Busy week ahead

In the coming days there will be only a few short updates. That is because I am attending the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. There I will once again be reminded of how hard it is to develop drugs that work. Contrary to what people think, making a drug that works is very difficult. Even when everything looks great in theory and we all know the drug should work, and we know it works in animals, we often find that it doesn't do a thing in humans. That is something WADA should think about before putting out lists of forbidden substances. It may well be that we think these work, or that we have a rationale as to why they should work, but that means very little without a solid double blind study. And studies are sorely lacking here.

Westin St Francis, home of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference

Today I ran 8.5 miles in the hills and it was pretty rough going. I hope I am not getting sick. My ribs are pretty much healed now but my shoulder still bugs me and I cannot sleep on my left side. My orthopedist thinks I need a cortisone shot but I am holding off for now. He says grade II AC separations are worse than either grade I or III (total separation) because the ends touch and they keep rubbing and that causes inflammation. It sounds logical and makes good sense, but who knows ? This type of medical reasoning is very common and I too have often indulged in it. Unfortunately it is largely unproven and probably just as often wrong.

Ergomo, with new battery

My Ergomos came back from the shop and they are fixed and outfitted with new batteries. One of these days I will write a product review on this item. For now, all I can say is that the Ergomo is the best deal in power meters out there -by a longshot.

Tour of California

The Tour of California started today. It is the year of the come-back kids. Lance, Michael Rogers, Floyd, Ivan, Tyler, it seems all the old stars are coming back. Not surprisingly, Fabian Cancellara won the prologue beating everybody by a solid margin. Levi did surprise by ending second, losing only a little more than a second to Fabian. But what I found most surprising was to see Tommeke in 7th overall.

Alistair and I went on a 33 mile ride, despite the cold weather (low 50s) and chilly wind. Many times it looked like we were going to get rained on, but we dodged it every time. My ergomo is back, it suddenly responded to a reset and some fiddling with the charger plug (I suspect there is a bad contact in the charger plug). I am quite happy to have it back and I find it a most useful device. I wish they had better Mac support, but now that they are out of business, the only thing I can hope for is that it keeps working.

I rode pretty well. The trip took 2:02 and I burned 1,606 calories. My top power was 620W, my average 207 and my NP 254.  As I indicated before, NP correlates very well with my subjective impressions and whenever I feel like I rode hard, it registers above 250.  I find it the most useful display on the whole device.

More rollers and bad ergomo

Rode an hour on rollers today. Probably about a 1,000 cals. It seems I can swim and ride easy without too much of a problem. I just can't run or even walk fast. Hopefully this will go away soon. It is just a dull ache and a tight spot high up my calf.

I was testing a new Ergomo I bought on eBay. It did not work. My first bad experience with eBay. The description was just way off. Not good. Turns out the seller, is a pretty well known bike rider from Rochester NY. At least, that is what I found on the web. What I did not notice was that he had received other similar feedback before from another buyer. "Items not as described." Surprisingly enough the reviewer had still given him positive feedback. Maybe the person was afraid of retaliation?

Not as described says it all. It is the worst possible feedback. If the items are not as described, how can you trust the seller?

In any case, now I am stuck with an expensive broken Ergomo. I hope that eBay's conflict resolution center can resolve it as the seller does not want to cancel the sale. I hate it when people can't be fair.

Unfortunately, you need to wait 10 days before filing an items not received/not as described challenge to eBay. 

On other news, it appears we may get some slot(s) for Ironman Lake Placid in honor of Cindy and to support the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. That would be just super. It would totally change my perception of NA Sports !

disk wheel

I pulled out my Renn disk wheel and rode 44 miles today. Not the best terrain for a disk as most of it is quite hilly, but both I and the wheel held up well. Unfortunately, the wheel is no longer really true and it has a slight wobble. I am not sure if this can be fixed. It isn't too bad and there is no rubbing -no brake adjustment needed. That is good because the Griffen frame is very tight and there is very little room in the back. The chainstays are almost as close as the brake pads.

It took me 2:44 to cover the distance. I rode out Redwood, to Moraga, to Lafayette (lots of traffic lights here) to Orinda over the St. Stephen's bike path, and then over Wildcat and Grizzly back home. I added a little detour on Grizzly to Skyline at the end. According to the Ergomo I burned 2,065 calories. My average power was 195W with a "normalized" average of 244W.

I felt a bit tired and think I will only do a short run tomorrow. Then I will be on travel for the next three days. That should give me plenty of opportunity to recover.

Power meters

The latest fad in cycling is called the power meter. It is a rather fancy and expensive gadget that is de rigueur for anyone taking the sport seriously. There are three popular power meters on the market. The earliest, and the most expensive unit is called the SRM power meter. It uses sensors in a specialized crankarm-spider combo. The SRM unit has three versions but almost anyone uses the professional (intermediate) version. There is an amateur version that is cheaper and a science version that is more expensive. The more expensive the unit, the more gauges it has.

Next comes another German unit, called the Ergomo. It uses the spindle in the bottom bracket and features an optical, non-friction pickup. Ergomo is about half the price of the SRM professional. Third in line is PowerTap, a system that uses strain gauges in the rear axle as its pickup. Unlike SRM and Ergomo, PowerTap is tied to a special wheel. On the other hand, moving it from one bike to the next is as easy as switching the wheel. Depending on the type of wheel you choose, PowerTap is about the same price as Ergomo or somewhat more expensive.

Finally, Polar, the maker of heart rate monitors, offers a rather complex method that detects vibrations in the chain. That requires a more delicate setup with a sensor on the chainstay. It also requires additional sensors measuring cadence to be placed elsewhere. The main advantage of the Polar system is its price. It is half as expensive as the Ergomo and less than a quarter the price of SRM.

Despite the differences, all four systems perform about the same provided they are installed correctly. As mentioned before, the Polar system is the most finicky and the one that is most likely to develop problems.

Since powermeters are hardwired -the new SRM is wireless- there are few problems with reliability and reproducibility. Battery life is not great but acceptable. Apart from power, all systems display a variety of other useful information. That includes speed, cadence, heart rate -using a Polar strap-, calories burned, and other derived variables.

All devices store data at regular intervals for download and later analysis. Most come with, or are compatible with software packages to analyze training data and make comparisons with others.

For accurate results, powermeters need to be calibrated often. Few cyclists bother to do this, and in some cases it is easy to see why. Calibration procedures can be quite tricky and time-consuming. In general, the effect on data collected is not that great, but for those who rely on fancy data analyses and cross-compare with others, calibration is a must lest the results be meaningless.

One thing a power meter user quickly finds out is that estimating power under normal conditions is quite easy. Power output is a fairly steady affair for a given rider and much of the data collected overlaps to an amazing extent with previous runs on similar courses.

Because power is so easy to estimate based on speed and a few other parameters, iBike recently introduced a power meter that is not only a lot cheaper but also quite accurate. Rather than measuring power, it estimates it using a few key measurements such as speed, cadence, wind, and a few simple inputs such as rider and bike weight. Tests under real life conditions have shown it to be very close to SRM, Ergomo and other direct-measurement devices, in all but the most rare conditions.

Think before you buy. A power meter is, for now at least, a very expensive gadget that will provide minimal additional information. A great way to estimate your power output and to detect any improvements is to ride a flat course for a set distance and measure your time. Or take a long steady uphill at an even grade. These will give you a very accurate way to estimate your progress without having to pay $500 or more for a meter. And if you need to know your power, you can use a simple web-based calculator to get a fairly good estimate.

A great rule of thumb is that if you ride 20mph steady in no wind, you are generating about 175W. At 22 the output jumps to 200-220W.

Happy riding!