How to measure a
target like the Festive 500km? In numbers, or feelings?
The numbers bit is
easy: 500kms, hours on the bike, average speeds, watts, intensity factors and Training Stress
Scores (TSS), all ways of quantifying the effort. But maybe the challenge
relates more to feelings than pure numbers: of tiredness, pain, and memories of
what’s so good about riding a bike?
Physically, last
year’s Festive 500 was relatively straightforward. The challenge was mental:
the fatigue of studying the weather, planning routes around the wind and
crawling out of bed early enough to be back for lunch and be too tired for the rest of the day to enjoy it.
This year things
would have to be different. Five days before Christmas, my wife had an
operation on her hip. Immobile, I’d have to be at home to help get the kids out
of bed, make their breakfast, take the dog for a walk – all the stuff you miss
when you’re out the door by 7.30sm to do 100ks before lunch. The only solution
was to do it all in the kitchen on a turbo trainer hooked up to Zwift. Two-hour
rides between 7-9am every morning should be enough. Sat on a bike going nowhere
would require additional mental stimulation, so I decided to play a game of
Fifa 17 during every ride (You can read how that went here).
Getting ready to complete the Festive 500 whilst playing Fifa
In numbers,
completing the 500ks was relatively easy. I covered 520km on Zwift and a further 105 on the road (see table below). Compared to last year my total TSS
was slightly lower (roughly, the Zwift Festive 500 was 5 hours shorter than last years - Zwift kms are quicker) but average power was also higher. There were junk miles whilst playing Fifa, but I won more games than I
lost. And if you include the two road rides I did it all worked out about the same. In measurable terms, the effort was about the same.
I rode with friends in Cambridge (UK), and met new ones from Austria, Denmark and Tasmania on Boxing Day. But was it memorable in the way last year’s effort had been? Watching the numbers displayed on Zwift didn't inscribe anything meaningful: whereas as I remembered being battered by rain and hills, the reasons behind every route, Geraint Thomas zooming past me on Christmas Eve on his TT bike, and the dull fatigue in the evenings, this year’s memories were pretty vacant. In the words of Edward Relph, it was a kind of placeless Festive 500.
I rode with friends in Cambridge (UK), and met new ones from Austria, Denmark and Tasmania on Boxing Day. But was it memorable in the way last year’s effort had been? Watching the numbers displayed on Zwift didn't inscribe anything meaningful: whereas as I remembered being battered by rain and hills, the reasons behind every route, Geraint Thomas zooming past me on Christmas Eve on his TT bike, and the dull fatigue in the evenings, this year’s memories were pretty vacant. In the words of Edward Relph, it was a kind of placeless Festive 500.
The point at which I completed the 2015 Festive 500.
All wasn't lost:
there was another story told in feelings and intensities. Halfway through the
week I had a chance to go out on the road. In last year’s Festive 500, every
ride had to use at least 1 road I’d never ridden along before. This ride would be
similar: along the gravel road crossing Manmoel Mountain, between Oakdale and
Ebbw Vale. No wind, and warm winter light made the scenery spectacular: windy
lanes lined with dry-stone walls led to a bleak moor high above the valley
floor. In the distance, the familiar
shape of Pen-y-fan. Tarmac gave way to gravel, which gave way to a stoney
pot-holed mess, which gave way to a rear puncture on a short descent. I’d been
pushing it and a pinch puncture was inevitable. I could dream of a new gravel
bike with tubeless tyres. But if there can be such a thing, this was the best
puncture ever.
Puncture mended, time to enjoy the scenery.
It was a simple
repair in the kind of place you might want to repair punctures. I had planned to ride back the way I came,
but decided to return along the valley road. A mistake: sunlight was a stranger to the valley floor and frost lingered on the verges. In the cold I took a wrong
turn up a steep hill only to return back on to the main road 100 meters further down. But despite this, it was the best ride of the year, by far. I’d be
back as soon as possible.
Back so soon? A week later on the Manmoel Mountain, this time in ice
They say that targets inspire perverse behaviour. That challenges like the Festive 500 cause family ructions. Targets ossify the mind: don't be
innovative, don't stand out, just get the job done. But experiencing the extremes is important: it teaches you the value of the other. Getting the job done, whether inside or out might involve cycling, but it might not be cycling. Maybe its important to experience those extremes to teach us what's great about cycling. The virtual doesn't replace the real; it accentuates it. And maybe sometimes it might just be better to enjoy failing to meet a target than
meet it for the sake of it.
So, on the last day of the Festive 500, rather than stick to one of my usual training routes, in light rain I rode up through the woods and into the mist on the edge of Cardiff. These will be the rides I'll do more in 2017. That's what the Festive 500 taught me.
So, on the last day of the Festive 500, rather than stick to one of my usual training routes, in light rain I rode up through the woods and into the mist on the edge of Cardiff. These will be the rides I'll do more in 2017. That's what the Festive 500 taught me.
The misty woods: more of this in 2017.
All The Festive 500 Rides
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