Paris-Brest-Paris southern style data analysis

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One of the lessons that I learned the hard way during RAAM is that it really doesn’t matter how much power you can put out on the bike. It doesn’t matter how long you can sustain a Zone 5 heartrate. It doesn’t even matter a great deal how fast you ride your bike. The only questions that matter are how long can you stay on the bike and how short can you make your stops? So the first data I wanted to look at from my 756 mile ride to Clemson and back over the weekend is my stoppage time. Here’s a quick summary of stats:

Total distance 755.8 miles (1/4 of RAAM)
Total climbing 57,834 feet (Over 1/3rd of RAAM)
Elapsed time 70h, 37min (2 days 22h, 37 min) 10.7 mph
Moving time 52h, 01min (2 days 4h, 1 min) 14.5 mph
Total stoppage 18h, 36 min
Total stoppage not including hotel 9h, 9 min

Annotated view of my stops on the way to Clemson.  Click to enlarge and see detail.Annotated view of my stops on the way to Clemson. Click to enlarge and see detail.

Stops on the way to Clemson:

Stop Distance Stoppage Elapsed Time Time of Day
Shocco Springs (clothes) 57.8 0:08:28 3:36:00 3/25/16 22:09
Cheaha Tower (photos) 84.6 0:03:42 5:46:30 3/26/16 0:19
Cheaha Vending Machine (clothes) 85.9 0:13:23 6:02:00 3/26/16 0:35
Dallas Gas Station (food) 170.8 0:10:11 11:27:48 3/26/16 6:00
Kennesaw Columns (clothes) 188.4 0:02:53 12:42:53 3/26/16 7:15
Canton Rd Gas Station (food) 196.8 0:03:54 13:17:14 3/26/16 7:50
Dahlonega Dunkin Donuts (food) 252.7 0:38:54 17:01:26 3/26/16 11:34
Brasstown Bald (clothes) 292.7 0:11:10 21:30:43 3/26/16 16:03
US76-bottom of first climb (clothes) 305.9 0:03:39 22:52:30 3/26/16 17:25
US76-top of last climb (clothes) 317.5 0:03:32 23:53:02 3/26/16 18:26
Clayton Waffle House (food) 328.6 0:52:04 24:41:25 3/26/16 19:14
Clemson Holiday Inn Express (sleep) 377.8 29:14:04 3/26/16 23:47
Summary – 11 stops, Average distance between stops: 34.3 miles, Average time between stops: 2 hr, 40 min, Average stop duration: 17min, 44sec. Notes: it rained a bit in North Georgia, but it was dry for all of Alabama and South Carolina and most of Georgia. There was still some pretty big temperature swings, hence all the clothing stops – especially Brasstown Bald and US-76 where it went from hot and dry to raining and cold twice in short succession.

Annotated view of my stops on the way back home from Clemson.  Click to enlarge and see detail.Annotated view of my stops on the way back home from Clemson. Click to enlarge and see detail.

Stops on the way back home to Alabama:

Stop Distance Stoppage Elapsed Time Time of Day
Gravel road currahee (clothing) 51.3 0:03:34 3:22:14 3/27/16 12:35
Dunagan Chapel (rain-clothing) 83.7 0:05:26 5:36:25 3/27/16 14:49
Rabittown Café (food) 88 0:18:28 6:01:03 3/27/16 15:14
Old Alabama Rd (clothing) 135 0:02:37 9:22:00 3/27/16 18:35
Vinings Starbucks (food) 154.4 1:27:12 10:44:15 3/27/16 19:57
Silver Comet (clothing) 160.6 0:04:43 12:36:10 3/27/16 21:49
Cedartown Waffle House (food) 209.9 0:38:49 15:56:52 3/28/16 1:09
Alabama State Line (photos) 220.5 0:04:30 17:20:24 3/28/16 2:33
Chief Ladiga (rain-clothing) 229.4 0:02:37 17:54:50 3/28/16 3:07
Chief Ladiga trail tree down (obstacle) 230.7 0:04:54 18:02:12 3/28/16 3:15
Fort McCllelan (charging-lights) 258 0:03:25 20:07:59 3/28/16 5:20
Fort McCllelan (charging-lights again) 259.7 0:03:25 20:22:16 3/28/16 5:35
Oxford McDonalds (food) 264.4 1:05:29 20:43:56 3/28/16 5:56
Hanging Rock Rd (clothing) 296.8 0:02:21 24:30:59 3/28/16 9:43
Talladega Walmart and McDonalds (charging) 311 0:41:46 25:38:00 3/28/16 10:51
US231 Kelly Creek (charging) 334 0:01:43 27:50:33 3/28/16 13:03
Chelsea Chevron (food/charging) 350.3 0:22:56 29:02:57 3/28/16 14:15
Double Oak Cliffs (photos) 361.2 0:02:20 30:27:43 3/28/16 15:40
280 Starbucks (food) 367.5 0:07:24 30:56:52 3/28/16 16:09
Home 378 31:57:19 3/28/16 17:10
Summary – 19 stops, Average distance between stops: 19.9 miles, Average time between stops: 1 hr, 41 min, Average stop duration: 18min, 42sec. Notes: it rained quite a bit in Georgia and Alabama so I had to stop a bunch for clothing, covering Garmins, etc… Also, I had some major charging / battery problems pretty much the whole ride so any stop labeled “charging” is a stop I didn’t want to make, but was forced to make in order to plug devices into wall outlets. Also, the Vinings Starbucks stop and the Cedartown Waffle House stop were both longer than I wanted to stop but I had to wait for devices to charge.

Annotated stops round trip including my 9.5 hour stop at the Holiday Inn Express in Clemson. Click to enlarge and see detail.Annotated stops round trip including my 9.5 hour stop at the Holiday Inn Express in Clemson. Click to enlarge and see detail.

In RAAM, of course, sleep stops also count against your time. So including my sleep stop in Clemson, here is the overall stop data.

# stops: 31
avg stop duration: 36 minutes
dist b/t stops: 24.4 miles
time b/t stops: 2 hours, 16 minutes

Even my stop in Clemson was longer than I wanted it to be. I only slept for 7 hours, but I was stopped for 2.5 hours longer than that mainly so I could charge lights, di2, and garmins before leaving since I had only charged my powerbanks overnight. So it’s a little unfair to compare to RAAM, but in RAAM I only averaged 17.6 miles between stops so 24.4 miles is quite an improvement and would have been even better if I hadn’t had the extra stops on the second day trying to keep my devices charged. There was also another major improvement for this ride: cadence!

Cycling Data
This was quite the adventure with tons of climbing. I was really wanting to do a side-by-side comparison of Cheaha, Brasstown, and Sassafras on the same ride — but that will have to wait until next time!

Total distance 755.8 miles (25% of RAAM)
Total climbing 57,834 feet (36% af RAAM)
Overall average speed (elapsed) 10.7 mph
Overall average speed (moving) 14.5 mph
Overall power average 143 watts
Overall heartrate average 109 bpm
Overall cadence average 74 rpm
Day Power HR RPM MPH Climbing Distance
Day 1 159 w 116 75 14.57 33,717 ft 377.8 mi
Day 2 127 w 102 74 14.55 24,117 ft 378.0 mi

Shifting Data
It was easy to see the impact of having a 32 tooth rear cassette on my overall shifting data – mainly, my average cadence went up quite a bit compared to RAAM. Also, I was consciously trying to spin an easier gear all the time to help avoid smashing the bottoms of my feet by mashing too big of a gear. One of the ways that I would do that is when I got to the bottom of a hill I would shift into easier and easier gears while still in the big chainring so that there would be a bigger jump when I switched down to the low chainring. I would still switch to the small chainring at what I perceived was my “normal” time so that meant I would be spinning a really high cadence into the bottom of the hill. Then I would move up into easier gears as necessary. Because of this, there was a lot 53×18, 39×18 transitions on day 1 and 53×20, 39×20 transitions on day 2. This really helped as my feet were pretty much shot by 1/4 of the way through RAAM. This ride, which was also 1/4 of RAAM saw my feet get not nearly as sore as RAAM – and that is even with a 1.2 mile hike up/down on Brasstown in my speedplay shoes, which killed my feet at the time. But because of spinning the easier gears, my feet were able to recover some and felt better by the end of the ride. Shift data and shift map below!

Annotated shift data for the complete 756 mile ride. Note the high percentage of time in the 53x20, 39x20, 53x18, and 39x18.

Shift map for my ride from Hoover to Clemson via Cheaha and Brasstown. Click to see an interactive version.Shift map for my ride from Hoover to Clemson via Cheaha and Brasstown. Click to see an interactive version.

Shift map for my ride back home from Clemson via Cheaha. Click for an interactive version.Shift map for my ride back home from Clemson via Cheaha. Click for an interactive version.

Comments

3 responses to “Paris-Brest-Paris southern style data analysis”

  1. Mick Avatar
    Mick

    Duuuuuude. Love the data analysis. No idea how you do it day in and day out, but it’s inspirational. I can’t even fathom cutting ONE of those two rides in half and doing it over two days.

    I just got my first 300km (320, actually), and it becomes a crazy mind-game you get yourself into. Doing twice that distance, on back to back days (well, 30+ hour days) is just completely beyond me. Truly inspiring. It’s good to see your insight into your shifting data too. Hopefully in your 2016 RAAM attempt you’ll do better and won’t do it so painfully (and with a little luck, you won’t get those scorching hot days).

    Thanks for sharing.

    1. kartoone Avatar
      kartoone

      Thanks Mick – it’s definitely something you work up to over time, but usually in a stepwise fashion – 300k this time, but then your next big ride will be 400k. Then you jump up to 500k after that. It helps to do a 500 mile race supported with a crew – then you feel like you can do anything under that distance by yourself unsupported. I’m hoping that learning to spin a higher cadence will help ease the nerves on the bottom of my feet. Also, I’m aiming for 2017 to race RAAM again, it takes too much time and money to try to come back and race it again this year.

      1. Mick Avatar
        Mick

        Thanks for responding. The 320 was solo, but I’m looking to do a supported 400km in June, so hopefully it’ll be easier and smoother to get through. It’ll also be winter here, so I won’t be subject to the same heat I was in the 320. The ride is with a local audax club for the Festum Prophetae (Eddy Merckx’s birthday). So like you say, it’s something to work up to. I’ll continue to build upon that base this year and hopefully can do something like you suggest and get into a big 500 mile race with crew support.

        Following your rides has certainly been humbling, and the data analysis that you do is fantastic. As an engineer who likes to get his geek on, it really piques my interest. Knowing that analysis such as yours can lead to massive improvements–one being the feet pain to gear ratio correlation–is pretty cool. Those insights aren’t something that most people would have the knowledge or inclination to gain.

        I’d thought I’d read somewhere that you were doing the 2016 RAAM, but that might have been someone being presumptuous on Strava. I’ll be following your efforts in 2017 and look forward to following your epic adventures here and on Strava throughout 2016.

        Thanks again.

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