Frustrating

A frustrating day today. But also frustrating that I find it frustrating.

Basically technology betrayed me today. I get annoyed that I find myself relying on technology so much during training. But then I also find it annoying that the technology didn't work, causing me to be annoyed about being so reliant on it in the first place. Annoying kind of morning really.

Basically the ride this morning was one of those sessions you would rather forget.

It started off so well. I was up early after plenty of sleep. Felt good. Weather looked like it was going to be epic. I had heaps of time to ride.

I had organised to meet a guy that I work with for a ride, so I had a timetable to stick to. Everything was going smoothly and I walked out the door more or less on time. Turned everything on the bike on in preparation for riding when... Power meter error. What! Why? I didn't have an error on the weekend, I haven't changed anything since then. Why have an error now? I don't understand. Rapidly my nice morning starts going off the rails. Dilemma. Sacrifice minutes and try and fix the power meter or just get going. Obviously I can't ride without monitoring every single minute of what I am doing so that I can fixate on it later so I have to try and repair the power meter. Okay, disconnect everything, reconnect. What! Still nothing. Okay so now I am late and I still don't have a power meter. Too bad, out of time, have to go.

Get riding. Hang on I will try one more thing. Nope, still nothing. Still no power meter and now really late, better send a message. Wait I don't have his number. Of course I don't. More minutes spent finding that out. You get the idea.

Basically by the time we met up I was 10 minutes late and still without a functioning power meter.

Oh well, forget it, lets ride. Once we are riding though my frustration just grows. The guy from work is reasonably fit, but not that quick and I find myself getting frustrated about it. Basically this was just me being a jerk because I knew this would be the case and I was the one who invited him. Plus this is a recovery ride and so all I am really doing is riding at the intensity that I am supposed to be doing. I couldn't help it though, we trundled around the river (getting passed by people!!! how dare they) and all I could think was, 'well there is a training session that I won't get back'. The fact that I knew I was being a bit of an arse just annoyed me more.

As I said, frustrating sort of session.

Deep down I know I don't need to be annoyed. A recovery session done as directed is not a wasted session. The fact that I don't have data to record what I did doesn't really matter, no matter what TrainingPeaks tells me. I never used to have a power meter and I am pretty sure the sessions were still beneficial. Sometimes we get so caught up in the numbers (particularly while riding) that we lose sight of what we are actually doing and why. Not to mention we forget that what we are doing is actually meant to be fun. Give me a couple of days and I will remember that. For now though I am just a little grumpy. Pretty sure I will get over it though.

Oh yeah, and the power meter is probably sorted now. I use Garmin Vectors, which I have not had the best working relationship with over the couple of years that I have had them, with numerous issues and faults. One of the features of the Vectors is that they measure power of both legs by having strain gauges in each pedal. I am still not really sure what that data does for you, but there you go. To record this information the left pedal transmits to the right pedal which then transmits to the head unit. The problem I was having today was that the left pedal wasn't broadcasting, or the right pedal wasn't picking it up. Basically I was getting no power from my left pedal, so the power output I was recording was approximately half of what I was actually doing (right side only). This meant I had a rough idea of the power I was producing, but the record for my ride shows only half of it. Once I finished my ride I essentially disconnected the pedals and connected them again (the Microsoft solution) and that seems to have sorted it out. I am about to ride home from work, so I guess I will find out for sure.

Hopefully the ride home isn't quite so frustrating.