Today’s ride started unusually. I’m used to technical issues, what with the Tickr playing up constantly. No change there for today – I swapped the battery out yet again, which does seem to kick it into gear somehow, and it seemed to perform well for the rest of the ride.
However, within the first ~2km or so, I could see the 3s average watts reported on the Garmin was just waaaay off. Other figures seemed correct. I tried stopping and restarting the ride, and even pulled out my phone to see if my kids had somehow altered my weight. But no dice. Everything looked right.
Now, strangely, this issue occurred on me during my last indoor ride, too. During Thursday’s Tour of Watopia Stage 3 I noticed the Garmin was misreporting some stats. However, I could see Zwift was pulling in the correct figures, so what was there to worry about?
What I had seen then, and what I saw today, was that the Assioma pedal calibration kept reporting -1 as a value. Then I saw that the calibration was failing. In the end it took me getting off the bike, placing it prone against a wall, and deleting the pedals then reconnecting them. That resolved it. I think that cost me about 10 minutes in total. How annoying.
After this things went well enough. The weather was cold so I was back in my winter kit. Strange that two weeks ago I got three days in bib shorts and short sleeve jerseys. Today was like that never happened with it’s bitter wind. I had three layers on and my hood up.
I’d planned this ride as a laid back / easier ride. Plotting a route as I set off, when I got to my turn off about 10km I decided to ditch that route and go check out Chorley instead. Why? Well, no reason. Just I haven’t done that route before, whereas I had done most of the other route several times.
Covering 40km with ~300m of climb, I managed to get through ~1000 calories in the 2 hours it took. Really pleased with this, overall. As I say, it was a laid back ride so not pushing myself by any stretch, and yet I still got a decent set of figures on the week. Plus I quite enjoyed several parts of this route – particularly riding through Astley Park.
Sadly I didn’t stop for (more) pictures today. Reasoning for that being I was in my rubber gloves which are a pain to take off, and once sweaty (which happens due to their unbreathable nature), they are equally hard to put back on. The only picture I did take was of my old work place. I’m very fortunate that I love my work, but I hated that place. Still, I worked there with my older brother, so sent him a picture as a nice little memento.
After that it was a pootle home, whereby one a-hole very nearly ran me off the road. The more that sort of thing happens, the more I wish I had a camera on the bike. It’s only a matter of time (until I get a camera, hopefully not till I get squished).
I feel like today was a decent enough ride without thrashing me. Therefore with tomorrow as a recovery day, by Tuesday I should be ready and raring to go for Stage 4… but I doubt I will feel that way as I’m kitting up on the day.
