This article from Cycling News came across my desk yesterday and thought it was both interesting and obvious at the same time.
Pro rider Ashleigh Moolman Pasio, who lives in Girona, has been forced onto Zwift during the cycling lockdown she’s had to endure in Spain. She, like many people (a client just told us about this yesterday, too), has noticed an uptick in power numbers after many hours on the trainer and attributes it to the ‘brute force’ that you consistently produce while sitting, pedaling and going nowhere. I noticed this long ago during every winter ‘lockdown’ we had before outside riding took over in the spring. I’m sort of curious as to why this comes as a surprise, but I guess one reason is that pros simply ride outside all the time (in Girona the trainer definitely wouldn’t be necessary very much).
Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (Image credit: Getty Images)
Anyhow, Ashleigh got let out last week and smashed a new QOM on Rocacorba, the nastiest climb Girona can throw at you. That’s something after 2 months of probably not a single ride outside! 31 minutes and change, if you’re wondering.
If this is true across the rider spectrum I wonder if indoor training on Zwift or other platforms will become de rigeur in the winter months for pros going forward?
And finally a little epilogue to yesterday’s 1000 blog article article. I decided to dig deep into my WordPress stats and found all sorts of data that I never really knew existed; one of which was my ‘word count’, i.e. the number of words I’ve thrown down on these pages over the last 12 years. The answer is: 379,883
Fine, but what does that mean? Glad you asked! Here are a few classic books that some of us have read, along with their word counts:
- The Sun Also Rises: 67,707
- The Hobbit: 95,356
- The Grapes of Wrath: 169,481
- Ulysses: 262,869
- Middlemarch: 316,059
- War and Peace: 561,304
So I’m somewhere between Eliot and Tolstoy, at least in terms of quantity. I don’t know where this goes from here, but at least it’s recorded. It will be interesting to see if I get more or less long winded as the years progress. I’ll just stop here because I think I feel it coming on…
The Vicious Cycle 
I never knew all of those stats were there!
Took 12 years for me to find them. There’s lots there if you like that kind of thing!
I’m going to add up my total words since I started in ’11…
I think I found that under ‘insights’. Report back!
You’re exactly right, very easy to find on the mobile app.
1,887,000 (and some change). Wow! The words really add up!
That’s amazing, Jim! Put that in a book and you wouldn’t be able to lift it.
TOP 21 FASTEST TIMES ON MT. VENTOUX
Marco Pantani Tour de France 1994 (#15) 46’00
Miguel Indurain Tour de France 1994 (#15) 47’30
Richard Virenque Tour de France 1994 (#15) 47’30
Luc Leblanc Tour de France 1994 (#15) 47’30
Armand de Las Cuevas Tour de France 1994 (#15) 47’30
Lance Armstrong Tour de France 2002 (#14) 48’33
Christopher Froome Tour de France 2013 (#15) 48’35
Alberto Contador Tour de France 2009 (#20) 48’57
Andy Schleck Tour de France 2009 (#20) 48’57
Lance Armstrong Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’00
Marco Pantani Tour de France 2000 (#12) 49’01
Lance Armstrong Tour de France 2000 (#12) 49’01
Frank Schleck Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’02
Nairo Quintana Tour de France 2013 (#15) 49’04
Roman Kreuziger Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’05
Franco Pellizotti Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’15
Vincenzo Nibali Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’17
Bradley Wiggins Tour de France 2009 (#20) 49’22
Joseba Beloki Tour de France 2000 (#12) 49’26
Jan Ullrich Tour de France 2000 (#12) 49’3
GERRY PATTERSON May 11 2020 44|5 APRÈS COVID CONFINEMENT
I thought this was spam and nearly deleted it! I might make Top 20,021, maybe.
It is sobering to count all the words that you use in blog posts and realise that unlike the noted authors you mentioned, you have never got paid a penny for any of them. When is your novel coming out?
I would love to know your ‘count’, TP. Do you have those stats? And yes, we really need someone to pay us for this, I agree.
A quick check reveals that I have used 2,294,595 words to date, many of them it has to be said, more than once! I was particularly chatty in 2013 when I used 285,283 words in the year. I have been surprisingly consistent at just over the quarter of a million mark per year over the years. Though perhaps as I say more or less the same thing every day, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Woah, that’s a bunch of words, whether a few have been repeated or not! I wonder how long it would take to go back and read every article from the beginning? I might have enough time to find out if covid sticks around very long. I know I’ve missed a few.
There might possibly be better things to do with your life, even in lockdown.