Marching on ....

March 2017 has been and gone and on the whole it was a quality month of riding within the realms of time spent on the bike along with juggling everything else modern life requires as well as getting older. I turned 45. I clocked 30 recorded rides, 28.5 hours with a distance of 407 miles logged. Could be more, could be less and I realise mileage is half the story but always nice to put some solid numbers on the board early in the year. I threw in some fast rides, some slow recovery rides and some hilly stuff. Standard fodder and aside from hitting a spell of tiredness last week which I tempered with a light week on the bike (actually hardly rode the things) my weight, form and power are all going in the right way. It is now 1 stone (14 lbs or 6.35 kg) lost since week 2 Feb 17, the week I decided I had to shift some timber. You can notice it on the bike on punchy climbs standing in the big ring as well as looking at data on Garmin connect. The elusive 'form', a metric derived of fatigue minus fitness is info based on numbers and perhaps more so, feel. Last week I felt like the nail rather than the hammer, and a more pragmatic approach told me to actually not turn the pedals, put some compression socks on and recharge the internal batteries. The numbers reveal themselves with FTP (hopefully will see and increase soon) and PB's logged on Strava and just tonight I secured a couple of gold PB's riding home from work after a long Sunday.  This what you want; increased power, less effort, faster times and where possible, higher cadence. I now believe high cadence and power are the two holy grail's. Make them work together and you'll get there. Evidence below of increased capability, listed in the chart on the right. I pedalled no harder. It just happens, which is what we want with our bike riding. Formula One is based on tenths, cycling on seconds, recreational cyclists can look for minutes. 

In summary, onwards and upwards. Life is good I think. A decent week looms on the bike. Have some time off work and will manage to get a couple of decent shifts in with a very long one planned for the end of the week.