Luddite narcissist.

I'm a modern day luddite in the world of triathlon, I guess..........eschewing gadgetry, but you're confusing me. Are "they" the narcissists? Needing constant reminders of how awesome they are?

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Thanks to Euro-Sports for my H3Cs.

http://www.euro-sports.ca

No, I just troll effin HARD when I do.

Gotcha, post with caps is a little douchey............will edit.

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Thanks to Euro-Sports for my H3Cs.

http://www.euro-sports.ca

lots of people do, i use it in the winter more but this time of year I like to ride and run in the woods, so it's kind of irrelevant. I have been using the GPS when I flatwater kayak, it;s pretty cool being able to do measured intervals on the water and see my speed and heart rate in real time, I find that pretty interesting.

On days when I use a gadget I'm hardly some sort of slave, nor am I a soul rider when I head out with just a watch with hands for company. It really doesn't matter much one way or the other, just get te work done and enjoy the experience.

I train with no gadgets. My bike does not have a computer on it. I also train 20-ish hours per week during IM season. I do wear a Garmin during IMs and standalone marathons. This is mostly to help know when to eat what. The distance/pace is a good feedback on how I'm doing during the race, but I don't chase pace. I let my body tell me what pace is a good pace.

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My marathon PR is "under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."

If you train without power on the bike then you had better be riding a shitty ass bike or else your money would be better spent on a power meter. Unless you don't care at all about getting better in which case why would you even be reading this forum to begin with. It isn't about being a slave to the power meter, it is about gauging progress on the bike which, without a power meter, is damned near impossible.

WOW!!!

Andrew,I use the powermeter once per week. Maybe twice.

Other than that, biking is all by feel. I use an analog wrist watch to know how long I ran. That's about it. When I go to the pool I never time any sets. I just swim as hard as I can doing "fartlek" in the pool because I go to public swim and I can't time anything without me getting in someone's way or they getting in my way. Once you have been doing these sports long enough measuring every workout gets old. In the winter I measure too many runs because I am on the treadmill and after a while I feel every workout turns into a race against myself with numbers staring me in the face. It stops becoming fun. In the winter I ride the Computrainer once per week to numbers. Other than that on a spin bike in my basement, or on XC skis again not able to measure any output.

Congrats on winning 45-49 at Tremblant 70.3. I think you were in the top 5 age groupers overall?

That's the thing, while I believe that in most cases, I\m not sure its true. If you ride the same routes, over a number of years, and numerous types of weather, wind etc, I think a trained athlete knows where they are fitness wise. I ride a really nice bike but after that, am tapped out. you are sort of suggesting a shitty ass bike w power meter, trumps a nice bike with lots of training.

I log everything I do and can flip back multiple years to see how I rode the same loop, at the same time of year, then compare weather conditions.

I think Perceived Exertion, compared with time based results, might be seriously under utilized.

I get the GPS for non measurable stuff like swimming, kayaking etc. but for running/biking, if I ride/run for x amount of time, I can tell you, base on PE, very accurately, how far I've gone.

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Thanks to Euro-Sports for my H3Cs.

http://www.euro-sports.ca

Tks Dev, this thread might be more aptly titled for older athletes only............!!!

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Thanks to Euro-Sports for my H3Cs.

http://www.euro-sports.ca

Poor Eddy, Jacques, Laurent, Miguel... those guys must have a damned near impossible time knowing if they got better.

Hey Andrew, in fairness, i can ride the Gats loop 90K door to door from my house and some days at 180W average it will be 2:50, other days 3:00, other days 3:05. The wind and temp and clothing can make a dramatic difference. But you are right, I could put the powermeter away and if I do 2:50 on a cold day with a ton of winter riding clothing the perceived exertion will be very high....because chances are I am having to do 210W for the same ride.....so yes, I suppose just knowing the time of the loop and perceived exertion generally gives us a good picture. Certainly for runs it gives almost the entire picture. I also do a P8 to Champlain lookout TT.....in the last 3 years my wattage on that is 255 on an average day and 260 on a good day. My times range from 21:30 to 21:10. I could put my powermeter away and pretty well look at the time and know what watts I did. Here is an interesting data point. I did a hill climb outside my company west coast office in San Jose in 14.xx in 260W. Then I said the next day I am going to do it at 280W and that should get me to sub 13:30. I did 13:29 and was 281W. I just went to my redline and that's the number I ended up recording. It's not like I was chasing a number on the screen, I just did what my body allowed me to do via perceived exertion and the split time and wattage were exactly my predicted number. Before IM Texas this Apriil when I had some bike problems, I did 4 IM's in a row at exactly the same wattage 182W....IM Texas 2014, IM Whistler, IM Tremblant, IM South Africa. After a while your body does what your body will do. In 5 trips to 70.3 Tremblant, I ran 1:40 4x and 1:38 once. Again, all kinds of different training, states of rest/taper etc, but the human body is pretty amazing in terms of how consistent it is for a given perceived exertion. You'd swear no one knew how to do sport without GPS and Powermeters and yes, I own all the gadgets, but I am more fascinated by human physiology and how the brain can so consistently control all this.

So that's the rule now... No powermeter, no nice bike??? Now, I feel bad.

You conducted a double blind experiment on all this?

Why would you use a metric that more prone to error and inaccuracy? Human perception is terrible, as evidenced by the inability of drivers to assess closing speed of bikes. Saying people there are too many people who are slaves to power is like saying that people are who vehemently opposed to power are just afraid of being objectively measured.

Amazing experiment design; clearly, you're not just experiencing confirmation bias. I'm fascinated by how delusional people are about their own rationality and level of perception.

I like exams, I like pressure, I like racing, I like that things in my professional life are very quantified, measured and performance oriented on a daily basis....but because I know that, about myself and that I can't take it easy when being measured, or might overdo it, it is often simpler to train without too many metrics.

...and there is nothing wrong with not liking to be measured in some aspects of life. After all, sport for most people is recreation.

Yes, it is simpler, easier, and less stringent. There is something inherently wrong with not liking to be measured in some aspect of life; it's a refusal to maximize accountability and optimization. I understand the need to relax and not feel stressed, but it is sub-optimal, compared to the ability to maintain a constant intensity.

Congratulations on your speed and your ability to train without technological aids. ( You seem to be seeking positive affirmation. :) )

You can believe what you want and discredit perceived exertion. I just have way too many results to back up that perceived exertion works for me. In a different sport where there are no meters, I have also raced a 100K XC ski race, and done each 25K lap in exactly 1:30 for a 6 hour day....raced sub 2:50 marathon with no watch and ended up seeing 1:23/1:25 on the results sheet. Call it what you want, but at some point the measurement devices just become redundant to what you already feel through perceived exertion. Some people are just bad at figuring it out.

Dave Scott and Mark Allen figured out how to go sub 8:10 in Kona. If you watch the video you see how easy they were running on Alii Drive. They just knew what their bodies could sustain. How did Paul Newby Fraser know what pace to go do pull off sub 9 races? Same with Sue Latshaw. Same for that matter with Chrissie Wellington and Natasha Badmann...or Stadler's 4:18 bike at Kona 2006?

LMFAO!

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“Bloom wherever you are planted"

Chrissie Wellington won with poor equipment choices; is that also an argument against aerodynamics? If you were asked to randomly produce intervals of certain power outputs, could you do it solely by PE? The question is not whether there is convergence in the long run, but if you can measure your output accurately in shorter intervals. Did you bike those IMs at the same exact NP? Can we trust your recollection of the events in question? Did you do other IMs at different wattages?

I mean, my walking pace is nearly always the same. Is that because I'm amazing at perceiving my PE or just because I'm lulled into a habit?

You are assuming that an athlete cannot maintain a constant intensity/output without a meter. We could debate that a good athlete can simply sustain a certain effort and tell you what the pool split time is, a track split time or a power number simply based on their internal gauge and this has been proven by many athletes time and time again. They just get it right. The OP is a good example of an athlete who can tell you what his pace is based on the effort. I can do it at the track and the pool and if I get on the same course and dial up the effort on the bike I can tell you what my time will be for a given set of conditions fairly closely. This is what Andrew is getting at. It is not impossible.

...and I don't think there is anything wrong with doing sport but not wanting to do it totally optimized for race results. Some people don't get that others just get a kick out of today's workout and while doing it they have fun and maybe that workout is not optimal for race results, but they only race because they have fun in training. For me chasing numbers be it splits or otherwise is fun in some context, not so much fun in others. We have NASDAQ deciding what metrics really matter for my professional life, so what comes out of my Quarq while fun is secondary to the almighty shareholder who is basically measuring our performance daily (or at least everything that rolls up to the end of the next quarter's earnings)

I don't always train with gadgets, but when I do it's Dos XX

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“Bloom wherever you are planted"