Power me up! I installed the PowerPod power meter yesterday afternoon for the first powerful bike ride today. With all of the sensors on my bike it may be a “techno-bike”. I selected the “Atascocita South – Walden – Huffman” route so I could ride into the 22 mph southeast wind and see some “big” watts number pop up on the Elemnt bike computer. Well I forgot to click the “on” button for the PowerPod and all I saw was 0 watts for the first half mile when I stopped and clicked the button several times until the green status light lit up. Now the watts were registering and all I needed to do was decide which screen to watch on the Elemnt. Later in the bike ride I added two data fields to the front page on the Elemnt to see the watts. For several rides I will probably be fixated on power.

The weather started off sunny as I began bicycling at 11:01 but as the ride progressed clouds moved in from the south. Wearing shorts and a short sleeve jersey I wasn’t overheating but maybe a long sleeve jersey would’ve been more comfortable. By the time I finished the ride at 1:41 the temperature moved from 77 at the start to 82 degrees. That strong wind meant the perspiration didn’t take long to evaporate either.

Other bikers were out too. My first one was riding west on the FM 1960 Lake Houston causeway as I rode east. Not too long after that the rider passed me on Old Atascocita Road. We waved and grimaced about the strong wind. He was down on his aero bars riding west while I went east. The last fellow cyclist was back on the FM 1960 Lake Houston causeway but opposite of the first one.

After finishing the ride I tried to import the ride data into SportTracks but an error message came up about a problem with a data field. I imported the Elemnt file into Golden Cheetah and then exported it in the .fitlog format to import it into SportTracks. This time the file imported but had the wrong start and finish time as if the time zone was off. I exported another file from Golden Cheetah using the Garmin .tcx format and the file imported with the correct time. The power readings show in SportTracks but I like the Golden Cheetah ride summary better.

Reading the power zone data I spent 79% of the ride time in “Active Recovery”. I think I need to lower that time and increase the other zones. Now that I have the power data I can make comparisons and changes.

I will probably have to make any changes on Monday with heavy rain forecast tomorrow (Sunday). I will need some recovery time too.

[iframe http://rwgps-embeds.com/trips/13691469/embed 80% 600px]

Link to Strava.com data and map.

Weather conditions at the start and finish of the bike ride.