Show us your.......newbie progress! [4 Sep 2012 - 4 Oct 2014]

[MattHB]

I agree, I dream of average speeds like this. Ah well one day.

Join a club it'll do wonders for your speed and overall fitness.

Most clubs do a variety of different speed rides so you can start small and work your way up. I started out about 6 months ago on 13-15mph rides. Now I do a 70+ mile ride with averages between 18-19mph every saturday. Its awesome fun too and I've met a great bunch.

 

[BrumJim]

I don't want to appear thick but, What are heavy legs?

Edit;
Yes I have Wikipediad it, but still confused.

Not a medical definition, but for me it is when your legs are really tired, and it feels like there are big lumps of lead in your shoes. Every movement is so much more effort than it should be, even though nothing hurts or aches yet.

 

[Nigelnaturist]

So it's been a month since I got back in the saddle after a crazy few weeks of weddings, birthday parties, work and holidays and did my "easy" route down some undulating back roads.....the 14 mile route that I had managed to get down to 52min completion today took me 1hr 1! :-0

Every little incline felt like I was climbing Everest- I had nothing to give! And the flats seemed like a challenge as well!

I knew that I would be a little rusty, but this experience just shows what difference a few short weeks out the saddle makes!

Ah well, onwards and upwards!

Its funny that I took the best part of two weeks off, setting up a web paged thing and a wedding shoot. I have found that I am tackling hills with more confidence, I have slowed down a tad because of it. I did a ride on the 22/9 30.94 miles, with a clib of 39.55 ft per mile @ an avg of 14.12, today I did 35.7 miles with a climb of 57.51 ft per mile @ 13.12 m.p.h., well I think its an improvement, I did three 1 mile rides into town ect which brought the speed down I think.

 

[Nigelnaturist]

I'm still using an old iPhone 3GS which is a few years old. Battery lasts around 3hours running strava, even with the current update that was meant to improve battery life.

Planning on doing the early and social ride with my club at lower pace so will be out for around 5hours and that's if no one in the group suffers any mechanical issues such as punctures. So garmin seems a good investment.

Plus I like the idea of downloading the clubs set routes for my own pleasure etc.

If your serious about the Garmin see if you can stretch to the 500, it can also record cadence,speed (this can be a bit iffy sometimes from just gps) and heart rate, it also gives you a virtual partner to race against (though the 200 might) it also provides turn by turn instructions on the course and the name of most roads (though you do need to plan it in advance, and load the right file type to the device) I had a Bryton 35, but I could never get these features to work, though from only having the Garmin a day I would have said the Bryton was a better gps tracker, though the one I had had a serious problem with altitude, if you stopped for say 5-15 mins, it would lose upto 60 ft of alititude from one reading to the next.

 

[Reece]

If your serious about the Garmin see if you can stretch to the 500, it can also record cadence,speed (this can be a bit iffy sometimes from just gps) and heart rate, it also gives you a virtual partner to race against (though the 200 might) it also provides turn by turn instructions on the course and the name of most roads (though you do need to plan it in advance, and load the right file type to the device) I had a Bryton 35, but I could never get these features to work, though from only having the Garmin a day I would have said the Bryton was a better gps tracker, though the one I had had a serious problem with altitude, if you stopped for say 5-15 mins, it would lose upto 60 ft of alititude from one reading to the next.

Couldn't quite stretch to the 500 although I was very tempted. I'm also in the hunt for a new bike as I only bought my raleigh airlite 100 off eBay for £92 and its a touch on the small side for me. Starting to get aches and pains in longer rides because of this.

However once the bike is bought and some money back in the bank I will upgrade to the 500. Ive noticed the 200 sells on eBay for not much less than what I paid so hope this keeps up lol.

 

[Noodle Legs]

Its funny that I took the best part of two weeks off, setting up a web paged thing and a wedding shoot. I have found that I am tackling hills with more confidence, I have slowed down a tad because of it. I did a ride on the 22/9 30.94 miles, with a clib of 39.55 ft per mile @ an avg of 14.12, today I did 35.7 miles with a climb of 57.51 ft per mile @ 13.12 m.p.h., well I think its an improvement, I did three 1 mile rides into town ect which brought the speed down I think.

Not bad effort for two weeks off!

 

[Nigelnaturist]

Not bad effort for two weeks off!

Well today's ride was absolutely shocking 30.3 miles in 2:30:51 @ avg sp of 12.1 (thats the bad bit) elevation gain of 1808 ft (thats 59.67 ft per mile)
Anyway I have worked out a rough formula for difficulty of ride, if you take the height climbed per mile i.e. 59.67 multiply by the avg speed 12.1 you get a figure of 719.12 then multiply by the distance of the ride i.e. 30.3 divide that by 1000 and you end up with 21.79 difficulty.
a short run I did on Wed of 8.22 m had about the same climb rate
so 12.3m.p.h x 59.49 ft climbed x 8.22 miles / 1000 = 6 difficulty.
another longer ride but less climbing
(14.4*34.55*52.5)/1000=26.05 difficulty (31/08/2012 date of ride)
yesterday
(13.1*51.51*35.7)/1000=26.93 difficulty

So yesterdays ride was as difficult as the ride on the 31st of Aug but 16.8 miles less.
another ride on the 26/07/12
(12.6*21.5*46.7)/1000 = 12.65
So (AvgSp x height climbed per unit distance x distance) / 1000
you could use either metric or imperial.

 

[Nigelnaturist]

Couldn't quite stretch to the 500 although I was very tempted. I'm also in the hunt for a new bike as I only bought my raleigh airlite 100 off eBay for £92 and its a touch on the small side for me. Starting to get aches and pains in longer rides because of this.

However once the bike is bought and some money back in the bank I will upgrade to the 500. Ive noticed the 200 sells on eBay for not much less than what I paid so hope this keeps up lol.

I always have aches and pains lol, you can get the 500 for about £142 on the web.

 

[DaveyM]

Well got out for a few good miles tonight, (although Strava stole some of the miles ) 14 miles with a couple of steep climbs.
Just the way to finish a week at work.
Hoping to get a nice ride in tomorrow as well

 

[MattHB]

Well got out for a few good miles tonight, (although Strava stole some of the miles ) 14 miles with a couple of steep climbs.
Just the way to finish a week at work.
Hoping to get a nice ride in tomorrow as well

Should be a perfect riding day tomorrow. Not much wind, 12ish degrees and a nice bit of sunshine.

New forest nutter club run for me tomorrow.

 

[Noodle Legs]

Well today's ride was absolutely shocking 30.3 miles in 2:30:51 @ avg sp of 12.1 (thats the bad bit) elevation gain of 1808 ft (thats 59.67 ft per mile)
Anyway I have worked out a rough formula for difficulty of ride, if you take the height climbed per mile i.e. 59.67 multiply by the avg speed 12.1 you get a figure of 719.12 then multiply by the distance of the ride i.e. 30.3 divide that by 1000 and you end up with 21.79 difficulty.
a short run I did on Wed of 8.22 m had about the same climb rate
so 12.3m.p.h x 59.49 ft climbed x 8.22 miles / 1000 = 6 difficulty.
another longer ride but less climbing
(14.4*34.55*52.5)/1000=26.05 difficulty (31/08/2012 date of ride)
yesterday
(13.1*51.51*35.7)/1000=26.93 difficulty

So yesterdays ride was as difficult as the ride on the 31st of Aug but 16.8 miles less.
another ride on the 26/07/12
(12.6*21.5*46.7)/1000 = 12.65
So (AvgSp x height climbed per unit distance x distance) / 1000
you could use either metric or imperial.

Quite the mathematician aren't we?!?!

Lol

 

[Nigelnaturist]

Quite the mathematician aren't we?!?!

Lol

Not really because distance x ft per mile is elevation gained so to make it easier (elevation gain x avg sp)/1000.

There are more complex formulas, but this does seem to give the ride some context, ft per mile gives an idea how much climbing is involved (or not in many of my rides) but multiply by avg sp gives an idea of effort or difficulty.

If you dont have a gps recorder, you can map your ride on many of the online mapping systems, my fav is ridewithgps.com (it has cool feature showing you racing yourself on the same route when you have more than one recording), you can also log a ride without gps, and then attach the route if you wish, or if anyone is intrested I can supply a spread sheet to log your rides.

 

[Dmh140]

Been out again today just up to the post office collection depot to collect my cover for the bike then went on a wee detour on the way back was only out for about half hour but im loving it done about 6 miles yesterday gona try and do 10 tomorrow

 

[Reece]

Wouldn't mind that spreadsheet Nigel if you don't mind. Thanks.

 

[DaveyM]

34 miles in just less than 2 hrs 30mins today, so pleased with myself.