Yesterday I forgot to wear my heart rate strap around my chest and about a third of the way into a 60k ride I noticed how good I felt. I checked my Garmin and noticed I had no heart rate monitor. I panicked at first because I was terrified my Strava fitness assistant wouldn’t work without it. (I was wrong.) By the end of the ride I had decided to put the wattage pedals back on and stop wearing a heart rate strap. The main motivator was getting free of that annoying strap around my chest all the time. I hate it. (How to women live wearing something like that every day.)
I came home and looked up my stats on Strava and sure enough, no “relative effort” numbers or fitness credit. Then I realized that adding “perceived exertion” by hand actually populates those same numbers, that’s right, without a heart rate monitor. That was the nail in heart rate monitor coffin. No more suffering with that torture device.
Also on that ride I noticed that I missed seeing just how much power I was putting out going up those several steep hills on my normal route. It’s just so fun to look at power output during those times. It also give people watching videos a sense of how hard something is at a particular point when they are planning their own rides or trying to match your workout while watching a rerun on YouTube or something. I realized that I really did miss something that measured immediately the total strain on my body instead of heart rate. While I think heart rate is a better indicator to stay in “zone 2” than wattage—especially for older people for whom none of the zone models really hold up—I do think having a more instantaneous measure of exertion is crucial.
Another concern about wattage is those damn painful shoes. I hate shoes in general. I’m a barefoot or sandals guy. That was the main reason for going to flats instead of SPD. So I bought some SPD sandals that are highly rated from Shimano because I never want to force my feet into a super tight shoe with tons of hotspots again. Cycling shoes are their own type of torture device, and I don’t ride my bike to be tortured. I ride it to relax and stay fit. My “serious” days of wearing stupid Lycra are over (which is funnier if you know my history with the stuff since I was 16). Give me cotton baby and some nice comfy (albeit stretchy) cargo shorts made for gravel cycling.
I must confess, I cannot stop laughing at people wearing serious Lycra now—especially those who are clearly significantly overweight. It’s not judgement (even though statistically people dressed silly like them are the least likely to return my polite wave on the road). I just cannot stop asking myself, “Why the fuck would you do that to yourself?!” It’s not like they need an aero advantage. Hell, they won’t need to get aero for a year or two after they’ve lost all that weight slowing them down way more than the air molecules. And it certainly isn’t more comfortable to ride wearing that shit. And why the fuck would you shave your legs every other day if you didn’t actually need to (i.e. are likely to fall and need to clean the wound or are planning on a daily massage). Shaved legs do feel amazing in the wind, I’ll admit that. Just the time it takes to put on a kit like that is ludicrous compared to regular clothes. Again, any cyclist who goes outside is an absolute hero in my book, even the ones who won’t wave back. I am so glad I finally came to these realizations again, one way or another. I’m a happier person because of it.
I went through this exact same cycle when I was a serious triathlete in the 90s. At first I needed something to keep me honest, then I started living by what was on my Polar and forgetting to be present in the event or workout, then I said, “to hell with it” threw out all the tech and PRed on all my favorite events. I started listening to my body instead of the tech. About that time someone invented the “perceived exertion” thing and a huge number of athletes trained only by the feel of the workout. Now it had a name. Some of the top pros in all endurance events still swear by “how do I feel” like some hippy/yoga nut. Then they smash records and people take notice. A lot of them won’t let a bike computer anywhere near their bike—especially during events. I get why that is.