Wicklow 200 done and dusted

Raam

kenmc wrote: »

That seems quite low. I don't have my calorific calculation with me now, but I'd be sure it was substantially higher than that. I know I lost over a kg in body weight, despite eating and drinking a lot, and never bonking

My yoke said over 9,000cals. Can't be right surely?

Limestone1

Cadex wrote: »

Our stats: Distance 199.76, Cycle Time 08:20, Elapsed 11:25(!), Max 71.8, Ave 23.5, Calories 3636.5, Max Heart 178, Total climb 2538m.

And mine said over 10,000 calories ......it also only clocked 197.5 K - did your crash send you 2Km into the heather ???

blorg

Mine had clocked 6,022 when it ran out of batteries at the 130km mark (halfway up Slieve Maan) That would extend to around 9,000 for the whole run, maybe a bit less as much most of the climbing was done at that point.

But I would take that with a pinch of salt as computer calorie counters are notoriously variable. My own Garmin started reading very differently (better I imagine) after a firmware update made it take note of ascent/descent (previously I think it just worked on distance.) Obviously there are also significant factors it knows nothing about, like what the wind was like or where you were in a bunch or solo.

1kg = ~2lb = 7,000 calories which would sound about right.

Calorie consumption will depend a lot on the weight of the cyclist/bike combo (primarily the weight of the former ;-) Other variables also but this one makes a big difference. So different people will have very different readings.

Chips Lovell

Mine read 8,000+ calories. I always take these figures with a pinch of salt. I wouldn't see them as a definite indicator of what was really burned, but it is useful to compare them between rides to gauge the level of effort involved in each.

Cadex

Bloody Hell! I suppose there might be something wrong with the calculation. One thing that makes me laugh is that it is a basic unit and while it records the distance, speed etc. and has my age and weight, height etc., it has no idea of effort. Pulling my weight around 200k of flat, downhill or uphill, would probably all get the same result. To do a better jobs, it would need to record the effort, cadence, elevation I guess. 9000 calories or so, sounds just mad - maybe that was what I used though - God! AS for the crash, no it was grand really. Brian was fiddling with his water bottle when I said 'Hole' and he couldn't miss it. Found a nice bit of heather to land on so only pride dented! See you lads tomorrow, probably in Dundrum.

kenmc

mine quotes 9787 calories.
It depends on your weight, your heart rate and about 6billion other factors too. As ElTonto says it's probably an indication of relative effort than an absolute value

doozerie

dub_skav wrote:

What a bunch of athletes. Every photo I've seen of me reinforces sy's observation that I cycle with my knees out, really must work on that

Hungrycol wrote: »

That's your style and if it's comfortable for you don't change it. Conversely you'll see cyclists who's knees are nearly hitting the top tube on each stroke.

The frustratingly trickly thing is that even positions that may slowly be doing you damage over time can actually feel relatively comfortable. Especially if you start with a new sport where you have no past experience against which to compare your position and technique to figure out if they are correct (for you).

No one position will suit everyone, so you certainly have to find what suits your own body, but if a person's knees either stick out a lot or stick in a lot then I think they should analyse their position and pedaling style as much as possible to see whether these are having a long term detrimental impact on their body (ankles, knees, hips, back, etc.). Even if the position/style feels comfortable, that shouldn't eliminate concerns about possible damage.

So my view would be that the best approach is to try to moderate a riding style to be closer to having hips, knees, and feet in line with each other and work from that as the starting point. Over time you may find that you actually deviate towards a very different position (such as knees out) simply because it's what suits your body better, but I think taking this approach is safer that starting from a (relative) extreme.

As one example of what can happen if you cycle with your knees out, it can lead to the muscles on the outside of your thigh becoming stronger than those on the inner side and this can lead to your kneecap being effectively pulled out of alignment over time. Left without treatment this can result in damage to the inner face of the kneecap (you can basically wear a groove in it) which could be difficult to repair. I ended up on this path within a few months of adopting a knees-out riding style - I had spent the previous 2 years spending a lot of time on bikes, both off-road and on-road, with no knee problems whatsoever, then stupidly got into the habit of riding with my knees out (don't know why, possibly 'cos I was stupid, possibly 'cos I picked up the habit from other sports I was doing at the time which sort of amounts to the same thing!). I never realised the danger until I was already at the point of having knee problems but thankfully a physio diagnosed the problem and I made a full recovery pretty quickly.

There are many guides available which suggest "safe"/good riding styles. There are probably quite a few available on-line and many more available in cycling-specific books and magazines. None of them can ever be definitive, but at least they can offer advice (and identify the risks associated with variations of the suggested positions/styles), so they may be worth looking at.

irishmotorist

I'm not sure if anybody has seen this or posted it separately, but the official times of the WW200 have gone up...

http://www.wicklow200.ie/2008/2008times.shtml

kenmc

it'd be nice if they showed the splits, or at least identified the 100 vs 200 riders, just so you have a way of comparing times like for like.

dub_skav

Bah no times for me there, not even a check in. Lousy good for nothings

cantalach

kenmc wrote: »

it'd be nice if they showed the splits, or at least identified the 100 vs 200 riders, just so you have a way of comparing times like for like.

I was just about to post the same comment. Not separating the 100 people from the 200 is just daft. They could easily have determined this by looking to see if a Donard split time was recorded against the card (what on earth was the point of scanning at Donard otherwise?).

But it's probably not surprising really. As I said in an earlier post in this thread, the best thing about the W200 is the course - the organisation is pretty poor.

kenmc

dub_skav wrote: »

Bah no times for me there, not even a check in. Lousy good for nothings

Huh how did that happen? You got a cert, right? so you must have check in at the end, at the very least! Email them....somethings not right.

blorg

1725 got around in minus two minutes. That's pretty good going!

blorg

kenmc wrote: »

it'd be nice if they showed the splits, or at least identified the 100 vs 200 riders, just so you have a way of comparing times like for like.

They may yet do this; they did previous years.

EDIT: Indeed, posted by "Admin" on the W200 forum:

We hope to have the intermediate times on the website in the next few days.

dub_skav

kenmc wrote: »

Huh how did that happen? You got a cert, right? so you must have check in at the end, at the very least! Email them....somethings not right.

I was checked in at all points, saw my name come up at the end and everything. I'll email them so.

Bambaata

i want some of those energy bars that he/she is obviously on!! back to the future bars they must be

Raam

kenmc wrote: »

it'd be nice if they showed the splits, or at least identified the 100 vs 200 riders, just so you have a way of comparing times like for like.

They really need an "in" and "out" time for the checkpoints. Take those splits with a pinch of salt as they don't reflect riding time. However, it is interesting to see how late people were out: 20.45 is the latest I've spotted so far.

dub_skav

Raam wrote: »

They really need an "in" and "out" time for the checkpoints. Take those splits with a pinch of salt as they don't reflect riding time. However, it is interesting to see how late people were out: 20.45 is the latest I've spotted so far.

Wouldn't have fancied this long a day in the saddle:

1068 08/06/2008 07:54:24 1068 08/06/2008 21:12:24

kenmc

The longest is this though!
1399 06:02:35 1399 20:47:41 = 14:45:06
Do they still get a cert? They were over the "allowed" 14 hours! Hope they were doing the 200, cos they could have *almost* jogged the 100 in that!

kenmc

Raam wrote: »

They really need an "in" and "out" time for the checkpoints. Take those splits with a pinch of salt as they don't reflect riding time. However, it is interesting to see how late people were out: 20.45 is the latest I've spotted so far.

I wasn't looking to use the splits as anything other than identifying those who cycled 200. Bar of course the girl who got lost and ended up in Donard on the 100 route

daymobrew

kenmc wrote: »

it'd be nice if they showed the splits, or at least identified the 100 vs 200 riders, just so you have a way of comparing times like for like.

Download the Excel file and do a subtraction (end - start time) and then sort.

kenmc

Already done that, but all it can tell me is that of those who swiped at the start and the end, I finished 672nd, since the fast 200s will almost certainly overlap with the slow 100s..... can't tell me how I did relative to the fastest 200s.

daymobrew

kenmc wrote: »

Already done that, but all it can tell me is that of those who swiped at the start and the end, I finished 672nd, since the fast 200s will almost certainly overlap with the slow 100s..... can't tell me how I did relative to the fastest 200s.

True, it cannot tell you that.
Attached is the data anyway (sorted, fastest to slowest Excel file, and perl script used to extract times).

irishmotorist

Daymo....I think your times might be an hour out. I did a subtraction on the cells and counted with my fingers to be sure and got 1 hour less for my time anyway

cantalach

daymobrew wrote: »

True, it cannot tell you that.
Attached is the data anyway (sorted, fastest to slowest Excel file, and perl script used to extract times).

Your calculated times are exactly one hour longer than they should be. How come you went to the trouble of using Perl? You can just get Excel to subtract the dates (column E = D - and then format column E so that only the time part is shown. See attached (I've dropped any rows where either a start or finish time was missing, and then sorted the whole thing by total time).

kenmc

cantalach wrote: »

How come you went to the trouble of using Perl?

using a hammer to drive a screw

irishmotorist

cantalach wrote: »

How come you went to the trouble of using Perl?

Sure, why climb a small mountain when you can climb a big one

daymobrew

cantalach wrote: »

Your calculated times are exactly one hour longer than they should be. How come you went to the trouble of using Perl? You can just get Excel to subtract the dates (column E = D - and then format column E so that only the time part is shown.

I only have OpenOffice and when I imported the xls file into OO and tried to do the subtraction I got zero. I tried setting the column types, deleting the dates and other stuff but no luck. So I exported to text/csv, used a standard perl module to convert the times to seconds, did subtraction and then converted to hh:mm:ss. I should have reviewed the results. Grrr.
Edit- I downloaded the corrected Excel file and I just see "12:00:00 AM" for the time taken column. I should forward that to the OpenOffice developers as a bug.

kenmc/irishmotorist - careful now :cool:

kenmc

you need to strip out the dates, that's all constant anyway, then format the 2 columns B and D as Time in the hh:mm:ss format, then you can subtract them correctly (just tried it in OO.o2.1)

kincsem

Someone made the point on the Wicklow 200 site (why do they never say Wicklow 100?) that it is pointless queuing in Donard and Rathdrum to swipe your card if the times are not published.

In Donard as I waited in line to get my card swiped the official / helper told the cyclist in front of me that he was not swiping / reading his card because it was sweaty.

It is an amateur event, but why is it amateur and inept?