KARMA! A B#$@%h

     This is only a minor case of Karma comeuppance, reminding me not to go boasting of my prowess.  Yesterday's ride was a power drill.  Four times ten minutes at ~170 watts, after a twenty minute warm-up.  I was feeling pretty good, but had to contend with a stout NE wind.  For a generic ride I'd normally take a north-south route, fighting the wind the first half and enjoying a tail wind on the return.  But I have difficulties holding my power numbers with the wind pushing me, so I took an east-west course, Chandler Road.
     The warm-up went well, legs felt good, and I hit the lap button to begin the drills.  I closely monitor my Garmin, shifting more than usual in an attempt to hold power.  I was quite pleased with what I saw.  Still going east for my second set, I again was ten or more watts over the goal.  For those familiar with Training Peaks, I was at FTP rather than 10% below.
     The third set put the wind on my right shoulder, thus using higher gears and increasing my speed by about five mph.  Power numbers remained high.  The fourth set would have me going south on CR 119.  This is the Strava section where I briefly held the KOM, and am still fifth All Time (not age group).  The wind would be mostly at my back.  I decided to go all out and try to beat my best time.  By doing so I knew it would be about half of what I should be doing, but the wattage much higher.  I was really fast, pushing big gears, and could hardly wait to get home to check the data, wondering how many seconds I'd shaved off my best time and what the actual power numbers were.
     Karma!  Don't know how it happened but Garmin corrupted the data.  Not being very computer literate, I went online to see if it could be recovered.  Back in February I couldn't get the computer to turn on just before a race and Todd gave me instructions that worked.  Perhaps I mis-remembered them, but in any case, I ended up doing a hard reset.  That cleared everything.  I spent the afternoon re-programming the computer.   I know I had a good workout, just don't know how good.
     But not all was lost.  When I'm out on the road I also use Strava on my phone so that Marilane can track me and know where I am in case I need assistance.  This results in two entries on Strava once I plug in the Garmin, and I delete it when I get home because it is a duplicate and doesn't have power or cadence numbers.  It's fun to see the estimated power as long as you put no credence in it.  In this case, it showed me hitting 500+ multiple times and averaging 297 for the 4 minutes and 57 seconds.
     While the power data is spurious, the speed and time were accurate.  I averaged 26.3 mph.  That put me twelve seconds slower than my best time, and faster than the seventh place All Time finisher.  I'll keep advertising my accomplishments on the bike, but will be more low-key about it.