Lunchtime Cycle – No holding back

Before heading off on todays lunchtime ride I had told myself that the plan was for a nice easy ‘recovery’ ride. I had done a hard 25 mile ride yesterday, I have circuits and Swimfit to go to this evening and a long MTB ride planned for tomorrow, so and easy ride was on the cards.

Once I got going though I couldn’t hold back and ended up hammering out a hard fast ride. Hard enough for it to feel like a good Time Trial effort and fast enough to beat my personal best on the course by just over 1 minute. I think I might suffer at circuits and Swimfit tonight!

It gives me a good excuse to show you one of the cool features of Ascent, my GPS and exercise tracking application though. Ascent allows you to compare up to four different sessions. The video below shows a comparison between two sessions. The yellow dot and upper topo graph is me on the course today compared to the blue dot (and lower topo graph) which was my previous best on the course a few weeks ago.

The movie is a a little stuttery but that is down to the screen capture program I’m using. It is obviously much clearer at full size too, but I’ve had to reduce it for display on the web. Hopefully you can just about make out the blue and yellow dots and get the general idea. You can see where on the map you were, where you were faster or slower and from the topography and heart rate graph you can see where you were trying hard and where you weren’t. Pretty handy hey! Click this link for more info on Ascent, and other Mac software for GPS and fitness training.

Here’s the route on Garmin Connect.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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