A couple of annoying things

I decided this morning that people who talk on their mobile phone while exercising annoy me. Not as much as people who text when they are exercising, but still they annoy me a bit. Really it is only an issue with walking, since I think in most other forms of exercise talking on your phone would be difficult. Funnily enough I don't really have an issue with people talking on their phone while just walking about. I do that myself. I find it one of the advantages of the 'mobile' part of mobile phones. But for some reason people who do it while they are walking for exercise bug me. I am not sure what it is. It might partly be because I usually see people doing it when I am passing them on my bike and I am never that confident that their attention is on where they are going. I think though that part of the issue is just plain ideologically driven. There is a bit of my brain that feels like they should be paying attention to what they are doing. Focus on exercise or focus on talking to your friend, don't try and do both. Disconnect, let yourself have this little bit of time to be outside and enjoying some of the more simple pleasures of being alive.

It may just be me though.

On the topic of things that bug me. I have a little bit of loose bar tape on the left side of my handlebars that resolutely refuses to be stuck down. It got many angry glares from me on my ride this morning. Hmmm.... Might just be time to move on.

Riding this morning was very lovely. Absolutely perfect conditions, almost no wind, just the right sort of temperature. With the exception of my bar tape, I had a great time. More cadence based interval work, which caused similar problems to the session I did on Sunday, 95rpm just seeming to fall in hole in my gearing. It didn't seem to be so much of a problem today though, so possibly some acclimatisation going on there.

The other day I mentioned that due to a recent firmware update, the Garmin Vectors now produce a huge amount of information. All sorts of things about where about during the pedal stroke you apply your power, where you apply your peak power etc. I now have a number of rides under my belt in which that data was recorded, so today I started going through some of it. I am not sure if I am seeing any trends yet, I might need a bit more information. Some of the trends I think are forming though are:

• Rides that have a higher average power, also, on average, have power applied through more of the pedal stroke. That sort of makes sense, and would imply that higher power outputs rely more on lower power applied for longer, than higher power being applied for only a short part of the stroke.
• Something else I found interesting is that, so far, it looks like rides where my left and right legs apply power for around the same proportion of the pedal stroke, the average power tends to be higher. I am not sure what that means yet (or if it is even a trend).

Running this afternoon. Not much to say about that. Just thought you would like to know.