This is a very complex and dense spreadsheet format I came up with to compactly represent a short form of my ride training log in a form that works for me. It probably is not that clear to anyone else, sorry! That said:
Everything to the left of the darker vertical line is ride data per day. Everything to the right of that line is summary data. For the rides before the break (2008) the number in the cell is miles ridden. For the rides after the break (2020) the number in the cell is minutes ridden. Thus, these two numbers are completely non-comparable. For those daily cells, the color code indicates the ride type: Yellow is my weekly long ride. Blue is a "Pace" ride. Green is an easy ride. Red is an intense ride, e.g. intervals. In the summary column "Total Min." (the total of the minutes ridden that week) a Yellow color indicates I have met or exceeded the Medical Community's ideal recommendation of 300 minutes of aerobic exercise per week, a Green color indicates I have reached their minimal recommendation of 150 to 300 minutes per week. The summary column "ave min/wk" is the same except that it is a running average over the previous year.
As I have previously blogged, I stopped cycling some time around 1979 not to resume it until August 1, 2008 when I rode my newly renovated Bianchi Specialissima 5 miles home from the bike shop. Being the person I am, the first thing I did after catching my breath was to create a spreadsheet to capture the data on that and all future rides for me and my wife. That first spreadsheet looked like this:
(DLS Miles and DLS MPH are for me, David Lloyd Steffen, AS Miles and AS MPH are the same for my wife, Agi Schönbrunn).
Over time, two things happened:
- I wanted a denser format, one to make it easier to see trends over longer time. I came up with the format shown at the top of the post. Currently, I have select data from every ride I have ever taken in that spreadsheet, from August 1, 2008 through today.
- I wanted to capture more information and comments than could be kept in a spreadsheet so came up with the following long, text format:
Monday, 2020-10-19
BP, HR, Weight: 136/92; 67 bpm; 172.8 lbs.Ride time: 10:00am-1:00pm
Temperature/Humidity/Wind: Before, 64/66/2. After, 76/50/8
Subjective Weather: Clear, Pleasant
Dress: Helmet & Liner, Short Sleeve Jersey, Adventure Cycling Shorts & Briefs,
Sunglasses, Cycling Gloves, Wool Socks & Cycling Shoes.
Clothing Appropriateness: Good.
Ride location: New Alpine-Cañada
Plan: Long Ride
Bike: BV
Ave Speed: 12.8
Distance: 33 mi
Climbing: 1700 ft
Duration: 155 min
Subjective Fatigue: Felt strong. Enthusiasm low before start, moderate during.
Mood: :-|
Comments: Complicated week so I get in rides where I can. Scouting ride. Can I make
this easy ride easier by taking the direct path to the lake and then Jefferson
home?
Current Plan: Discover my new rhythm.
Yes, than really means I was entering data three times. I continued to do that until my wife died in 2017, at which point I dropped the middle format, the first spreadsheet I had developed, and went down from triple entry to double.
Am I insane? I don't think so, or at least I think I am managing this particular insanity effectively. I usually enjoy cycling very much, but I always enjoy recording data about cycling. When I would finish triple entering my data, I would feel a sense of loss that the fun of recording my ride was over. Other than that, is there any value to this (multi-part) log? Many coaches advise keeping a training log to help monitor progress and to head off overtraining, and I have found my log to satisfy that function quite nicely. The weather and clothing fields have also been useful to help me decide what to wear on a ride based on Google's weather prediction for the day. When I have wanted to summarize my riding for this blog, my Training Log(s) have been invaluable.
Is that all there is? I'm afraid not. Before I retired, I was Director of Biomedical Informatics for the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center, which means I used computers and wrote programs to help the Center do its cancer research. I truly love coding, and missed it when I retired. As I developed the long text form of my training log, I had in mind that this should all be in a computer database, so developed and used that form in a way to facilitate uploading it into such a database. An early version of this database now exists containing every bit of data for every ride I have ever done. Does this mean I am doing triple data entry again? It does not. Because of how I use the long text database, I can upload that into the database and avoid reentry. Will the computer version of the database replace the text version? In theory in could, but in practice not a chance, it is just a hobby to keep an old retiree amused. It is possible when I am creating summaries of my rides, for a blog post for example, the database might come in handy, but developing a data entry front end to replace my text file will probably only happen in The World To Come.
How does this all work? The way I log my rides has stabilized since my move to California, and this is how it goes: When I get up the morning before a ride, I weigh myself and measure my blood pressure and (resting) heart rate. Just before I leave, I record the weather. When I start my ride, I turn on Strava on my cell phone. When I get home, I again record the weather and also the data from Strava. To minimize boring data entry, I copy a previous entry from the text log and change only those parts that changed for the current ride. I then (double) enter a few select data elements into the summary spreadsheet. Every so often, I update the database. The way the database works is that any missing "fields" (things like Distance: or Climbing:) are entered as blanks in the database, I only need to record fields relevant to the specific ride. That changes, especially over time. Back in Houston, my routine use of a heart rate monitor and availability of the dead-flat, zero traffic Rice Track allowed me to capture data that I can no longer capture here in California, so that fields for those data are not present in my current text file but because that data was recorded in those Rice Track rides, those fields are in the database. I think as good a way as any to end this obsessive-compulsive post is to list those fields:
General Text Comments:
Bike Ridden
Ride Type (Long Ride, Fast ride, Easy Ride, ...)
Plan for this Training Period
Ride Location
Other Comments
Health and Wellbeing:
Blood Pressure
Resting Heart Rate
Weight
General Health
Mood
How Tired Did I Feel?
Weather:
Temperature at the Start of the Ride
Humidity at the Start of the Ride
Wind Speed at the Start of the Ride
Temperature at the End of the Ride
Humidity at the End of the Ride
Wind Speed at the End of the Ride
How did the Weather Feel, Subjectively?
Time of Day when Ride Started
Time of Day when Ride Ended
Clothing Worn
Clothing Appropriateness
Data Returned by Strava:
Average Speed
Total Feet of Climbing
Total Miles
Total Time of Ride
Data Only Returned by Bike Computer:
Average Cadence
Average Heart Rate
Rice Track/MAF Test Specific:
Gears
Decoupling
Ability to Control Heart Rate
Maximum Heart Rate
Minutes in Zone 1
Minutes in Zone 2
Minutes in Zone 3
Minutes in Zone 4
Minutes in Zone 5
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