perception is everything, especially w/o empirical data. personally, if I feel faster, does it matter what my actual speed is? often, when I feel like a good strong rider, I get my doors blown off, by actual good strong riders. can’t do anything about that, so it can’t matter to me, other than to keep me informed of my position in the food chain. sure, I keep track of my stats & I like seeing better #s but there’s no way I’ll see my #s from a decade ago. but operating a machine, an operator always strives for optimization