I feel I have made quite a lot of progress in my first month back after a 15 year break.
I suppose the major thing I did was purchase a used Concept 2 with PM5. I was thinking of getting a new one and then selling my Wattbike at some point in the future. However, looking around on FB Marketplace I found one for sale quite local to me. Hardly used – 38,000 metres. Pristine condition. About 4 years old. £700.
I then joined an indoor online rowing club. I always find these things are very motivating and the Diamonds (Over Sixties). It is a very large club and over 1100 members completed their annual Decathlon Challenge May25 – Apr26
The Concept 2 site has 13 ranking distances, and I aim to complete them all this season. The half and full marathons seem a bit daunting at the moment.
On the C2 logbook site you can rank your best time at each distance and get a nice summary showing position in your age group. That makes more sense to me than going into the open category where I would be much lower down. It is early days still, but I have managed to compete 8 of the 13 events and my age group position gives me encouragement. I knew before I started that the short distances would be my nemesis, but the longer ones give me a lot of hope. The 30:00 and 10,000 metres were both rowed at 20 and 22 spm respectively. Clearly one would hope to be faster when not rate-capped.
I started rowing on the indoor rower around 2000, always using a Concept 2 machine.
I have never had any desire to go out on the water, too cold, wet, and normally too early for me.
I peaked in interest between 2006 and 2010. I worked at Vodafone HQ during that period and they had an excellent gym, which contractors could use. I would often go before and after work, normally doing 6-15km per visit. I also had a C2 at home.
I also ran at that time but I was constantly getting calf strains, which eventually led me to give up. However, the rowing did keep me lean and fit. I cannot recall why I gave it up. As with most things for me I cycle around sports (no pun intended). I have done weights, running, cycling, and rowing and had several periods of each of them. Periods normally being between 5 and 8 years.
The indoor rowing season starts on 1st May so I did the magnificent total of 5Km in April 2026 and not much else for the previous 15 years. As anybody follows me on Strava they can see that I am doing lots of gym work and have started rowing again recently. The gym work is enforced by an osteoporosis diagnosis which also means that it is too risky to bike outside. I do not need any more broken bones than you very much.
One of the advantages of having long lay off with a sport is you should not have any expectation of being able to perform as you used to – especially when you are 69 years old.
Concept 2 have a great log facility where you can view every row you have done since 2002 although I started recording in 2004.
They have 13 set distances or times which cover the full gamut between 1 minute (~250+ metres) and a century (100km) and you can rank any row you do to set it as your season best.
In the last few days, I have completed three events – 500m, 5k, 6k.
Nothing to speak of there but it is a marker and I would expect to improve on every one of them. My technique has remained good (although I am sure there are technical improvements that could be made). Certainly, I have a better technique than almost anybody I see in a public gym. Not a brag, just fact.
Indoor rowing competitions are mostly centred around the 2000m distance. A distance to which I am not really suited. I am much more of an endurance person, whether it be running, rowing or cycling. I have competed at various events including the English Championships (Manchester), European (Amsterdam, which was convenient because I was working there) and the Holy Grail – the Worlds AKA Crash B’s in Boston, USA. Unfortunately, I never broke 7 minutes, which I think might compare to a 10-mile running race under the hour. My best was 7:01. Not sure why that is not shown in the table below. My best distance was the marathon (42km) and I did that in 2:53 and I went for a 10km run after that. Those were the days. Coincidentally my marathon time on the road was a few minutes quicker than rowing but they do track quite well with running being quicker in every case.
My aim is to try and improve on the rowing times for this season and still do some bilking but probably not quite as much. I find that rowing gives me a better all over workout than riding – it uses 83% of the body muscles – legs, back, arms. Chest is the biggest contributor to the other 17%.
I hope readers have found that interesting. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
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I currently run Fulgaz and Rouvy subscriptions and I use them both almost daily.
Only a couple of weeks ago I was considering cancelling my Rouvy subscription when it finishes in early July. I am part of a 5 person plan so it only costs me about £8 a month (annual, paid in advance).
My reasons for that were about simplifying the apps I use and organising myself better between gym, biking and potential indoor rowing.
I favoured keeping Fulgaz because I have a long-term affinity with it and it has improved a lot since Rouvy took it over. It is also good to see that fresh faces are contributing rides, which is a good sign.
I also believe that the consolidation of new rides into a single monthly release works much better and means that less new rides go unnoticed.
Now I am considering the complete reverse. Stopping Fulgaz and renewing Rouvy.
What has happened? Version 7 of Fulgaz has made two, IMHO, significant changes which will undoubtedly impact the way I do indoor cycling.
‘Save for later’ no longer sends the data to Strava but waits until you finish the ride. I often do a part ride, save it and maybe finish it in two more sessions or a couple of weeks later. To not upload data at the end of each session seems bizarre to me and I cannot believe that anybody has requested that change. I want my records to show what I did on the day that I did it.
I can easily see a scenario where someone uploads a 100Km ride and there Strava mates congratulate them, when in reality they might have done 10km a day for 10 days.
I am keen on data (TSS, elevation, time) and I like to see it at the end of a ride. There are workarounds. I could dual record on a Garmin but that would be detrimental to Fulgaz as it would not show that I had done a Fulgaz ride and why should I have the hassle. Equally whenever I do complete the saved ride then my stats will be over-inflated for that day.
My second objection is a real brain teaser as to why it has been implemented.
Every trainer app has an option to make the trainer non-controllable. FulGaz had that itself. With the new connection function that has been removed intentionally.
My question is why? Who wanted that. It does affect my use of FulGaz and not in a good way. I am guessing the new connection function made it more difficult to implement as you no longer have an option to select or deselect devices
So how does that affect my Fulgaz usage? I often do a workout from another app (Xert maybe or Rouvy) with that app controlling the power and Fulgaz being non-controlled. I will save the Fulgaz ride with all my data in and then discard the app data.
With the best will in the world I cannot say that I would wish to use the Fulgaz app for workouts. Rouvy outdoes it by miles. Fulgaz doesn’t even calculate the TSS correctly – or it didn’t, I haven’t tried it for years.
There are workarounds but none are particularly palatable to me and combined with the save for later change it has really made me consider what I am using going forward.
Does anyone else have similar views on either change?
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2025 was a poor year for cycling in that I had a fall outside in late February on a muddy road. The result was that my left hip was shattered and I had a replacement the next day. The next outcome, as I found out in September after a Dexa scan, was that I had Osteoporosis. They tested back and arm (I have had both hips replaced after bike accidents so they couldn’t test either) and made the diagnosis.
The treatment was an infusion (annually) to make the bones regenerate faster and daily Calcium and Vitamin D tablets. I made two promises to myself. No more outdoor riding and to join a gym.
Both accidents I had were exactly that – accidents, with nobody else involved. I feel that it is not worth riding outdoors and risking a much more serious outcome, either more broken bones or worse.
I also resolved to join a gym, which I did in November and I am really enjoying going 3-4 times a week. More of that in another blog.
So, given I am only riding indoors, using Fulgaz and Rouvy what do I want to achieve in 2026?
As I promised in my last blog post I thought I would put out some thoughts on Strava and it’s offering.
Firstly I have tried Premium for a couple of years but I no longer subscribe. When I was riding outdoors, I used to enjoy getting home and seeing which segments I had improved on, especially when on a group ride as the average pace would be normally higher than mine alone. No, I wasn’t looking for KOMs. I only ride indoors now after several accidents and a diagnosis of Osteoporosis. Therefore, there is no real benefit of Premium to me (that I can see at least).
However, I really enjoy my ‘free’ Strava account and I would be prepared to pay a small something annually to use it. Especially if it stopped all the nagging reminders and adverts for me to purchase a Premium membership. I have around 300 followers and I follow the same number approximately. If anybody asks to follow me, I generally follow them in return. I believe it really enhances my social circle and adds lots of interest to my life. That is probably a little overly-dramatic so let me explain further.
I only ever enter Strava challenges when a follower/follower has entered one and it appears in my feed. I only ever enter the ones that I will be completing anyway, such as 10 active days in a month or 500km in a month. If it was 1000km in a month I would not enter as I would not be changing my habits to hit that 1000km.
I think TrainerRoad have been guilty of some pretty underhand tactics in order to sell more subscriptions. Maybe not intentionally but that is the way it has turned out.
Anybody who is on the TR mailing list will know that they had a massive publicity campaign promoting their latest release, the highlight of which is a projected FTP at the end of a planned block of training. They constantly touted 27% improvement. I have not delved into that too deeply, but I think they are saying that their new model gives 27% better results than their current model.
My 2025 objectives have had to change due to a cycling accident in late February resulting in a broken hip (opposite hip to the one broken 4 years previously). I am not riding outside for the foreseeable future (if at all).
My objectives are shown below with a comment on how each is progressing
I was pleased to reach Level 80 on Rouvy recently. I had been working towards it with quite an effort.
I joined in March 22 for 1 year. I then rejoined in Sept 23 for 6 months and then joined as a group member in Jan 25. So a total of just over 2 years.
I focussed on challenge rides that gave XP points, as well as a doing a weekly workout which gave 500XP a time. The stages start gradually 500, 1000, 2000 etc. XP points but by level 70 onwards they jump to over 600 XP points per stage.
The real kicker is that from Level 80 35,000 XP points are required to progress one level. It probably gets harder after that but I have not looked further as yet.
I finally got myself into gear and went for a half Everesting. 4424 metres.
Basecamp
I used the Fulgaz Gerlospass route which means just over 8 climbs – 547 metres a climb, 7.2km up and then the same down. I was very consistent with the timings, all about 55 minutes
The heart rate at 96bp for 4 ascents is incorrect. My HRM got disconnected for some reason and then reconnected later. It hit a max of 128 but probably averaged about 115-120 –(73-76%). The power going uphill was consistent at about 165 (75% of FTP). I will return to that aspect later.
sixtyplustimetrialling 