Good morning everyone! After my holiday, my pc time hasn't improved much so I'm not making a lot of posts at the moment, I don't even play as much on Splinterlands as I used to, it's because I had an extra training day since this week and wanted to get my first video made in Germany out, editing takes quite some time now I'm still learning how everything works, and because I shot A LOT of footage I first didn't know how I could cram this all in a good looking video with a good pace in it without it getting boring so viewers would swipe to the next video, but hey... probably no one is going to watch anyway. 🤣

If your're interested in seeing a cool German ancient castle, some gravel riding that turned in to a serious MTB climb that was too much for my skills 😁 and I ended up on the ground next to my bike, and my camera was running LOL... lessons learned, you don't get a second chance when riding off-road uphill so look ahead and plan your lines well. 🙂

Here is my new video!

This video has just been launched this morning and is accompanied by some shorts to hopefully get some exposure on YouTube.

For the first time since I started cycling, I didn't go out this week but that doesn't mean I've been lazy... it's just that I rather was testing out my new cycling toy in the attic and although the weather was pretty good this week with temperatures around 16 degrees and a lot of sun, the wind was really strong - not a problem when I didn't have an alternative but after a lot of off-road kilometers in Germany I figured I could give my bike some rest and the only activity I did with it was clean it.

One of the things I forgot to bring with me on my holiday was chain lube, so my chain REALLY needed some love because it was way too dry and dusty for my liking.

I've spent a couple of hours upgrading the upstairs training area, the laptop table was easy but making two power outlets, one for the Kickr and one to charge the laptop was more work, especially to make everything look nice, and it's needs to be safe as well of course.

Most of the work wasn't in just adding two power outlets because that's quite easy, the problem was there already was a light tube on the blue wall and I wanted to use that same power line but connecting new wires either meant making an ugly connection box which I didn't want to, so I used WAGO lever connectors but the old duct was too small to fit them inside it, so everything had to be redone with a slightly larger cable duct and fit three rather big connectors in the new duct.

Numbers! 🤗

I'm a nerd so I like numbers, and now my indoor trainer measures all these things on my ride I have even more nerdy stats to look at, Strava was always making an educated guess at the power of my MTB rides, putting an expensive power meter on a MTB in kinda useless I think but the Wahoo Kickr Core 2 has one built in, so I learned about the ERG Mode, what basically means the trainer just MAKES you ride at a certain power level, great for low intensity rides in which you can't cheat and put more power on the pedals.

This was a (rather boring) aerobic development 55 minute training schedule with mostly low power blocks of a couple of minutes each and a couple of higher powered short bursts in between, it's recommended to do a proper power test every 8 weeks to adjust these schedules and see whether you improved, I couldn't find the normal 20 minute FTP test so I went for the FTP Ramp Test... not knowing anything about it other than that every minute, I needed to put in more power 'until exhaustion'.. well that doesn't sound nice but let's go! 😅

But HOLY SHIT, ramp tests are no joke! I gave it my all in 35 minutes and I almost completed the whole set but I couldn't make the last two minutes, a 290 watts block and a 300 watts block. No idea what you experienced road bikers can put on the pedals but I recon after many years of training it's a lot more, for now, my FTP is 210 watts, at the time of writing this post it's a Sunday morning and I did the ramp test on a Thursday afternoon and I can still feel my upper legs and back. 😆

Pros and cons

So, from what I've experienced and learned so far, training indoors is more efficient. It definitely feels like a better workout than my MTB rides so I guess I have to look at both of them in a different way, from now on I can just have fun and ride to the trails in my area to get some dirt in my face and at least once a week I can put in a good training indoors.

Cons are definitely the lack of the outside environment, no stunning nature and blooming flowers to see and it's quite hot, even with one fan in from of me and one to my side there's just not as much ventilation as outside.

I think when this 'new experience' has faded, I will get back more outside again but it's nice to have options, especially when winter arrives again.

Cycling influencers: real inspiration or just pure posing?

I am not following a lot of cycling influencers, I'm not even sure there are any really famous ones. I follow the usual channels like GMBN and GCN, and a couple of English speaking smaller channels like Level Up Phil and Peter Treadway and a couple of female cyclists just because they look stunning in lycra. 🤣

Influencers for me are just entertainment and not inspirational at all, are they for any of you?

Also, are content creators and influencers the same thing here? For me they are just people creating cool content for me to watch and they are not in any way influence me in my own life.

Well.. my posts is just over a thousand words again so it's time to wrap it up, I just had breakfast as preparation for my next ride, today I can't even make an excuse to ride indoors, the weather is good enough.. there is rain forecasted for later today but not in the first half, my daughter isn't feeling well enough for a MTB ride but that doesn't mean I couldn't go out on my own.

So, why don't I?

I need more coins to buy this cool new bike 🤣 which will take about three more rides.

Tomorrow, a new event is launched which include three rides, the distance is quite easy but there's a lot more elevation than the bridges and dykes I'm used to in my own country.

I still need to log in to the game and see what I will ride today. 🙂