I went on a 3 lap (36km) time trial ride today and collected all telemetry. I felt like shit and wasn’t fast. I analyzed the data with Tableau Software.
My target was 33km for the whole ride. I failed. Lap 1 was good: consistent speed with little variation. I felt especially horrid on the second lap. The third lap I felt fairly lousy too, but finished it with a sprint chase that put my heart rate to some insane 200bpm for a moment and left my puking white slime on my arm afterwards. Having not ridden for the better part of two weeks did not help.
Overview
This first chart shows my instantaneous speed sampled throughout the ride. You can see the five stages and even make out from the speed where I started the laps and did the 180 degree turns. Other oddities include receiving a phone call at 9am from Denmark and having a brief sprint chase near the end of the last lap.
Power and Torque during the ride
The chart of Watts and Torque (Watts = Torque X Angular Velocity) shows, with unflinching eye, when I was working and when i was cheating and suffering. You can see in Lap 1 I started out strong and kept working throughout. I slowed down purposely because the 250watt range was running me closer to 35km, above my target rate. Alas in laps 2 (especially) you can see I was generating less power and also there were many instances of no torque (meaning I was just coasting on the pedals). I was fidgeting a lot in the later laps. I shifted my seat forward, taking stress off my back, but now am putting probably too much weight on my arms. In the second and third lap I came up off my aero bars several times.
Three power/speed outputs
You can see in the chart of spped versus power that Lap 2 was a shaggy, inconsistent lap. Big swings in speed range from as slow as 25km up to only 33kmh. Also, you can see I had no power to keep the bike running at 33kmh. sigh.
Lub dub lub dub lub dub
My fast, fit friends’ heart rates run at 170bpm. Mine ran at 180. My resting heartbeat measured last night was 70, which is an indicator of poor fitness. Ideally it would be closer to 50, like Michel. See the spike when I was being chased? At 200bpm I seem to vomit.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
Here’s a zoom-in of my heartrate before/during/after the chase. I peaked at 198bmp (!) and then dropped back to saner rates after a minute+. I read last night you should drop at least 30bpm within one minute of stopping max heart rate. I came in slightly slower than that. My heart should run slower and cool off quicker.
Anyway, now that I’ve finished with the Pakistani Gift That Keeps on Giving and can resume riding consistently, I’m looking forward to trying again next week with a better effort to see what I can get. There is also a lot more meaningful analysis which can be done with this data, but I just haven’t read the theory yet.
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