This is a sticky post. It’s probably not my most recent posting; if you’re looking for that, simply scroll down to the next entry.

I pinned this post to the top of my cycling blog because the following charts are automatically updated after every bike ride (both outdoors and on the indoor trainer). So you can easily find this entry, which always shows my up-to-date Fitness numbers.

By “Fitness”, I’m specifically referring to my Chronic Training Load (or CTL), which is an exponentially weighted average of my Training Stress (TSS) over the preceding six weeks. You can learn more in this video, this web page, or this book.

So without further ado, here are my up-to-the-minute Fitness charts.

The first chart depicts my Fitness level over the current calendar year. Any red dots that appear re »more

Last we heard from our hero, he was looking forward to an “almost normal” year. That lasted all of four days.

On January 5th I did a Step Test: the first of three rides that comprise my usual functional threshold power (FTP) testing regime, to determine my baseline fitness level. These are vomit-inducing long-duration maximum intensity efforts. If you’re doing it correctly, you should feel like you’re dying. This one went “well”, producing a respectable FTP of 218 Watts.

However, that part about dying? That was just a leetle hyperbolic. I finished that workout with two kinds of chest pain: sharp, painful contractions on my left side that went away after 24 hours, and a dull ache in the center of my chest that remained for a few days.

Having experienced heart palpitations around this t »more

Measuring power is the gold standard of performance management on the bike. I’ve waited years for the industry to provide a pedal-based power meter that is accurate, uses mountain bike-style SPD cleats, is reasonably easy to use, and “affordable”.

In 2018 I bought a Wahoo Kickr Core indoor trainer, which allowed me to finally measure my power output over the winter. But when I took the bike off the trainer for the summer, I had to give up measuring power, and go back to estimating power (and thus fitness and fatigue) indirectly based on heart rate data.

However, after over a decade of waiting, last month I opened my wallet and acquired a set of Garmin Rally XC200 power meter pedals. Here’s some background and insight into how it’s been for me so far…

Why pedal-based? These days, you »more