St George Smog

Beauty day today. Ticked off 61 miles with 55 miles of that on single-track. Fabby. High of 48F. Nice and calm after yesterday's silly windy day.

This winter is the first time I have noticed a smog cloud hanging over the St George valley. Progress, growth and development I guess.

Looking westward away from St George. Gorgeous deep blue sky today.

Looking east at the smog haze over the city.

 

I rode the same trail today as I did last week - both times with the Ergomo clocking the data. Tomorrow I'll spend some time looking at the files side-by-side to get more of a handle on how repeatable the Ergomo data recording is off-road. At first glance it looks pretty solid.

I made quite a few suspension changes to the bike between rides - added 20 psi to the rear shock, took 10 psi out of the SID negative chamber and added 10 psi to the positive chamber. The bike felt much better today and I was able to ride some of the techy climbs and drops I was flubbing around on last week. So I was more efficient this week. The Ergomo recorded 354 TSS last week and 334 TSS this week. I did miss out a 1.5 mile section of jeep road this week. I'll have to pick out of the file if I was more efficient this week or is the Ergomo wavering.

The Ergomo altitude recording is wishy-washy. With the same settings it recorded I was riding at different elevations and accumulated a different amount of elevation gain over the ride. It is kinda cool to look at the elevation graph profile and it does help me pinpoint where I was on the trail when looking at the power file.

Published Monday, January 22, 2007 9:49 PM by Lynda

Comments

# @ Tuesday, January 23, 2007 8:29 AM

You didn't mention it in the blog...but I happen to know you also did the loop a lot faster yesterday :) Here's something to consider: for a given loop, the ride with the fastest time (less time) should have the highest TSS. Speed comes at a cost (try this sometime to prove it to yourself - but it takes a very consistent PM to dial it in, ala my PT files from OP last year). Now it could be that your shock settings made a bit of difference, only can say how terrain would have been affected by that. But - unless that 1.5 mile section missed was good for 35+ TSS, those numbers sound off.

Dave

# @ Wednesday, January 24, 2007 11:15 AM

Love the mp3 setup!

Dave
Are you sure that's always true? Suppose there are 10 downhills on the loop and suppose with a much better feel to the suspension she can knock off 30 seconds easily on each one. That's 5 mintues faster and if she just coasted/bombed down there's no extra effort. How would that get ya a higher TSS? I don't think speed would come at an extra cost in that scenario.

mp3

# @ Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:03 PM

Mario - it's usually true. There can be extenuating circumstances, like one day might be super windy or muddy hence changing the power requirements. It sounds like she was more efficient with a stiffer setup, but I don't have a clue how much of the terrain she covered would have been affected by that. It would have to have been a lot to swing the balance...

Usually when times improve on a set course, it's not all done on the downhill - improvements happen across the board. It's the higher power on the pedalling sections that gets the higher TSS for less time.

Dave

# @ Monday, January 29, 2007 11:38 AM

Wow...what a different view from when I was living in Vegas and riding with you! I don't ever remember seeing smog back then. As you said...progess...

sounds like fun riding either way!! :)


Mark

Markfaz