Bicycle racing for almost anyone

A great place to start... Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there's lots of great stuff.

This looks interesting... a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run... annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test... all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on "Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults" - especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I'm neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale... remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained... and I'm not particularly overweight (nor skinny).

	Male	Female
%Rank	Watts.Kg	Watts.Kg
90	10.89	9.02
80	10.39	8.83
70	10.20	8.53
60	9.80	8.14
50	9.22	7.65
40	8.92	6.96
30	8.53	6.86
20	8.24	6.57
10	7.06	5.98

Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989

And this..."Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults" is :

	Male	Female
%Rank	Watts	Watts
90	822	560
80	777	527
70	757	505
60	721	480
50	689	449
40	671	432
30	656	399
20	618	376
10	570	353

Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989

Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people... perhaps non cyclists?

How about the Human Powered Vehicle association? Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike. Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one... and Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours... STOP IT! Go outside and ride!

Still here? Ok, how about Aerodynamics for cycling? If you are getting into the maths, try this Human Power eJournal for size. And last but not least the informative guys at CyclingPeaks software discuss reading and comparing power outputs at different durations.

Labels: cycling, http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif, links, power

Cycling and data. Well I was hooked on bike data long ago - firstly by writing down how far I rode, then how long it took... which gave me an average speed. Then I collected more detailed data on max speed, then heart rate and finally power output. It just gets better and better (the data collection, not the output). Here's a reassuring story I found in the NYT about similar obsessive behaviour.

Labels: cycling, data, power

SMART. Let me think... without looking it up... Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Repeatable and Timely (or something like that!!). Goals should be something valuable to you - an achievement, but not so easy as to be almost worthless, and not so hard that you never get there! Goals should also be measurable, although how you do that is up to you (quantifiable. My goal here is to write about goal setting, and I measure that by successfully posting... but that doesn't mean that my post is relevant or useful.

Anyway, in cycling terms it's a bit easier - or more explicable. I'm in the (sob!) Masters 5 category now so I can look up the world masters records and see how close I get. Hmmm. 50-54 year age group, 500m in ... yikes! I've a bit of work ahead of me!

Here's a useful track resource, by the way: Fixed Gear Fever.

Labels: cycling, records, track, training

Why does it have to be a war, anyway? Why do we portray these things as 'fights', 'stoushes' or 'wars'? Yes, we need to protect riders from the longer-term effects of various 'medications', particularly when they don't understand what may happen later; and we need to ensure that the competition is fair (if we can define 'fair' at all). But is our only option to go to war? In every war there is collateral damage, in this case to the sport itself, the riders and to the crews that staff the support teams.

Good quote from Neil Stephens via Cyclingnews:
"But there are guys involved in all this and all they want to do is keep their kids in school and to be able to feed them. I feel very sorry for them. My situation is different - I am walking away because I want to...but all these other guys just want to put bread and butter on their tables. They should just let them get on with their jobs" - Neil Stephens on the never-ending Operación Puerto

Labels: cycling, drugs, sport