So lately I've been really busy with cycling and everything around it and because Splinterlands is fun to play again, I'm on the PC more and for some reason I'm back in to posting more as well, hopefully this lasts! 😄

So last week, I had a financial break and with some money from other little breaks I was saving with for expensive cycling equipment (I had two on my wish list, a power meter and a radar tail light) I bought myself a power meter and it was even on sale at the moment I bought it 😍 still, it's crazy how expensive these things are but because my indoor trainer has a power meter I feel like it's a real added value to have it on my road bike as well.

I reckoned it would be a pain to install it because usually I have a setback or two with seemingly small jobs but probably because the bike is still very new, it was a 30 minute job.

I ordered a shimano crank tool a couple of months ago because the crank on my mountainbike kept falling off but since it's been to the bike shop for maintenance, it didn't happen anymore but I was now glad I had this tool to easily remove the strange hexagon like plastic cap that's in the center of the crank, loosening the two pinch bolts and getting the little plastic locking tool up was easy as well and with two gentle taps the crank came right off.

I was worried that there wouldn't be enough space between my frame and the back of the crank, because a crank with a power meter on it had a bulge on the backside, but there was space enough, connecting it with my Garmin Edge was easy as well and a little surprise for me: the power meter has a cadence sensor as well! 😊

It's not something I would have bought on it's own because when you spin enough rounds, you can pretty much estimate how much RPM your legs are doing, with power this is much harder to guess.

A quick lap around the house to see if everything transmits to my Garmin and to check if I've set the right screens up and it was done!

Hmmm... I guess I have to make some roadie banners now as well huh 😋

Different numbers!

A couple of hours and a 70 kilometer ride later, I have a lot of data to look at, the one thing I noticed immediately was it's easier to push more power outside than it is on my indoor trainer, I did a max effort but the dyke wasn't long enough for a full 20 minute FTP test, with 17 minutes of pushing myself, I arrived in the next town and I had to slow down again... 😆

From what I saw today my outside FTP should be somewhere around 240 watts.

The 'new' helmet

Because my daughters helmet was 5 years old, and it's better to replace it, especially as a mountainbiker, we crash a lot more 🤣 so I ordered a new Agu XC MTB helmet, I checked the sticker in the new helmet to find out it's FIVE years old. 😟

I bought the helmet directly from Agu and their first response to my complaint was they store helmets in a dark temperature controlled environment and aging only starts when it is used... YEAH MY ASS!

So I answered that some of the products used for helmets also age just because of time, and if they could confirm it's safe to use for another five years, my question is now being forwarded to their product team 😵

A present for my daughter

So, my daughter now knows for sure she wants to continue mountainbiking, the Merida we bought because with kids it's never certain if they like something is 11 years old and the front suspension isn't very good anymore so we had the plan to sell the Merida and get her a brand new bike, she has good taste too!

This is the new addition to our cycling family, a Sensa Livigno Evo Limited Comp. I had two demands, as must haves: disk brakes and a 1-by 12 speed groupset, nice to have was 29" wheels and the Sensa had it all.

On her first ride, testing out the bike I was riding in front of her not realizing this bike is a lot faster and she was actually able to keep up with me and she was only 15 to 20 seconds behind me, she got three top 5 all-time leaderboard spots, as a 13 year old girl again women of all ages 😮

The wind was perfect so that helped us as well, I was able to get to the first leaderboard position on a Garmin segment with the tailwind, going 35kph on a off-road piece of single track. 😄

Cycling ambassadors

So this Sunday, one of my daughters friends is coming with us to the local MTB Trail using the old Merida to see if she likes mountainbiking as well, she's a trained runner but untrained in cycling, the shortest route we can take including the trail is 29km which is pretty far for the first time, we'll just take it easy. 😅

So this is it for today, according to Garmin I need to rest for another 90 (!!) hours and I can feel my max effort attempt!