Robert's Northern Transcontinental bike ride 2018: Day 30: Trending now (wonkish)

Today's entry will review data from my bike computer for the all the riding days so far.

TMI? Travelog pics from today's ride follow below.

This graph looks at how much time we spent riding each day and compares it to how long & hard the stage was. The time spent is tracked both for "elapsed" time - from leaving one hotel to arriving at the next - and the "moving time" which doesn't count the SAG breaks, lunch and any other stops. The "elev 100s" amount (green) is the climbing feet divided by 100 so that its scale works with the distance (blue). The lighter straight lines are the trend lines.

What it is: The trend lines for elapsed time and moving time are parallel meaning we have not changed the amount of time we spend lallygagging around during the day as the tour has progressed. The trends also show that we've ridden longer hours as the tour has progressed, which corresponds to the increasing distances, duh. The time tracks the difficulty pretty well except day 17 into Mitchell SD which was easier than the day before in terms of climbing but was the second real high mileage day in a row. Recalling my perceptions, I thought the following day (18) was the hardest, but that was only the first chunk of the ride and the ending miles brought the overall day toward the norm as I described in the blog post.

Comparing the average speed for the day (orange) against the difficulty. This one shows the trend lines for the distance and elevation also.

What it is: Looking at the distance trend line (thin blue), you can see that the rides have gotten longer as the tour has progressed. The elevation trend (thin green) goes the other way - the first part of the ride had more climbing in general. The average speed trend tracks inversely with the elevation trend, which is what I'd expect. Longer distances don't seem to slow us down, so apparently we trained enough and haven't been exhausted.

This one looks at the average heartrate and average power information --- when my power was being measured. Power as you would expect is how hard you are pedaling. The thin lines show the trends:

What it is: The extra effort I made today is obvious (day 29 because the graph isn't showing the rest day when we didn't ride). The average heartrate numbers are amazingly low in those middle days when we were riding the flats. Heartrate can be down because I was tired, or it can be down because I was getting more fit. I think I'll choose the latter explanation! Which is justified from the trend lines where more power is generally being put out at lower heartrates.

Here is all the data that seemed interesting. The last column (max heartrate) shows how frisky I was feeling that day.

ending	day	distance	elev	elapsed	avg watts	work	avg speed	moving time	avg cadence	avg hr	max hr
cedro woolley	1	96	6114	08:04	168	3283	15.4	06:13	76	122	161
winthrop	2	128	8189	10:02	155	4640	14.7	08:42	74	118	147
couley	3	101	6428	07:49	162	3379	15.2	06:38	70	120	163
spokane	4	93	4301	06:50	152	2778	16.4	05:38	75	119	165
sand point	5	83	3148	06:28	153	2457	16.7	04:58	73	119	168
thompson falls	6	87	3303	06:16	154	2690	16.4	05:16	75	122	158
missoula	7	105	3476	07:28	156	2963	18.1	05:47	75	123	157
butte	8	134	6176	10:00	154	4329	15.9	08:27	71	118	143
bozeman	9	100	4369	08:00	158	3071	16.7	06:01	73	118	152
columbus	10	104	2286	06:27	133	2212	19.5	05:19	75	107	164
powell	11	110	5517	07:36	153	3142	17.3	06:21	73	119	160
sheridan	12	121	7571	09:02	157	3920	15.5	07:50	66	117	162
gillette	13	108	4581	07:58	155	3465	15.9	06:47	72	121	160
custer	14	115	4706	09:13	158	4276	14.6	07:51	70	121	160
rapid city	15	76	6588	07:09	166	2592	13.2	05:44	60	112	156
murdo	16	146	4087	09:30	154	3945	18.1	08:05	73	113	164
mitchell	17	144	3522	09:44	146	4150	16.8	08:35	77	110	140
worthington	18	135	3488	09:01			17.4	07:44	73	108	141
albert lea	19	118	2454	07:34			19.3	06:08	74	110	142
la crosse	20	140	3739	08:52			18.1	07:45	76	105	153
portage	21	126	5017	08:34			16.8	07:31	74	112	172
manitowoc	22	127	5183	09:12			16.5	07:42	71	105	152
midland	23	134	3594	08:59			17.5	07:37	75	118	165
imlay city	24	103	1984	07:13			18.7	05:30	76	108	144
london	25	139	1080	08:58	161	3971	18.9	07:20	77	121	161
niagara falls	26	136	3183	08:39	161	4163	17.8	07:38	76	118	157
seneca falls	27	136	4405	09:07	151	3821	17.6	07:43	76	110	150
little falls	28	123	9520	09:50	171	4314	15.2	08:06	66	120	157
bennington	29	110	6390	07:17	184	3872	17.1	06:26	74	125	167

OK, now for the pictures. Summary: beautiful country in eastern upstate NY - rolling hills, fun to ride, generally good roads and pavement, a bit too much traffic.

Morning mist in the distance: