OP here

Some very useful contributions to this thread, so thanks all!

I’m still injured, so not getting outside as much as I’d like but I have been doing Z2 sessions on the turbo but was finding it difficult to keep in Z2. The efforts seemed very low and I’d usually drift up into Z3.

Anyway, somewhere up thread, someone mentioned crickles.casa so I connected that to my Strava account and crickles calculates my HR zones quite differently (higher) than the usual 50/60/70/80/90% of max HR. Consequently, when I thought I was straying upwards into Z3, I was still in the crickles Z2.

I’ve now adjusted my Garmin/Strava to use crickles values and I’ll try a few more Z2 sessions this week to see how it goes.

Anyway, I did manage to ride outside yesterday and can’t say I felt any better for two weeks of Z2 work (and minimal high intensity stuff) but I am curious about the fat burning potential of Z2 work.

Throughout my life (I’m 59), I’ve been fortunate to be able to eat what I like and not put on any weight. But in the last few months I’ve developed a pronounced gut which I’d like to shift (Ideally I’d convert 2kg of gut into 2kg of muscle mass in my shoulders, arms and pecs 😃).

So…given I ain’t gonna turn fat into muscle, will Z2 work actually burn off fat that Z3/4/5 won’t? Or does it follow that, for instance, a 30 minutes Z4 session will burn off the same amount of fat as a 60 minutes Z2??

(Going back to my original post, I tilted the saddle down slightly and now use Vaseline as a chamois cream and that has drastically reduced the “painful” element of being sat in the same position for a long time. My mind seems to have adapted to watching Netflix so the “boring” side seems more tolerable as well – though having done Mt Ventoux on Zwift once, I’m pretty certain I don’t have the fortitude to do multiple hours on the turbo anymore)

If you post the picture up here, maybe we can check whether we should be following her?

I have to write release notes for my companies app, knowing NO ONE every reads them…🙄

FWIW, Mrs Vlad had booked a rental car with Easirent in Manchester and the third party and CDW insurances were different charges (both around £12 per day IIRC…).
I wasn’t present when she picked up car so not sure whether she could opt in or out of either element…

My main aim is to get rid of my smartphone ASAP then progressively get rid of all tech from my life.

Yes, but WHY? Are you some sort of conspiracy theory nutter? 😜

How do you think government services are going to be delivered in the future (say 10-15 years out)? Are you expecting taxpayers (or bank shareholders) to fork out unnecessary infrastructure costs (like keeping offices open to the public) so you can indulge in your “no tech” fantasy?

You’re not wrong it’s a big log, its also extremely long so multiple cuts are going to be required to do anything with it but it’s right across a great trail so it needs sorting!

Or build a ladder bridge over it…

I’m after a Google Pixel 6a (I think…)

I may also splash out on a new TV seeing as the (sole) existing TV is about 12 yrs old and “only” 37″ & 720p resolution. Keep in eye out for a new thread as I know sod all about TVs these days 😃

I’ve had IMS multiple times and, in fact, seeing physio tomorrow for some more.

Note that acupuncture and IMS are different treatment types. Anyway, I’ve found IMS to be pretty effective for various lower back, neck and shoulder aliments.

Contrary to some of the above posters though, I’ll point out it can be VERY painful though pain is fairly brief.

My physio was telling me that some muscle spasms (usually in lower back) can be so intense that they bend the needles.

Maybe it’s some misplaced macho bullshit but I don’t feel as though it works properly unless I get a big jolt to release the tight muscles!

Any Verstappen fans want to justify that behaviour? 😉

Hi
I’m just recovering from exactly the same.
What you need is a physio who is trained in IMS (aka dry needling which is not the same acupuncture). The treatment itself can be somewhat painful but, bloody hell, it work quickly (by releasing tight muscles which trap the nerves).

I’ve had IMS multiple times in various places in my upper and lower back, shoulder and neck (I really should spend more time of improving my posture and all round strength 🙄)

Edit: a good physio will also give you appropriate gentle stretching and strengthening exercises for you specific injury as well

All of them!

+1

It might be worthwhile letting Trump have another go, after all he’s only allowed 2 terms so after that he would be history anyway.

Are you nuts?!?! You want Trump to be President again?? Haha. And if by some nightmare Trump did get in, I wouldn’t put it past him/GOP trying to remove the 2-terms limit or install a puppet like Putin did

(I also have nothing else currently in place, due to the assumption I had a permanent position secured).

What does that mean? Are you actually unemployed at the moment?

FWIW: Google are reducing the 6a from $449 USD to $299 USD for Black Friday (source: GSM Arena website).

No idea whether that will translate to aimilar deals outside the US though!

Or You Tube Music

Hmmm, interesting. Which specific cassette did you use? (Brand & groupset level)

I’ve got a similar setup and was thinking of swapping out the 11-30 cassette. I was curious as to how low I could go, just by changing the cassette though I don’t think I’d need anything that low (34 or 36 may do me…)

I already use synchro shift so altering the change over point wouldn’t bother me but I’m not sure I’d need to if I just go with a 34…

Oh, and seeing as we are all being open minded here, does your partner still turn you on?
Or if you’re single, is this problem better or worse with certain partners? i.e. maybe you’re not attracted to your partner as you used to be…

“I’m a cyclist and I’ve murdered my wilkins”?

That would be a good start, but give him/her an idea of how many hours per week over however many years you’ve been riding!

I presume you’re not just an occasional cyclist and it’s not a hobby you want to unduly curtail… otherwise his/her solution may just be “give up cycling” 😉

Thanks Johnny – that’s reassuring that Samsung is pulling their finger out and providing reasonable ongoing support. My experience was that they’ve been very slow to offer OS and/or security updates

FWIW, my heart rate also takes a fairly long time to respond (can be a couple of minutes to get up to max HR from Z2 for instance). I’ve never been concerned about it but I’ve never attempted to “train by zone” using fairly short intervals…

Obvious question but have you tried Viagra (or similar)? And if so, did it have the desired effect?

And how old are you?

You may just be suffering from middle age and the “usual” ED rather than something like nerve damage.

I’m not a Twitter user. I thought it’s raison d’etre was that it was way of quickly sharing short messages. I’ve viewed various tweeks via this thread and the Ukraine thread and can see that videos and photos can also be shared.
The product doesn’t seem particularly rich in terms of functionality.

So I was kinda surprised to learn that they had a workforce of 7500…anyone have any background of what all those 7500 employees did? For a “software company”, Id assume a large percentage of those employees were developers but did they sit around all day twiddling their thumbs cos I can’t see much evidence of “product”!

Or where they all content moderator’s? If so, and they’ve fired half the moderators, that doesn’t bode well…

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/awesome-film-about-riding-up-a-hill/

Watched it yesterday. Bloody hell, he’s a determined bugger. Some crux moves he attempted over 50 times*
I’d have given up waaaaay before that.

* Luckily, not every attempt made it into the film

What’s your power curve in Garmin show? I’m going to guess you’ve got pretty high short power up to a few minutes which (I think) helps with the ramp test.

I guess eating all the left over Halloween chocolate gave me an energy boost but my plan to go out @280w seemed quite easy but I did get a new max heart rate 😁

I’d be curious as to how many people could hold 95% of their 20 min power for an hour though.

GCN discussed this recently. There was a specific study which concluded that Pro/Elite riders can maintain their FTP for something like 90% of the hour whereas riders new to turbo training could only maintain their FTP for something like < 40% of the hour. So yeah, it has its limitations and in reality you’d be doing VERY well if you could do 85%!

FTP is only really useful for setting training zones for structured training* though.

Sure, which is exactly what I’ll be using as my baseline (I’m just not sure which programme I’ll be doing as I’ve got some imminent DIY jobs which may scupper my plans)
* plus Zwift races…

Soooo, OP here…
The ramp test I did suggested an FTP of 318w (which I thought was overly optimistic) but I’ve just done a dedicated FTP test using the Tacx Training app. Unfortunately, unlike Zwift, the app doesn’t tell you what it’s calculated the FTP as…
These are the results:

Looking at the same activity once it’s loaded into Garmin Connect:

Garmin seems to think my average 20 minute power is 310w so does that mean my FTP is 310w or 95% of 310w (294w)? Or something else???

(I think the FTP setting of 265w shown on the second screenshot is just from an old ride I did a few months ago where I had > 20 minutes of solid climbing)

Cities that don’t work out how to encourage people onto bikes and public transport will need to live with ever increasing congestion and pollution.

Those city centres will suffer as people find that they don’t want to sit in a traffic jam in order to cruise around a giant multi-storey looking for a spot and then go to a dying city centre.

Meanwhile cities that work out how to make it safe and enjoyable to cycle into will grow and thrive.

Very well said!

I watched the programme and wasn’t surprised by the content (I also regularly check out Near This Of The Day on road.cc) but actually think the title was, hopefully, quite clever, as in I hope it attracted the attention of enough motorists and that it will moderate some of their attitudes.

I was somewhat disappointed about the survey Panorama commissioned as there wasn’t much detail of what other questions where asked
i.e. did they ask any questions such as, would motorists be happy to sit in denser traffic if all the bike commuters switched to (solo) car use instead?
Or questions about vulnerability of cyclists or pedestrians?

Software company I work for was hacked, our data encrypted and held to ransom

Most of the client data was backed up but as we extensively use Amazon Web Services, very little of the dev or production environment configuration was backed up.

Oh what fun we had for a couple of days trying to re-configure everything from scratch in AWS…

We learnt from that lesson though, and every dev/QA/production environment config and data is now backed up to different AWS clouds and we can automatically re-create a new production environment in a matter of a couple of hours max.

But, jeez, the amount of time it’s taken to get to this stage is unbelievable and has really slowed us down rolling out new “product”. Sys admin/dev ops activity and re-factoring for resilience seems to equate to more than 50% of the IT teams output…

Only Chewkw could imagine “sexy times” and Margaret Thatcher in the same instance…lol

Hmmm, I’ll just add “compel STW to implement an ignore feature to silence certain users” 😉

I thought you were supposed to take the power for the last completed block.

This thread seems to suggest there isn’t a single agreed protocol 🤷‍♂️

Mines a rescue mutt, so we didn’t get the opportunity to train him from a young age. And it’s not loud bangs, but even far off fireworks trigger him.

It probably doesn’t help with Mrs Vlad making a huge fuss as well ☹️

Have you thought about letting fireworks off all year round in your back garden, randomly and without warning?

That way your dog would soon get used to them and be fine around them come bonfire night, surely?

Hmmm, did you used to write Viz Top Tips Binners?

I think the article linked above said the ramp can be a way of setting a target for the 20 minute test

Sadly, I’m don’t have a PHD in Sports Science so most of that article went waaaay over my head 😁

all singketrack and trails are banned from being rained on.

They’d turn to dust very quickly without some rain, or are you also proposing some sort of irrigation system to keep them in tiptop condition?

so its just all a bit predictable.

A bit like Top Gear threads on STW? 😉

Mandatory 360° cycle/pedestrian sensors in cars (and vans and trucks) which are intelligently linked to throttle/braking/steering (and door handles)

Mandatory driver licence re-test every 5 years (including mandatory cycling-in-traffic element).

Immediate re-test required for every motoring law broken.

I’ve got a much longer list if you are bored but the above will do for starters…

Oh. And a more left field suggestion…rain would only be allowed to fall between the hours of 2am and 5am. (I’m a bit of a snowflake about riding in the rain)