BassMan Race Report - Pat O'Connell - PM Issue

Patrick O'Connell

Hi everyone.  First timer posting on this forum.  I raced Bassman 1/2 IM in NJ on Sunday.  Primer/confidence builder leading up to Challenge AC in 8 weeks.  

Overall, good results for me.  Not a PR, but based on my schedule, ability, travel schedule, etc. very pleased with this effort.  Thanks to Coach Patrick/Rich on the help.  Patrick has been modifying almost every weekly M-TH schedule for me due to travel.

So the result and the issue:  5:18 overall time.  39 swim, 2:47 bike, 1:50 run.  My steadiest 70.3 ever.  Swim is what it is.  I'm a middle of the pack swimmer and don't have the time at this point to fix that.  I was planning to ride Zone 3 -215/230, the entire ride.  I synched my Quarg prior to swimming but the PM wouldn't activate once I got on the bike.  I resynched it while on the bike, my 900 recognized it again but I couldn't get it to show Power.  With no power, I kept repeating, "ride the bike I should, not the bike I could", stayed aero 99% of time and hit T2 feeling great.  MP, 8:00, plus 30s walking, for the first 3 miles.  4-8 at 8:10 pace. Mile 9 or so The Suck showed up and I slowed to a 8:50 or so pace.  Big improvement for me from many previous 70.3s because when The Suck showed up, prior to me being an EN member and knowing The Suck had a name, I would walk.  Zero walking for me, except as prescribed, and I was able to run the last 1.6 back at MP.  

Any suggestions on what I need to do to get the Quarg to work after swimming, would be much appreciated.  

rbogle

Very Well Done! A solid race and some nice results Patrick! Big win here is that you were able to ride smooth even without the power meter, and know that your perceived effort was in line with what you should be doing, which was rewarded with a much more even run. I don't care who you are the run in an HIM is hard, and it sounds like you got a really good set of splits. Sounds like you are well prepped for Challenge!

harrast

I'll start with my $0.02 on syncing your powermeter. I use a Quarq with a Garmin Edge 500. For a while everything was good, then I went on a ride and the powermeter wouldn't connect to my Garmin. I replaced the battery. No improvement. Resyncing. Nothing. Eventually I called Quarq and they had me send the unit back. Within maybe 10 days I had a replacement in hand. The one that came back worked fine. It still had my old crank arms on it, but I assume they reworked the guts.

I have another hypothesis, and others can correct me on this, but it seems that the Garmin has a boot sequence where it looks for devices that it has previously identified. If one of these devices is not present, it seems like the unit didn't have an efficient routine to connect to the devices that are present. I'm just conjecturing here, but I wonder if the trouble I had with my powermeter was really an issue in my Garmin looking for a device (heart rate monitor maybe) that it couldn't find. No way to know at this point. It all works just fine now.

Mark Cardinale

Nice race, Patrick!

I experienced the exact same issue with my Garmin and my Quarq.  Worked fine before the swim, but didn't connect after i started riding. I needed to turn of my garmin and restart it for it to find my quarq.

@Steve, i agree with you.  I think it's the garmin not the quarq.  Based on your input i'll try disabling my heart rate monitor and see if that makes a difference.

Patrick O'Connell

Good morning.  Thanks for the words of encouragement and guidance.  I'm back from traveling all week.  I will try your suggestions and report back.  Heading out for 40min run/4:30 bike prescribed EN session.       Thanks again.  Pat

Patrick O'Connell

Amazing - PM fix looks to be replacing the battery!!  PM was only used maybe 6x prior to racing.  No clue, though, as to how long the batery had been sitting around.  Replaced the battery last night and the PM fired up with no issues.  $5 fix - live and learn.  Thanks for all of your suggestions.