Fitness

Naturally we think of doing group activities in the evenings, after work, or over the weekend, when we’re free for the entire day. Some people take the opposite approach. They wake up early to go for a morning sunrise run or a croissant loop bike ride.

The concept is simple. Instead of waking up for work, you wake up early, and you do an hour of sport between 0700-0800. In so doing you get your bike ride or run, before your day of work. It then includes a café, a croissant, possibly breakfast, and then to work we go.

It’s ironic that since I started a Runna fitness plan my “fitness” has been going down rather than up. The simple reason is that although the workouts are challenging, they’re challenging for a short time.

Take this morning’s bike ride for example. It was short in distance and time, but high in effort and strain. I had to keep up with specialists. By specialists I mean “people who cycle without touching other sports as often”. I walk, hike, run and cycle every day so I’m excellent at walking, and mediocre at everything else. This is written with humour.

Yesterday we were under the clouds for the entire day. Low lever clouds or fog kept us away from the sun. I noticed that someone on Strava had managed to get above the clouds by going for a bike ride. I decided to try to do the same thing, eventually, by running. This is the longest distance I have ever run. It was uphill for the first part.

I ran from the height of Nyon towards Tranchepied, and from there I ran up towards the Domaine de Bonmont before turning to run along the foot of the Jura towards Trelex, before running back down towards Nyon and home.

The Garmin Connect End of year summary is currently available, and updating daily. The stats are quite interesting,

Despite cycling as much as I did Garmin says that I took 3.8 million steps this year and that in March I took 486,000 steps. That’s when I was hiking a lot.

Activities

I logged 457 activities, of which 233 walking, 154 cycling and 36 running. I logged 741h and 58 minutes of sports. According to the app I travelled 8919km which is cycling to Paris from London 18 times. The biggest bike ride was 148 kilometres and the month where I travelled furthest was 1691.8km.

Garmin connect isn’t as smart as I thought. I thought that if I used the Explore 2 with a heart rate belt, that I would get training status and training readiness. For a week I was tracking with the Explore 2 as my primary tracker. Data is missing.

It’s a shame that it doesn’t work as expected because if I could wear a normal watch while cycling, rather than the instinct 2, then I would avoid tracking the same workout twice.

Since Strava has decided to sue Garmin, and since Suunto has decided to sue Garmin as well, for different reasons, I feel now is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of how to upload to Garmin and Strava manually.

Exporting to Strava

Garmin

If you record an activity with a Garmin device, you can navigate to connect.garmin.com, log in and go to the activity. You can export file, TCX or GPX. I usually export the file, double click, and then use the .fit file to upload to Strava. You can add a name, photos etc.

I have been up the Molard climb four times this year, and each time I sped up by a little. Twice my time improved by two minutes, and when I tried yesterday it improved by only a few seconds. With an average of 2000 meters of climbing per week I can feel the effects.

I can feel that I am climbing with more power and I can feel a big change on short climbs. There is a climb to enter Eysins and a few days ago I went up without tiring until the top. Yesterday when I climbed the Molard my heart rate peaked at 180 beats per minute but I had some strength left to try to sprint the last few meters.

A few weeks ago two individuals in a car yelled abuse at a group of us who were cycling. They were mad that a cyclist did not pull in for them to pass easily. At this point I thought “Despair is not sat on a bench as in the proverb, he is sat in a car.

Years ago, after yet another speeding fine when driving between home and a scuba diving spot, or vice versa I was flashed and I thought “expensive cars are a waste of money, because the motorway is rarely quiet enough to drive at the speed limit, let alone to speed. In effect you’re spending a huge amount on a machine that will see you stuck in traffic and grumpy.

Yesterday I rode with Group 2 rather than Group 1 with TDC. I believe I could keep up for a second time. I also believe that when you’re cycling hard three times a week it takes a lot of energy.My experience last Saturday showed that I was pushing myself too hard by riding by cyclists stronger than me three times in a week, especially after riding close to my max on Wednesday, Thursday and then Sunday.

For years I wore no watch, and then I took up scuba diving, and then I wanted to wear a watch when climbing, and then it escalated from there. Now I have Garmin, Suunto Apple, Casio, Xiaomi and other watches. It’s easy to justify wearing the Apple watch because it’s a smart watch so it has a niche. It’s harder to justify the Garmin, Suunto, Xiaomi and Casio watches because they overlap each other.