I tend to play a lot with my new phone as a result of which the battery depletse in a short lapse of time. If I’m by a power source then that doesn’t matter because recharging the phone is easy. There are other cases where recharging is a hassle. Â That’s part of the excuse I used for getting a mophie air cover for the phone.
Last night I was at a party and whilst talking to one person I found out that their phone battery was dead so I removed the cover from my phone and lent the external battery/charger/iphone cover to that person. As a result as the party progressed that person wasn’t tethered to a wall waiting for the phone to charge. She had full mobility.
The cover does not recharge the phone fully. Instead it provides you with between seventy to eighty percent of the charge you would normally have. That’s enough to get you home comfortably. In other situations though the back can be used as an external battery. That is to say that rather than recharging your phone it behaves like a primary battery. The cover drains itself of power before the Iphone battery is depleted, therefore making sure that you can have around twice the normal autonomy of such a device. This could be interesting when the device is used on a hike for example.
There are two weaknesses to the mophie that I would like to see rectified. The first is for when you’re using the mophie as a cover but haven’t used the cover’s battery. If you plug it in it will automatically start recharging the battery rather than going straight to recharge the battery. As a result I prefer to remove the cover when it is just the phone battery that needs recharging.
The second problem is the amount of time it takes when you want to recharge the device both by itself and with the phone already in the case. It’s better when you’re recharging both at the same to do it over night.
Stravistix for strava is a Chrome plugin. It allows you to analyse the data from your ride in more detail and with more graphs. In the detailed view you can see heart rate information, speed, power, grade, elevation and  ascent speed. It allows you to see each metric in more depth.
It allows you to look at your statistics in detail. You can see what percentage of the ride was flat, uphill or downhill. You can see how fast you were climbing and how your speed varies.
This breadth of data is fun to play with. It allows you to see whether you do spend as much time as you thought climbing. It also allows you to see how much of your time was spent static or moving.
There is a weather module for wind, temperature, clouds and humidity. This is a nice way of checking whether the wind is favourable to the ride you are thinking of doing that day.
What I would like to see next is a log of the weather and especially wind during the ride. It would like to see ground speed in contrast to wind speed. This data should be relatively easy to acquire.
Plugins are great because they allow you to do more with the data that you or other people generate. They allow weekend and professional riders to analyse how they are progressing. It also allows riders to compare themselves with others.
In this video we see someone paragliding from Plan Praz to the Mont Blanc. To do this the individual finds ascending air at a number of points going from 2800 metres up to 5000 meters before finally landing on the summit of the Mont Blanc.
This video gives you a practical example of how a good paragliding flight should go. When I flew at Les Diablerets last week I was surprised that we don’t feel the wind as much as we would expect when on a parapente and I was surprised that you do not feel when you are going up or down. In this video you hear a beep that increases in frequency and intensity as you ascend. The faster it beeps the faster you are climbing. There is another beep that we hear just once in the video that indicates that the parapente is going down.
It’s a shame that in this video we do not find out how long the flight lasts. We hear him at one moment speak about the need for patience as he looks for pockets of rising air to raise him to the desired altitude. We hear him comment about how certain people seem to struggle and we hear that his breathing is more laboured as he gets higher.
It would be nice to see them take off from the summit and head back down in to the valley. It must be nice to ascend the Mont Blanc in such a way. We seldom hear of people ascending the Mont Blanc by parapente so this video is interesting.
In this second video we see people hike up the Mont Blanc and take off from the summit. The view from there must be spectacular and the feeling must be pleasant. Many of us have seen the vista from the Aiguille Du Midi but imagine seeing it from a place as calm and quiet as below a parapente.
Today I participated in two Zwift events, a social ride and a race. The social ride was one hour of pedalling at a comfortable pace trying to keep to the same speed as the group. Rather than trying to be as fast as the group I was trying to pace myself to be within the peloton rather than riding off.
Social rides are amusing because you start on the peer and wait for the counter to get down to zero and when it does you go from being on a home trainer in the real world cycling on a home trainer in the virtual world to cycling on the roads of Watopia. Social rides are interesting because you have people from Australia, England, Denmark and many other countries, so long as they are in a timezone where it would be reasonable to cycle at such a time of day.
It’s the first time that I get out of bed, look at the schedule for Zwift events and feel excited about doing something virtual like riding a bike. Keep in mind that today I could have burned diesel by heading to St Triphon to climb with people I know. I felt no motivation to drive that far so I was happy to stay home.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that riding a bike on Zwift is riding an apartment bike because it isn’t. It’s similar to riding a bike in the real world, with real hills, virtual drafting, virtual fellow drivers, no cars and more. What is real is the conviviality, the desire to share a few phrases, the cheering and the desire to ride as a group.
During the ride we did sprint twice and on the first sprint I beat my personal record and on the second go I had less energy remaining. During the first sprint I put out up to 934 watts in theory. That’s enough energy for me to rest on the handle bars for a little bit before catching my breath and continuing.
When I ride in the real world it’s usually alone and I race against myself but when it’s on Zwift I have a choice between virtual social rides, virtual races, training, or just a “as the wind takes me” option. Of course there is no wind, I mean that you ride for the pleasure of riding.
A Race up a Volcano
The second ride of the morning, about 15 minutes after the first ride finished was a 15km race up the side of the volcano on the Watopia map. I thought that with my abilities I should select group D. I pedalled during the countdown to keep warm and a few seconds before the race started I pedalled at a higher cadence to compensate for the lag that I experience with my current setup. I started well but I tired more quickly than most. While I was trying to maintain 200 or more watts they were racing off into the distance. I found myself in 110th or lower positions but I continued pedalling. I tried to maintain between 180 watts and 220 watts. I kept looking at the riders beside me and most were category C riders.
Keeping up
I worked hard to keep the power up and at moments when I felt that I needed to rest I changed gear, changed my cadence, but tried to keep the cadence up. Usually my cadence is about 85 when I’m riding alone but in this race, as I tried to keep up it reached an average of 105 strokes per minute. Over the duration of the race I was generating about 2.61 watts per kilo.
I didn’t know what to expect from the other racers so my goal was simply not to be dropped into last position. After that and as I got closer to the end my goal was to be within the top one hundred so although my body wanted me to slow down I kept working at it. I was pushing at over 200 watts for 14:45 in this race.
I spent hours and days training on Zwift before I felt ready to try a race. I trained for multiple sessions and those sessions got me used to pushing beyond my comfort levels for minutes at a time and it paid off in this race. If I continue training I can aim for better positioning. Today I was in 6th place in D category out of over 40 riders and 99th out of 180+ riders. So half of the racers have trained more than me. I can continue training and see where I come up next time.
What I like about the race, that I don’t have except for sprints is information on how far it is to the end of the race. If I know for how many more kilometres I have to make an effort then psychologically I can push harder. This was just a short race at 15km and I would struggle on a longer race and I would struggle on the flat.
I want to participate in more races and I need to choose which training course to attempt next. It’s nice to race virtual cyclists rather than real cars, e-bikes or people on lighter bikes than the one I ride in the physical world. In the virtual world today I was riding a trek emonda. This might be geeky but it’s pushing me to be fitter so fewer people can object.
Remember when I wrote 50,000 words in one month? Today’s challenge is a little different. From tomorrow, and for the next 30 days I will have the task of writing 100 pages for a script within 30 days.
That’s about three pages a day and it shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve done a lot of transcribing so I know dialogue when I hear it. I did also have to study it in uni. Now we’ll see what the result is.
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