Vincent and been showing me the different parts of Strava that gauge different aspects of training. I haven’t been using these tools before this. Actually, I don’t quite understand the whole thing. I haven’t read enough about it to truly understand how the fatique detracts from the fitness or form.
I’m not sure if my fitness is high now because I’m doing more mileage and if it’s taking in the power I’m producing during training to gauge that. It has figured my FTP (Threshold) at 360. I haven’t no idea if that is close to anything. Makes me think it is high because my team mate Brian Jensen told me while he was riding off the front, a couple weeks ago at a local road race, that he was trying to keep his wattage at 350, which is his threshold. Mine can’t be anywhere near that.
Anyway, I’m going to start geeking out a little and try to understand this stuff a little more. I’m going to try my best not to let it disrupt my serenity of riding my bike.
it’s gonna ruin the serenity, be assured!
Strava’s fitness & freshness uses both power and milage to determine these scores. It’s completely dependent on power however. If you do a ride on a bike without power, the fitness “increase” for that ride doesn’t register. (You’d think it would look at heart rate as a general barometer as well) FTP (power) is tricky and really dependent on the rider. A rider that weighs more often puts more power out in a 20min TT put travels slower than a lighter rider putting out less power, mostly due to the resistance and drag the larger rider creates. In my experience with their fitness vs. freshness scores, they give you a pretty good “ballpark” of where you are compared to yourself in the past but it’s not very good for gauging where you are in relation to others…unless you know their FTP and do the reverse math. The good news is that it appears that you are in almost as good of shape on the bike as you ever have been during your Strava lifetime. And the negative 35 fatigue score might explain why some of your rides have felt a bit tougher lately. When I’ve reached fatigue scores that high I felt pretty lethargic on the bike. Hope that helps
Steve – Don’t go down the rabbit hole…………………….
Power meters and helmets have destroyed cycling
Indeed. Could not have summarized it better myself.
I think you’d be better off depending on your 40 years of cycling experience rather than numbers on a computer…
Agreed. Go ask Alice…..when she’s ten feet tall!
Radios, Power Meters, Helmets ( a distinct maybe–I’ve been knocked out a few times in the hairnet days) in that order…..but don’t forget Steve everything changes pretty rapidly once you hit 60…not as far away as you might think…
I can’t speak to Strava’s use of strain gauge data, but, their gps track numbers are generally wrong and then the wrongness is multiplied across users and devices.
If the average Strava user acknowledges that Strava’s frontend numbers are vague and generally wrong estimates, that should be sufficient to limit wasting time.
You have been warned.
I can’t speak to Strava’s use of strain gauge data, but, their gps track numbers are generally wrong and then the wrongness is multiplied across users and devices.
Don’t waste your time trying to compare ride-to-ride or even worse, your ride to another person’s ride over the same gps track. The best thing I can say about Strava is maybe (!!) some of the principals used to make those frontend numbers are correct.
Paco,
Does the Amir have a helmet policy? Do you train in Dubai?
We motorpace behind a lambo, the Emir got it from the Hussein estate sale. I would drop you because you are fat with bad genes. A lifetime of doping does have some perks