Training Peaks and Strava
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My primary software for managing training activities (cycling, running, soccer, yoga, gym) and hours is Training Peaks. However, Strava has some very cool features that I enjoy having access to so I store all of my cycling activity on that site as well as Training Peaks. I've embedded a few summaries on this page from Strava, where I previously (until 2020) used an alias, Lava Monkey, to give visitors a sense of my training over the most recent few days.
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Veloviewer: Designed and Delivered By Ben Lowe
The Strava app known as Veloviewer is an excellent resource for digging into 'the numbers' from rides uploaded to Strava. Ben Lowe, the brains and developer behind Veloviewer, has significantly increased the value of uploading data to Strava thanks to his clever and easy to use app. Below are Veloviewer annual summaries (infographics) of my Strava cycling activities since I began training and racing in 2013. Twenty-eighteen includes two winter training camps in Spain (Mallorca, Gran Canaria). I've also inserted 2011-12 infographics with some background so visitors can judge for themselves how much my cycling habits changed when I became an amateur racer in April 2013. My latest year on the bike surpassed my previous distance record by 3000 miles. A significant part of those miles were associated with my ambitious autumn, 2019 bicycle tour, Le Tour de Europe.
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When I was sixteen-and-a-half years old, I acquired my Massachusetts driver’s license. A few days later I purchased my first car, a three-speed, 1973, Ford Mustang. Although I was an avid bicycle commuter and explorer throughout my adolescent years, my cycling activities came to a screeching halt when I was handed that license to drive part-way through 1987. Twenty-three years passed before I purchased and climbed onto my next bicycle. By this time I was thirty-nine and had recently, November 2009, moved to Fort Collins to start a postdoctoral fellowship at Colorado State University. From November to March, in just a couple of months, I would become inspired to return to cycling by the community where everyone, it seems, rides a bike (and drinks locally crafted beer). Nonetheless, my initial trajectory, miles ridden, etc, was essentially a flat line with only a slight, barely perceptible, uphill curve until well into 2011. By then, I was beginning to lose my intimidation of rocks and steep descents. But more importantly, I was also discovering the secret that all cyclists know and cherish, cycling's ability to refocus the rider from their wandering, often negative, thoughts to a relatively clear and positive "now".
During this time, I watched the 2009 Race Across the Sky documentary about the Leadville 100 mountain bike race, the characters that it portrayed eventually inspired me to attempt my own 100 mile, mountain bike, adventures. First in the fall of 2011 and then again in 2012. I still recall the conclusion of the first near-100-mile attempt, hungry and severely dehydrated I collapsed onto a couch, more exhausted than I'd been before and probably since. For more details about what transpired in 2012 and 2013 click here to view an article I wrote for Integrative Physiotherapy where I recall My Road To Leadville.
Below are summaries of, my guess, most of my activities in 2011 and 2012. I wasn't as committed to recording rides in those days as I am now, but my appreciation for numbers and math probably kept me more - rather than less - consistently logging in those days. Sadly, it seems that despite recording in 2011-12, I was not in that habit at all in 2010 when I was almost exclusively a FoCo bicycle commuter. With these caveats in mind, the two panels below (2011-2012) provide a window into my cycling habits before I transitioned from recreational rider to amateur racer on 1 April 2013. At the conclusion of 2012, I'd apparently ridden about 920 miles. By the end of 2013, I'd increased that to 4,547 miles!
During this time, I watched the 2009 Race Across the Sky documentary about the Leadville 100 mountain bike race, the characters that it portrayed eventually inspired me to attempt my own 100 mile, mountain bike, adventures. First in the fall of 2011 and then again in 2012. I still recall the conclusion of the first near-100-mile attempt, hungry and severely dehydrated I collapsed onto a couch, more exhausted than I'd been before and probably since. For more details about what transpired in 2012 and 2013 click here to view an article I wrote for Integrative Physiotherapy where I recall My Road To Leadville.
Below are summaries of, my guess, most of my activities in 2011 and 2012. I wasn't as committed to recording rides in those days as I am now, but my appreciation for numbers and math probably kept me more - rather than less - consistently logging in those days. Sadly, it seems that despite recording in 2011-12, I was not in that habit at all in 2010 when I was almost exclusively a FoCo bicycle commuter. With these caveats in mind, the two panels below (2011-2012) provide a window into my cycling habits before I transitioned from recreational rider to amateur racer on 1 April 2013. At the conclusion of 2012, I'd apparently ridden about 920 miles. By the end of 2013, I'd increased that to 4,547 miles!
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