Welcome to Our Life
“I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency,” William McRaven, a retired four-star admiral, wrote in an open letter to Trump in the Washington Post. “Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.”
Today I took an on demand hip-hop ride with Robin Arzon On Demand. I felt really sluggish during the warm up. My legs did not want to move. There were 63 other riders taking the ride. After the first few minutes things got better, legs warmed up, more resistance felt good. I noticed that I was four or five point of output behind the next person on the leaderboard. The next past her (30’s female) was another 8 higher. Cool, targets! That motivated me through the ride. Next up, 6 points ahead let’s get ‘em. As time went on most of the “riders” on the leader board had finished (there’s a progress circle that shows percentage completed). They were easy to surpass. There was a 20 year old and a 30 year old who held on for a while, then dropped back. However, this one 50 year old woman who had started after me was keeping pace ahead, though at a different point in the ride. After a while I hit a push, caught up, and passed her. As I passed riders who had finished, she dropped off the bottom of my limited leader board view. Minutes later, she climbed back, passed me, and dropped out of sight at the top of my limited leader board view. Aw Shucks. I kept plodding along (working hard) passing mostly finished riders and the occasional 30 something woman until Ms 50 yr old re-appeared atop the leader board. I was closing on her or at least there were no riders whose output was between mine and hers. I put it “in gear” and she did as well. A few minutes later she disappeared not to be seen again. I gave her a high five before she disappeared. (high five is a social gesture you can give by pushing on a rider’s leader board icon.) No high five back? Not uncommon.
What was surprising and a bit disappointing was my total output: 394 kj. I was pushing past “all these people” on the leader board and finished like #6 of 63, pretty good I thought. But my best 45 minute output (my PR) is 486! 92 more than on this ride, a 23% difference! Twenty Three Percent!?!
This is one reason tracking performance is a good idea. A ride’s output doesn’t lie. I felt like this was a very high performance ride and it was not. It’s far from my best. Am I disappointed? If I compared raw outputs I could be, but looking at the overall plots of my 45 minute rides, both the average output and overall output fall above the trend line. This was a better than average ride. No complaints here!
The power curve image at the top of the page compares today’s output against the best output for any and all rides in 2018 for a period of time. The example shows comparative output for a 28 minute 20 second window. My best output, 186 kj, was on August 3rd. Today’s 28:20 output was a measly 151 kj. Strava.com provides this breakdown and other statistics. I’ve setup Peloton.com to directly feed ride measurements to Strava.com. Strava.com directly feeds myvirtualmission.com to track cumulative mileage on virtual missions. Strave.com also feeds mPaceLine, a performance tracking app for smart phones. All these data intensive tracking applications take the guesswork out of athletic improvement over time. It’s pretty cool if you’re a data nerd.
I’m not going to post an article about this guy. Google him if you must.
Watching the news yesterday (I think it was yesterday), Chris Watts pled for his wife and children’s return. My skin crawled. I could see he was lying and mentioned that to Ellen. I was convinced he killed his wife and kids. His plea on the news was wooden. I don’t think I’ll typically pass judgment on anyone based on a few minutes conversation; even less so based on a TV clip. This instance was different. It felt wrong.
Today “breakingi news”, Chris Watts has been arrested for murder.
<I hate the phrase “breaking news”, how many times in a day does news “break”. Who wants yesterday’s news? Apparently we do, if it’s “breaking” >
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One of the greatest vocalists and an Icon of American culture dead at 76. So sad.
I’m feeling my own mortality.
According to the ranking, here are the best hospitals in California:
UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco (1)
UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles (2)
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles (3)
Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital in Stanford (4)
University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento (5)
Scripps La Jolla Hospitals in La Jolla (6)
Keck Hospital of USC in Los Angeles (7)
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach (8)
UC San Diego Health-Jacobs Medical Center in San Diego (9)
Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena (10)
UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange (11)
John Muir Health-Concord Medical Center in Concord (12)
Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo (12)
John Muir Health-Walnut Creek Medical Center in Walnut Creek (14)
MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach (14)
From: Patch.com
We arrived home around 3:30 PM Sunday and I had no desire to hop aboard our Peloton. We relaxed, pretty much did nothing, and retired early.
Monday I had planned to get the bug remains off our car and pick up our mail. It had been on hold for two weeks. However we settled into watching some of the programs our direcTV PVR recorded over the last two weeks. Monday was another lazy day. We picked a few tomatoes and strawberries and gobbled the strawberries. TV & fresh strawberries, a fantastic combination if you like strawberries. I did take a Jennifer Jacobs 30 min 70’s rock ride and I tore it up! But with our cycle’s calibration as hard as I pushed, I fell far short of my 30 minute personal best on Chanda’s Peloton: 277 kj “home”, 318 kj at chanda’s. That’s almost 15% difference!
Today, Tuesday, I took Jenn Sherman’s 45 minute 70’s Rock Ride “on demand”. There were 63 riders taking the class at the same time. “I’m going to take this class easy,” I thought. About five minutes into the ride, I noticed a guy in the 50-60 age group who was just ahead of me. Game On! Push a bit harder and I’ll zip right on by. There is one big problem with passing someone on the leader board. Once you pass someone, that someone will want to pass your back. A race ensues. Sometimes I’d open the gap, sometimes the gap would narrow. This was not the easy laid back ride I had planned. It was hard work maintaining a lead. Also displayed on the leader board is a rider’s personal best output that many minutes into a ride. I was working hard to maintain my lead with this 50 something rider. I noticed that the difference between my output on this ride and my best output at this point in a 45 minute ride was widening. I was beating Mr. 50 Something, but I was loosing to myself. With the ride over, I was ahead of Mr. 50 by 7 to 10 kj. It’s not much, but enough. However I lost to myself by a whopping 75 kj, 486 vs 411. That’s over 18%.
Now, because I set 30, 45, and 60 minute personal bests on Chanda’s “easy” Peloton, I will have to work long and hard to make up a 15% to 18% difference in output. I could recalibrate our Peloton, but that would render all my prior rides moot comparison wise. Instead I’ve chosen to segregate rides on Chanda’s cycle, keep them as a point of reference, but to track improvement on our Peloton separately. This way my performance plots will be consistent for our Peloton. I’ll use the personal bests from Chanda’s as a goal to work toward. There is hope. Last year all my rides on Chanda’s cycle were below today’s effort.
My progress is slow, but it is progress! Some days I take consecutive rides. The lower data points are undoubtedly from a third or fourth ride in sequence. It might be instructive to add rides at Chanda’s as an overlay with trend line. Spin classes differ significantly in structure. Some will emphasize hard pushes with long recovery others emphasize steady high output. This leads to massive variation in class total output and the scatter plot’s variation you see below.
