Originally Posted by
Ygduf
my issue with all of this is just that it's 100% N = 1 anecdotes.
I won Boonville RR that starts out on a 13% climb for a mile with no warmup, but I'm not going to weigh in on whether warmups are necessary. I also see some guys who climb fast that, and get this, they don't use Strava, so it can't be to blame for their fitness. Also, I DO use Strava, and I can't descend for ****, so that whole "strava makes people go fast" thing isn't working for me.
I've seen old racers make stupid moves on group rides (like diving across the group to get the draft of a passing car to attack!) and that tells me "back in the day" probably was just like it is now, only you're all viewing things in sharp-edges-dulled-by-time sepia tones.
I mean sure, N = 1, and I have no evidence or even any specific claims to back up, but that's all it takes to be an expert in here.
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. You're absolutely right; identifying the right metric, tracking that metric, and measuring the effect of initiatives designed to improve the metric would be great. But not having that data shouldn't preclude efforts to improve things.
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