics for a, probably, faster spin around the same park. Decisions, decisions.