FTP as Calculated by Garmin

I have a Smart Trainer and also a couple of 4iii Power Meters (left side only)

When I bought a Garmin 1030 last year it forced me to use the Garmin Android App (before I just plugged my 800 into my laptop and let it sync to Strava

With the Garmin App you get all sorts of other data that I started to look at - one of which is FTP. I am not sure how it calculates it given I have never gone out to do a FTP test either on the turbo or on the ride - hence I don't think I really believe it. However it gives me a relative benchmark from ride to ride (when measuring power).

I find that it's actually quite demotivating how it seemingly varies relatively easily

Here's a screeenshot of my last 6 months:

My "Garmin FTP" rises during the summer, then drops away over the winter - I peaked at 216W in 2019 before it bled away. I managed to push it back up from about 195W in December 2019 up to 210W in late February by putting some big efforts in on the turbo when riding using the RGT trainer application. I found that the "hilly" Pienza, Paterberg and Ca de Formentor routes suited me to push the power. The flat routes - 8 Bar, Canary Wharf and Borrego Springs don't quite do it for me.

I don't believe the real value and if I did a proper test I am certain it would be lower that this - but it gives a benckmark to compare myself to and equate how I felt on a ride vs. what the numbers say

It also gives a VO2 Max value - I believe this does need a proper test so how this is achieved I don't know. I guess I need to read and see if they publish information in line. However whilst the FTP number is not that great, the VO2 number rates me as between 49-50, which for my age (let's just say it's 50+) rates me as having a Fitness Age of 20 - the top 5% for my age and gender - I'll take that.

Cycling In the Lake District - Day One - Wrynose Pass

(Updated 2-Jul-2014 with some photos)

We're on holiday this week staying in the Lake District. It's a chance to try to knock off a few more of the climbs in the  100 Greatest Cycling Climbs book. We're actually staying by the side of Thirlmere, but this is quite central to a number of the climbs. I plotted off a couple of routes using Garmin Connect before we left but as aware from the maps that some of the roads plotted were potentially quite busy and not cycling friendly.

Of the 2 routes, 1 included Wrynose and Hardnott via Ambleside and another a loop starting from Keswick including Whinlatter. On the way up we drove up the A519 from Ambleside and this experience suggested that it would definitely be better to avoid cycling on this road. So on the first day (Sunday) I decided that I'd try the Wrynose and Hardnott route but to change it and start from Ambleside rather than Thirlmere, although I did not edit the Garmin route. The first problem was that Garmin connect doesn't know about One-way systems so I had a double trip around Ambleside before managing to get out towards the planned route. However I then kept getting the Garmin deciding I was off route, directing me to the right, but when taking the turning was then off route again. This was even after stopping the route and restarting it. I even took a short incorrect diversion up a 25% climb!

Eventually I consulted for the nth time the map I printed off from the Garmin Connect site (although in reality it was too small to see the required details) and followed what I thought ought to be the route. Fortunately I shortly caught another cyclist and confirmed that not only was I on the right road but that in a short time if I turned right I'd see signs, and sure enough there was a sign for Wrynose (thanks to that cyclist) for help. After a short but steep descent and over a bridge there was a warning sign ("30% !!") for a left turn. I paused for a moment and took of my gilet and arm warmers, had a drink and set off into the unknown. It started really quite steep from the junction but then eased off and turned into a rolling ride for several miles.

Gradually some height was gained, the trees thinned out and the surrounding view became more and more barren. Then I reached a cattle grid and a fork in the road. The left fork was signed for Wrynose (and I think Hardnott) and so I took that turn. A few hundred meters further on there was a farm house/guest house and then the road definitely turned upwards. I was in 2nd gear (34-26) at this time already but it did not take very long before I had changed into 1st (34-28) and realised how hard this climb was going to be. The Garmin was showing over 10-12% all the time and beeping away with a High Heart rate alarm (I have set it to 168bpm). This was to be a constant soundtrack for the next 20 minutes or so.

The short 10% stretches were starting to become the periods where it felt like a rest. I rode along and the rode curved gently to the right with a sign warning of 25%. As I rounded the the corner I could see the road climbing up really steeply with a bridge ahead. At this point the gradient was more like 15-16% as a minimum and it was really hurting. My Heart Rate was now about 180bpm - I have never had it this high anywhere at home. I tried standing up to use some different muscles but just could not sustain any more than a few meters.

Passing over the bridge was another short respite but already it turned up again, and at this point it became really steep. A couple of cars passed me but luckily the road had widened at that point and they gave me a lot of room. The Garmin was suggesting 17% but given that by now my HR was 189, the cadence was about 30rpm and the speed only just over 3mph it was clearly a lot steeper. It was at this point that I was beginning to wonder if I would actually be able to get to the top without stopping. I felt that I ought to be close to the top and dug really really deep just to keep going forwards. Fortunately I was right and it started to ease off (anything less than 20% feels like is flat!) and rode up to the top. It looked like there was a false summit so I rode on further and over the top just far enough that I started to go down again.

My original plan for this route was to drop over the back of Wrynose cycle the 3-4 miles and climb up the back of Hardnott, descend it and return back in reverse (Wrynose and Hardnott are on the same road but the climbs are in opposite directions, so to do them both means climbing and descending each one from both sides).

The climb I had just completed was about 1000ft of ascent and the with the riding there over riding to the bottom of the pass meant I was already at 200ft/mile, so to do the planned route would have meant over another 3000ft of climbing just to get back to where I was at that point. Given that I had dug really deep to do the Wrynose climb meant I re-evaluated the planned route and turned around to ride back to Ambleside. I also decided that a better strategy for the week would be to take my bike with us each day and do the various climbs one at a time before or after the more sedate touristy bits we had also planned to do. Further, given that whilst Wrynose is very hard, Hardnott is meant to be even harder, so Hardnott should be a ride in its own right and just to get up would be a massive achievement.

Whilst the climb up was a challenge, the descent was was also very tough. The reasonable surface going up slowly became very uneven and rough going down - bouncing over the bumps became the norm and the back wheel was constantly locking up. I was quite nervous about the descent and was keen to keep the speed down as there was no where to run-off to. Riding the brakes was making my hands ache and I had to move from the hoods to the drops to get the leverage more easily. I also cycled the brakes between front and rear to try to stop too much heat going into the rims and tyres. Once back by the farmhouse the ride was a pleasant ride back to Ambleside.

Statistics for the ride:
Distance: 18.6 miles
Ride Time: 1hr 34mins
Height Gained: 2464ft
Average Speed: 11.9mph
Link to Strava Ride: http://www.strava.com/activities/159384847

When I uploaded the ride to Strava I was very pleased. On the 2 segments that mattered I placed quite well
"Wrynose Pass Full Cat 2 Climb", 3.8 miles, 1053ft, 5% average - my time 27:04, placing 139 of 815 (just outside the top 15%)
"OFFICIAL 100Climbs No 85 Wrynose Pass", 1.6miles, 915ft, 11% average - my time 15:56, placing 172 of 1222 (just about the top 15%)

Here are some photos (sorry about quality, batteries in the camera were flat so had to use my iPhone3):

At the top looking East just at the very steep part

About 2/3 way up (although looking down) at the bridge

At the top again looking down (east)

The Number 11 Bus Route

According to Wikipedia The Number 11 Bus Route is "Europe's second longest urban bus route". Part of the route runs past Sarehole Mill which is less than 2 miles from my house. I'd been thinking about the practicalities of riding the route for some time and plotted out the 'A' (anticlockwise) route in Garmin Connect based on the info on the bus company's web site, assuming a start and finish at Sarehole Mill. I was reasonably comfortable that I knew about 60-70% of the route and that part was OK. The other 30% I was less sure about. This part started from Erdington Five Ways and ran through Aston, Witton and Winson Green (past the prison) before joining the Hagley Road where I knew the route again. There looked like a few busy roads so I decided that for this reason, and more generally for traffic that this route would be an early Sunday morning ride only. This Sunday I felt pretty tired and not really up for a long ride so decided to give it a go. The roads were quite wet so I decided to take the Giant (with mudguards) rather than the Scott.

After a short ride to Sarehole Mill off I started on the route. On the whole it was reasonably easy to follow - the Garmin seemed to behave itself on the whole. It got mildly confused somewhere between Erdington and Aston, but fortunately a number 11A bus appeared and I was able to follow it for 100yards or so.

At 9am in the morning the roads were pretty quiet all round. There were some gentle 'climbs' but I was able to keep in the big ring all the way. It took about 1hr 40 minutes for the 25 miles or so. There were a few traffic lights but on the whole it was a pretty even ride round. It would take a lot longer on a weekday or not as early and some of the roads and junctions would be fairly cyclist unfriendly with more traffic.

I had also plotted the 11C (clockwise) route as well and had thought of riding both in the same day but felt too tired to go back round for another 25 miles or so this time.

Here's the Strava Ride:


And to my shame I made a segment for it as well:


Needless to say its a KOM, although when I created the segment it did identify 2 similar segments - both of these were on quite a lot of the route but neither followed it fully or all the way round, so I don't feel too bad.

Would I do it again? Probably once more, and I'll do the 11C route as well to get the set. I am surprised no one else has ridden it to be honest, although it is not the most scenic route by a long way.

A Ride to Clent - 24 November 2013

This Sunday I rode over to the Clent Hills and Clent. In particular I wanted to go to St Kenelms Pass - given the mythical name (and it being a Strava Cat 4 Climb) I felt it might be worth the effort. I have known that the Clent Hills are relatively close but was never sure exactly where they were - by this I mean what roads are worth using to climb and what are just boring roads and what are downright dangerous. To help in this however one of my followers (and I follow as well), Neal Lamont, had posted just such a ride on Strava in September this year that I could use as a template - the link is here: Saturday Ride and here is a screenshot:

This was actually a much longer ride than I wanted to do (a maximum of about 40 was what I was looking for) so I could keep it to around 2.5-3 hours in duration, but Neal had done a load of riding in Alvehcurch that added quite a lot of distance, so I felt if I cut all that out and rode direct to Catshill I could make it more suited to what I wanted to do.

I used Garmin Connect to create a route:

This route meant I rode over to Rose Hill and onto Catshill. This is part of a route I have done quite a few times in the past. What was new was continuing on to Belbroughton and then on to St Kenelms Pass and Clent where I added some loops.

As you can see from the image above the climbs started at about 18 miles. In fact St Kenelms Pass was a long but steady climb which suited me well, apart from a very short steep bit right at the end. It was quite scenic even in the cold grey winter morning and would be great in the summer. I followed the Garmin over the route above, which I created with quite a few loops back on itself to try to get all the climbs in the area in. All was well until the Garmin said turn left on to what was at best a farm track - clearly it did not go where I expected so I turned around to the last junction. The Garmin seemed happy enough but I was on a stretch of road I'd been along not long before, so at that point I decided to abort the route, ride up to the top of St Kenelms Pass from Chapel Lane again and then ride down and exactly retrace the route I'd used to come over.

The other reason for deciding on this approach was that it was actually a lot hillier than I'd expected, and with the cold weather, and my Giant in full Winter mode I was felling pretty tired. Finally given that I had another ascent of Rose Hill to do on the way back I decided discretion was the better part of valour and needed to head back.

It was the right decision because the ride home was a real drag and I was pretty shot before I even got to Rose Hill. I ground up Rose Hill at a steady but slow pace. The direct (as the crow flies) route from Rose Hill to Solihull (through West Heath, Kings Norton etc) is also extremely rolling, and I was finally glad to drag myself home.

After a shower and some calorie intake I uploaded the ride to Strava. It came out at 45.9 miles which I was OK with but what surprised me was over 4300ft of climbing and explained why I felt so tired. That seemed a really big number so I used Veloviewer which allows you to sort all your rides by a huge variety of criteria:

This shows that the ride came out as the ride with the 6th most ascent of all I have done (496 to date), the most ascent on the Giant and not far short of the same climbing as some of the 100 mile rides I have ridden, so I was decidedly happy with the achievement. I was also surprised at how much climbing I could geton a "local" route and without driving to start a ride somewhere more naturally assumed to be hilly. I'll definitely do the ride, or a variant, again - it was scenic and challenging and somewhere I have not been before. I went for a walk a few months ago with my wife to the Clent Hills and we parked by the National Trust visitor centre. When we left we went down a very long climb and I think its worth adding this to the route - however that climb will have to be a "down and up" as there was only dual carriageway at the bottom - decidedly unpleasant on a bike.

Again I am not sure why the Garmin got confused. Whether in this case its associated with planning to use the same bit of road several times I am not sure, but its something I need to get to grips with as I am keen to continue venturing further afield and need to rely on the Garmin to do this. I'll probably have to plot out local rides to follow that I know I can just experiment on without getting lost. On the way over to Rose Hill within the first few miles it threw a wobbly in Kings Norton, insisting I was off route and seemingly wanting to navigate back to the start. It appears if you go off route near the start it will give and navigate you back to the start as I found in Suffolk. Its a great device but not without its foibles.

The Maillot a Pois Rouge

I recently won a King of the Mountain competition and hence the The Maillot a Pois Rouge

Unfortunately this was not as a result if my climbing prowess but due to luck of a draw.

I am a bit of a Strava junkie and keen to look at the data at the end of the ride. However I also upload my data to Garmin Connect and Bikeradar. And I then look at in in Veloviewer as well. This makes the uploading phase more than a few moments work as you can imagine.

However I really only upload data to the Bikeradar because they run competitions with prizes. These are generally a combination of distance, hours ridden, height gained etc but for the more ordinary riders amongst us there are some random winners as well. 

I was amazed to be one of the random winners and the prize was a T Shirt. Here I am proudly wearing it on a day at Sudeley Castle.

Tour de Suffolk

Cycling in Suffolk
We have been on holiday for a week in Suffolk - near the villages of Botesdale and Rickinghall to be precise. We have been staying in a relatively new holiday cottage here - very pleasant and relaxing and well equipped. We brought the bikes so that I, my son, and my wife could do some cycling. Here's a link to all three bikes on the car: linky

I was not sure what the cycling was like around the area. A quick look on Strava showed a very low number of local segments so I was not sure whether cycling was not popular, whether cycling was popular but not many people used Strava, or whether cycling was popular but there were no hills at all and Suffolk residents were sensible and realised that there ought to be at least some gradient to justify a proper segment.

The plan was to run off a few possible routes of about 30 miles and see how it went. If I cycled I'd aim for a reasonably early start so as not to use the whole day selfishly on the bike and to keep the distance to 30-35 miles max. Not knowing the area at all I would actually use the navigation option on my Garmin 800, and as with the trip down to Sussex over the May Bank Holiday weekend I'd use Garmin Connect to create the route and download to my 800.

I found Garmin Connect pretty poor a year or so ago but recently have found the route planning, creation and downloading to the device much improved.

Day 1
Here's the route for the first day (Sunday) that I and my son planned to ride:

And here's the corresponding Strava link:




The first thing to notice is that they are not the same! The problem was that we turned onto a road and the Garmin got very confused. It clearly thought that we weren't on the road and after about 400m we came to a junction - I had no idea where to go and made what turned out to be the wrong decision. However about 200m up the wrong route it "found" the route again and after a few seconds recalculated and off we went. However what it was re-calculating was how to get to the end and so after about 15 miles we were back on the run to the cottage. I'd assumed that it would try to get us to the route but was mistaken.

Given that this had taken us only 50 minutes or so we decided to re-ride the route we'd just done but a bit further on decided to ride the original planned route - which would be I estimated about 50 miles. The route turned out to be OK - pretty flat and reasonably quite roads - we managed a 30 minute stretch cruising at 20mph or so with a vaguely helpful tailwind. Total time 2h41m for 49 miles - an average of 18.1mph - not too bad and helps with 2 people sharing the load.

After almost 50 miles I was astounded to see that the route had only 5 segments - confirming the preliminary review before we left.

Day 2
On the second day my son did not want to get up as early as I did so I rode solo - I repeated the shorter loop from the day before, but as I was not following my Garmin missed a turn somewhere and made a slight change to the route. On the return I also rode fully through the villages of Botesdale and Rickinghall and by chance saw what might actually pass for a "hill" in the area, so I gave it some beans. I also went pretty hard on the "Redgrave Road Race" segment and pulled a 3rd out of the bag.

Here is the route:



I was astounded that the "hill" was not a segment so to my shame I created it. Here it is:


After all the updating I came out a 3rd so was surprised and pleased.

Day 3
My son had indicated he'd come with me this morning but declined when I woke him at ~8am, so I went solo again - this time I headed east from the cottage on a ~40 mile route, here:




Plan A was an attack on the segment I'd created the day before and with legs just warm enough and fully fresh I blitzed the KOM. A good tail wind outward bound saw an average speed at around 19.5mph up to the turn back, but what gives must take away and I struggled to maintain any real pace anywhere on the return leg, dropping down to an overall average of 18.3mph. This is still OK and I am pleased with my progress but would have liked a higher speed. I also think that I was starting to feel the burn of all the miles over the past week.

I also pulled a 5th on this segment:


Sometimes its good not to ride on known routes as you don't know where the segments are and just ride at a "natural" pace. 4.3 miles is a reasonable length (although it was almost pan-flat) and so 5th was good, even if only of 13 people.

Day 4
On day 4 I did not ride in the morning as I felt mildly tired (see above) in fact we had a proper holiday day and did almost nothing in the morning, then had lunch and drove a few miles to a local nature reserve around a local Fen. This was a very pleasant 1.5hrs. When we got back I suggested a short ride with my son - the proposal was to re-ride Day 2.

Within the first few miles I knew it was going to be hard. I struggled to keep on my sons back wheel for the first 1/2 of the ride and then just managed to stay there for the rest. We also went to my "Rectory Hill, Rickinghall" segment where my son stole if from me by a big 4 seconds, so I'd managed to keep it for less than 36 hours!

Here's the route:



I was glad to get back from this ride!

Day 5
I was awake and bright eyed and bushy tailed for a ride this morning - mainly because getting up for an 8am start for 45 weeks of the year for 25 years is a bad habit to get out of in just a few days. However despite a sunny appearance out the windows a more careful look showed it was pretty misty and misty = cool. So I had a more leisurely breakfast and didn't get out until about 9.30. My legs were less tired than the night before and whilst the pace wasn't great it was better than I had expected. Here's the route:



Got a couple of PRs but all in a nice ride.

So far this week I have been lucky enough to be able to cycle every day in good weather as well. My Cyclist's Tan:

 
















has been topped up nicely.

Given that I have cycled every day it seems that I should have done more than 110 miles by today but the rides have not been massive so perhaps that's OK.

The local scenery has been very pleasant, and the roads quiet (as long as you do a little careful route preparation). We've seen many attractive villages in the area.

It's also pretty flat. Not Norfolk flat but there are no hills to speak of. I have never even thought of using or needed to use the 34T chain ring and only used the 21 (3rd) tooth cassette gear twice for about 100m each time when my legs were tired near the end of a ride. I have been able to roll along in the 5/6/7 cassette gear more much of the time, so the style of riding is quite different to that of the Midlands.

Sussex Ride - Sunday 26 May 2103

Part of the deal for taking my wife down to Sussex was that I would do a little riding. Box Hill was one of the planned rides and the other was to ride from where ever we were staying to Billingshurst to visit her sister. We ended up staying on Fontwell just round the corner from the racecourse so Billingshurst was about 20-25 miles depending on the route. However the choice of route was difficult as many of the roads in the area are very busy - much more so than the Midlands. I used Garmin Connect to create a route for my Garmin 800 (I have ended up using this as I find it the most slick and easy to get a turn-by-turn route into the Garmin although other sites do some mapping functions better) and just went for it - no looking at Strava for segments to ride - just a ride on what looked like the smaller roads.

This was the route I ended up with:




It turned out to be, with a few miles exception a fantastic route. I have hardly ever done so before but I stopped about midway to take a few photos on my phone:

It was a very pleasant ride with beautiful weather - and I even picked up a top 10 place!