In praise of… Data
Focusing on data is fine, but in looking at the specifics of what you’re doing, you should never lose sight of why you’re doing it
hould my wife ever ask how my ride was, which admittedly is as likely as me asking her which denier of hosiery she prefers, there are two ways I could go about answering.
Option one: ‘It was beautiful, a bit windy on the way back, but the views were stunning from the top of the Cairn. My legs felt great and I stopped for a haggis panini on the way home.’
Or I could say: ‘I beat my personal best up the Cairn, averaged 300 watts. My average speed was 30kmh at a cadence of 92rpm. And I kept my HR average to 80%. How was Saturday Kitchen?’
Both answers contain data, it’s just that the data in the first is more qualitative than quantitative. Data is great, but for us recreational cyclists, it should really be more about quality than quantity, if only to make conversation with non-cyclists more of a sociable encounter between sentient adults as opposed to a one-sided torrent of gibberish from a slightly intense-looking character fingering their Garmin.
There’s a lot of quantitative data about these days, thanks to computers, heart rate monitors, cadence sensors, power meters and all the other hi-tech gizmos you can attach to yourself or your bike before you set out on a ride. And if that’s not enough for you, you can climb on a Wattbike and check your ‘peak angle force’ and whether your pedalling efficiency graph is shaped like a peanut or a sausage. Then there are online video games such as Zwift and tracking apps like Strava. Riding your bike used to be a primeval pleasure. Now it can feel like a scientific experiment.
The unwary rider can all too easily become a hostage to data. Chasing down that fastest time or KOM can become an obsession, just another set of figures with which to validate our existence alongside the number of our Facebook friends, Twitter followers or Instagram likes. Don’t get me wrong, I like a set of numbers as much as the next cyclist, but I’m happy with confining mine to the bare minimum: distance travelled and average speed. If I clock a KOM along the way, that’s a bonus, but not as big a bonus as it not raining.
I don’t need to know my FTP, because no one has yet been so suspicious of my performances that they’ve demanded I publish my data to scotch rumours of doping or hanging on to the back of passing tractors.
I’ve often wondered whether this makes me an imposter in this brave new world of Mamils riding £10,000 Pinarellos, so I spoke to John Osburg who, as well as being a cyclist, is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rochester in New York. Cycling’s newfound obsession with the minutiae of data is part of a wider phenomenon, he says.
‘There is a broader societal fixation on evaluating, measuring and quantifying every experience, referred to by some as an “audit