Improve - cycle without a bike computer!

Like pretty much every cyclist who takes the sport at all seriously I use a bike computer to see speed, average speed and distance travelled. I don't have a flashy model with cadence, GPS, altitude or heartrate but wish I did!

Having a bike computer also helps me along the route, because for routes that I cycle quite often I know, for example, that I have a target minimum speed for a particular hill, or have to reach a particular village within a certain amount of time.

I had always thought this kept me at maximum effort, by constantly trying to outperform my previous times on the same route - but a few weeks ago my bike computer broke, and now I'm not so sure. I think maybe this approach stops me going slower but isn't pushing me to go faster.

The computer itself broke but the clock still works so I have kept it on the bike, and each time I do a route that I cycle quite often I make a note of the time taken. The remarkable thing is, my average times have significantly improved since it broke!

I'm beginning to think that while I thought the computer was helping me go faster it was actually slowing me down, perhaps because setting a 'target speed' of say 20 kmh on a particular hill meant i wasn't trying very hard to do significantly better.

Now when I'm cycling I just know I have to make a sustained effort, and the result seems to be that I can do better than I thought.

Is it just me?

Interestingly my experience is consistent with a comment left by one of our vistors recently on the article about average speed. In summary they suggested:

"Try riding without your bike computer for a few rides and just go on the feel, rather than the clock...you need to wear a (heart) monitor for a few rides first to get a feel of when you are in the fat burning zone, you will be suprised at the level you need...weight lifters use a technique called negative reps, where the lifted weights are beyond what the lifter can manage. This starts to teach the mind to accept higher weights as a lot of the push through plateau is within the head."

So the idea is that we become used to a given level of effort and think that's what we can manage, when really we can do better if only we can convince ourselves it's possible. And the bike computer is telling us we are already doing our best, so we lack the motivation to try harder.

So why not try it yourself? If you have a decent length route that you do fairly often in a predictable amount of time, the next time you do the same route ignore the computer (even better leave it at home, but you do need to know how long the route took), and just give the ride your best effort.

You might just find that you are a faster cyclist than you realised!