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Bike components are a scam, but I have reservations with cheap unbranded chinese carbon. Manufacturers can make any claim they like regarding manufacturing and standards... ISO... I'm guessing we've all seen those self published certificates china manufacturers like to show off. A broken frame, fork or wheel can be a disaster for the rider and it will be very difficult to hold the manufacturer accountable.

Our club entry level bike is lugged C-V steel with Shimano gear group and house brand components.. Member price starts at €450 with claris gear group, more with sora and up to €700 with tiagra. House brand cranks come with a power meter (about €20 worth of electronics). The frame has a life time warranty. Good luck making a claim on something from alibaba.
Admittedly we have taken exact opposite to normal approach, building the highest quality product possible at the lowest possible price point and sell at little over cost to members and there is only a single shareholder, but even at twice the price they would still be good value.
When we were doing the promotional material my claris equipped bike was only marginally slower climber than my latest €15k+ PCW. The difference was mostly the extra 1.5kg. Without aero enhancements the difference in a flat TT was more pronounced...
 
I give you "The Next Supper"

From left to right: Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Jan Ullrich, Johan Bruyneel

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200mi... Maybe last year when I had a lot of base miles, but then it would have been counter productive. I would have had two off to recover.

I did a few 150mi days on the tandem with T, but that was last year. More tandem days this week. Nothing ambitious, it is a week of speed and the fun starts at 50kph. Up to eight tandems each day and game on with motorcycles pacing us. Cars start getting in the way.

Still big group rides this late in the year. I rode both days on the weekend, Monday morning it took two planes to get all the girls back to school. Monday afternoon I did FTP and VO2 tests then to the track for a few laps with the Ukrainian girls. They aren't missing out. Swim, gym and track, "two of" has become their daily routine while the boys try to kill themselves on the mountain. :baldy

Sunday we had a Nocal geriatrics club invite themselves into our ride and an unmasked (ffs!) knuckledragger was spewing nonsense and telling us how great they are and pointing to one to watch on the climb... When we turned onto the climb I hung back with T to make sure they weren't harassing the tail. I needn't have worried. The tail moved away from them at 3.8-4 and the last rider was at the top of the 22km climb in under 1:30. The front was moving at 5+ and T and I had a task catching. On the descent we passed the NCGCC at 1:42 and the 13km marker. It looked like they were making a day of the climb. :lol3
We set a pace to intercept our other group that didn't take the climb. Home, shower, a snack and I was airborne in Frankie with a student for a meeting.
 
I give you "The Next Supper"

From left to right: Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Jan Ullrich, Johan Bruyneel

TxktdcB.jpg





The trash has been stripped of all his titles and he is still stinking up the room... no shame!
 
Ah, philistines who won't accept pro cycling for what it was, and what it is. Just keep denying, lol. You're as bad as ... LANCE was at denying, lols.
 
Dave, the only person in denial here is YOU!

The message he and you send is that it is okay. It's NOT!!!

And the same lies and denials repeated over and over (very politic) by his supporters does not change that!
 
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It's a mess with no easy answers, no doubt about it. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

I'm not too happy about it either... Not just armstrong.

Any cyclist using PEDs and attempting to pass it off as genuine, for example asthma medications that have gained popularity will raise my ire.

Bronchial restriction is a natural physiological response to high stress... it is not asthma!

Some of our club riders don't participate in UCI/WADA events because of arbitrary rules affecting them. Many of the top twenty ranked club riders for example exceed arbitrarily defined T levels for women - yes, women's bodies produce T. They are faced with two choices. Chemical or surgical intervention. Most of them are mothers!
Much of the exodus occurred at a time when UCI, IOC, WADA, etc were setting definitions for trans women with T levels four times higher than natural women... and the trans competitor who already benefits from male musculoskeletal structure gets to keep their junk!!! T levels were lowered again, but it is still a farce.
 
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Did a solo gravel century Saturday. The goal was to see what a limited-power-output century felt like the next day to be able to ride again - effectively. Of course it rained the next day, which meant an indoor session, and TrainerRoad decided that I needed to do a ramp test ... which was just awesome after doing a wind-exposed gravel century the day before. I understand that without a power meter on the outdoor bikes, TrainerRoad can't yet calculate and adjust for the ride... but TrainerRoad does see that I rode 100 miles, and it assigned a calculated TSS score to the ride of 354, so I would have appreciated that the ramp test didn't happen on the day after.

Not sure about you all, but I never do a ramp test until I'm throwing up. I'll push it to some uncomfort-level, but am not about to risk fainting and hitting my head on the floor tiles, etc.


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Did a solo gravel century Saturday. The goal was to see what a limited-power-output century felt like the next day to be able to ride again - effectively. Of course it rained the next day, which meant an indoor session, and TrainerRoad decided that I needed to do a ramp test ... which was just awesome after doing a wind-exposed gravel century the day before. I understand that without a power meter on the outdoor bikes, TrainerRoad can't yet calculate and adjust for the ride... but TrainerRoad does see that I rode 100 miles, and it assigned a calculated TSS score to the ride, so I would have appreciated that the ramp test didn't happen on the day after.

Not sure about you all, but I never do a ramp test until I'm throwing up. I'll push it to some uncomfort-level, but am not about to risk fainting and hitting my head on the floor tiles, etc.


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Dave, your estimated power seems too low for generous pizza portions riding on gravel. Rolling resistance alone would be a high percentage of that estimate and a power meter would be very useful.

Ramp test is just another way to make a fun activity hurt more than it should. I won't... not on a trainer... not for some training program designed by someone who has never met me. My coach would have nixed a test like that after 100mi on gravel in favour of time to recover.

And FWIW, I did an FTP and VO2 test last week that was bad enough...
Worse, I did it while watching a group of Ua girls on the track. Dammit! Those are fast and fun sessions. Go 'til you blow, sit up on the stayer's line for a couple of laps to recover then come back for more. Their pace is well in the 50s now - NCGCC are faster though:imaposer. I could have rebelled, but I was with a group for another video in the pregnancy and sport series.

The next day we were doing sprint and recovery intervals. Z1 to 15s sprint, recovery to Z1 and repeat. I did that after real world intervals doing 10s surges off corners, about 22 of them on Turini in the morning. Lots of drone footage. After 12 cycles on the trainer my legs were jelly! Massage, a long hot soak and lots of food.
 
Selective quoting... read my follow up comments.
 
Dave, your estimated power seems too low for generous pizza portions riding on gravel. Rolling resistance alone would be a high percentage of that estimate and a power meter would be very useful.

Ramp test is just another way to make a fun activity hurt more than it should. I won't... not on a trainer... not for some training program designed by someone who has never met me. My coach would have nixed a test like that after 100mi on gravel in favour of time to recover.

And FWIW, I did an FTP and VO2 test last week that was bad enough...
Worse, I did it while watching a group of Ua girls on the track. Dammit! Those are fast and fun sessions. Go 'til you blow, sit up on the stayer's line for a couple of laps to recover then come back for more. Their pace is well in the 50s now - NCGCC are faster though:imaposer. I could have rebelled, but I was with a group for another video in the pregnancy and sport series.

The next day we were doing sprint and recovery intervals. Z1 to 15s sprint, recovery to Z1 and repeat. I did that after real world intervals doing 10s surges off corners, about 22 of them on Turini in the morning. Lots of drone footage. After 12 cycles on the trainer my legs were jelly! Massage, a long hot soak and lots of food.

That track work seems fun - wish we had something like that here. Do you bring your own track bike, or just rent one there?

I have to be honest about our 'gravel' here: it's "hero gravel" where it can be some of the easiest gravel to ride on. The challenge often isn't the gravel causing a wattage drain, but instead since the gravel levees are so much higher than anything around them for miles it is the wind exposure that takes a toll. I'm out of shape and I know it, so a lower FTP is believable. In recovering from what all I went through earlier this year, the loss of the Kona with its 2x system has been a detriment to training. I no longer can get into a really tough gear and push it out, so I lost that style of training that kept my legs strong. Sure, I can put the SRAM 1x in its toughest gear, but I easily get that going too fast, and I lose out on that resistance training. I used to have nice over-1000 watt surges that I can no longer easily practice for.

So for your sprint and recovery intervals, do you really allow the heart rate to settle all the way down to Z1 before the next 15 second sprints? I have head that that is the goal, but for me that would be about 101 bpm to get to zone 1, and that would take a while to get back down to. Though, with the limited 1x gravel gearing I'm dealing with now, it will sort of force me to ride in some ridiculously easy gear at some ridiculously slow speed in order to do a 20 second sprint up through the gears. Without doing that I'd likely run out of gears if we didn't have a good headwind.

Ramp test is just another way to make a fun activity hurt more than it should. I won't... not on a trainer... not for some training program designed by someone who has never met me. My coach would have nixed a test like that after 100mi on gravel in favour of time to recover.

Ah, but that's the catch. I was doing much better until a poor decision here at work cut my earnings, so that autonomous 'coach' of TrainerRoad is my defacto (inexpensive) coach, and I'm thankful for what it is. Cheap coach is better than no coach to a degree or three, agree? :-)

Perhaps it isn't TrainerRoad's fault with the ramp test as that was the morning I entered in a new 'goal,' into a new training regimen, and perhaps it just needed an updated baseline to develop a path toward that goal. My guess is that, had I not created a new regimen (me, not knowing what I was doing with it as it was the first time I ever entered a goal... and I deleted the prior training regimen after creating the new one), it would not have ramp-tested me that morning. As much as I didn't like it, I DID like it because, hey, after an easy century the day before, a ramp test doesn't take a long time, lol. Well, it wouldn't, but I'm experienced enough to know that the little five-minute warm-up for anything like a ramp test is fine for young people, but for me - I did an easier 30-minute 'workout' spin that I found in TrainerRoad just to warm up and get the legs moving before doing the ramp test's warm-up and climbing intervals.

I mean, even on a good day if it takes me 10 miles to warm up before I can really start riding, five minutes of easy spinning warm-up before a ramp test seems to be ludicrous.
 
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That track work seems fun - wish we had something like that here. Do you bring your own track bike, or just rent one there?

I have to be honest about our 'gravel' here: it's "hero gravel" where it can be some of the easiest gravel to ride on. The challenge often isn't the gravel causing a wattage drain, but instead since the gravel levees are so much higher than anything around them for miles it is the wind exposure that takes a toll. I'm out of shape and I know it, so a lower FTP is believable. In recovering from what all I went through earlier this year, the loss of the Kona with its 2x system has been a detriment to training. I no longer can get into a really tough gear and push it out, so I lost that style of training that kept my legs strong. Sure, I can put the SRAM 1x in its toughest gear, but I easily get that going too fast, and I lose out on that resistance training. I used to have nice over-1000 watt surges that I can no longer easily practice for.

So for your sprint and recovery intervals, do you really allow the heart rate to settle all the way down to Z1 before the next 15 second sprints? I have head that that is the goal, but for me that would be about 101 bpm to get to zone 1, and that would take a while to get back down to. Though, with the limited 1x gravel gearing I'm dealing with now, it will sort of force me to ride in some ridiculously easy gear at some ridiculously slow speed in order to do a 20 second sprint up through the gears. Without doing that I'd likely run out of gears if we didn't have a good headwind.

Club bikes are free or BYO.

I'd still expect you need about 50W for rolling regardless, another 80W for 25kph average... and more if as you say it is windy. Trainerroad estimate seems low and you probably shouldn't have been punishing yourself especially if your fitness is low.

15s sprint to top of Z1 (5 zone scale) is a few minutes. I put in 100% effort, but the intervals are not long enough to maximise my HR. Somewhere in Z4. The recovery is a useful measure of fitness. If I was doing the same on the road it would be a little different with Z3 behind a motorcycle and longer intervals.
 
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Club bikes are free or BYO.

I'd still expect you need about 50W for rolling regardless, another 80W for 25kph average... and more if as you say it is windy. Trainerroad estimate seems low and you probably shouldn't have been punishing yourself especially if your fitness is low.

15s sprint to top of Z1 (5 zone scale) is a few minutes. I put in 100% effort, but the intervals are not long enough to maximise my HR. Somewhere in Z4. The recovery is a useful measure of fitness. If I was doing the same on the road it would be a little different with Z3 behind a motorcycle and longer intervals.

OK, I like that it takes your heart a few minutes to come back down as well. I was confused as I didn't think that waiting that long between short (15 second) intervals was common. When I've seen intervals done, and copied what I thought I was seeing, it was something like 20 seconds on, 30 or 40 seconds off, then back on again no matter what the heart rate is. Of course there are different intervals (my main gravel riding seems to be in longer 'intervals' when I'm in shape, like 20-minute intervals).

I did a weird one this morning with TrainerRoad. I believe they were 30 seconds on (that part is correct), and either 30 or 40 seconds off, over and over again. Max watts at their plateaus were 242 watts (all to be over 100 RPM), which was a workout of sorts, but they weren't killing me to get them done. I don't know if it was an effective workout because I never felt like I was dying (max heart rate 131 during the intervals when my max is 164 outdoors, probably max of 154 indoors) over the 1.5 hour workout.

So, yeah, perhaps a ramp test after a long ride wasn't going to be accurate. The peaks should have probably been 22 MPH peaks instead of 19.9 MPH peaks for a really hard workout.

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OK, I like that it takes your heart a few minutes to come back down as well. I was confused as I didn't think that waiting that long between short (15 second) intervals was common. When I've seen intervals done, and copied what I thought I was seeing, it was something like 20 seconds on, 30 or 40 seconds off, then back on again no matter what the heart rate is. Of course there are different intervals (my main gravel riding seems to be in longer 'intervals' when I'm in shape, like 20-minute intervals).

I did a weird one this morning with TrainerRoad. I believe they were 30 seconds on (that part is correct), and either 30 or 40 seconds off, over and over again. Max watts at their plateaus were 242 watts (all to be over 100 RPM), which was a workout of sorts, but they weren't killing me to get them done. I don't know if it was an effective workout because I never felt like I was dying (max heart rate 131 during the intervals when my max is 164 outdoors, probably max of 154 indoors) over the 1.5 hour workout.

So, yeah, perhaps a ramp test after a long ride wasn't going to be accurate. The peaks should have probably been 22 MPH peaks instead of 19.9 MPH peaks for a really hard workout.

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Is there an explanation for that workout and what it is supposed to achieve?


My intervals were over 1000W, some over 1100W... that is above my weight class. It serves my training purposes, that is engaging everything to hit the target power levels if I hit the sprints on the trainer fresh. The only question IRL is if I have enough gas in the tank. W' needs to be 18,000W.s for an effective sprint and because of my low mass that can be a lot to ask.
I much prefer to do those intervals on the road with a motorcycle pacing me though. Or twice weekly summer crits with four lap primes. If I absolutely have to do it on the trainer I prefer to choose a route on RGT or Zwift or something and attack the climbs and sprints. I've demonstrated how I do that in the videos. I've also done videos of the climbers intervals and the screaming good fun (with lots of screaming) motopaced intervals. lol
This current video is about our relative gains, performance targets and the recovery of our bodies after children. The stars are two "oh wow!"early twenties upstaging three of us thirty something old women. I am looking a little more beaten with a few more scars that only gives me street cred with the Ukrainian girls, nothing else... but hey, I have my scarred mini six pack back and I am fit! :sob
Since February there have been fourteen children born here and another, the last is due any day, enough for a creche and there is already a school. I am angered beyond words by the thought that all of those children will not know their fathers and none of those women will see their husbands again because of the empirical ambitions of one evil little monster! But, I digress. Most of the mothers have no sports background and a few are participating now with the rest of us guiding and encouraging them. We are seeing a lot of progress and they are becoming the new stars of the series.

Yesterday, early swim after half the night on teleconferences, then 110km/2500m with T and a few friends and in the afternoon I didn't miss out either with some fun on the track with the UA girls. The extra hour on the bike isn't hurting me and it is hard to describe how much fun we have. More the same today.
After another successful summer ctit series this year we are organising a similar track series for the winter months.
 
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