Year End Stats

Happy New Year!

 Dog I meet on the Union Transportation Trail

I hope you are all enjoying the new year. I am glad we are done with 2016 as it was an overly busy year for me both personally and professionally and I'm looking forward to having a less intense and more relaxing year in 2017.

At the beginning of each year I take a look back at the previous year and review a few things like my investments to see if I should make any changes in my plans for the new year. This year I kept better track of my riding than in previous years. I was inspired by a presentation I saw by the women's US pursuit team on how they used data used from HR sensors, power meters, etc to help them improve their performance. I also got a free HR monitor from work. I wanted something simple to maintain that might be useful in measuring my performance and give me some insight to improve it. I settled on a simple spreadsheet where I record the following information for each ride.

• Distance Ridden
• Avg Speed
• Elevation Gain
• Avg HR
• Max HR
• Temperature 
• Wind Speed
• Weather (Sunny, Partly Cloudy, Cloudy)
• Feeling After Ride (Good, OK, Tired)
• Ride Type (Group, Solo)
• Bike Used

I could record this information in 5 mins after a ride by looking at my cycle computer and HR monitor. I either estimated the elevation gain from plotting out the route or by downloading the data from my GPS when I used it on a ride. I used the RideWithGPS site for my measuring the elevation gain. This site is probably 10-15% lower than actual but is a good standard for comparisons.

I spent about an hour looking over the data, writing a few macros and creating charts like the one above to see if I could find any trends in the data. I learned a few things. The chart above shows that my avg speed drops as the elevation per mile increase which is common sense although it really isn't linear. Some 3000 ft rides are easier than others. Some other factors like temperature, wind speed, weather and total miles didn't seem to affect avg speed much. No matter what type of ride I did hilly or flat my avg heart was steady at about 130 bpm. I give blood a few times a year and usually wait 24 hours before I riding. I have never felt bad riding after giving blood but my heart rate even 2-3 days after giving blood was 7-10 beats higher which shows the affects of giving blood last longer than I thought.

The days where I cramped up were usually hilly rides that were hot and humid which is not surprising but means I need to prepare better for hotter rides. For the century I did this year I made a conscious effort to keep my HR 5-10 beats lower by using lower gears and not pushing the pace. That definitely helped but the humid weather slowed me down at the end.

In general as a bike and computer geek I find the data useful and think it will help me improve my ride preparation and help me finish rides a little stronger. It also is a good baseline to help me measure how things change as I age.

I plan to try and automate the collection of data to make it easier to maintain the spreadsheet and analyze the data.  I already started collecting data for 2017 as I did a quick 25 mile ride today and recorded my stats. I will see if insights I gained from the data I collected last year will help me in the new year.