Could there be other substantial moderating differences between the days when you generate ~900 kJ and the days when you don’t? (E.g., does your mental state before you ride affect how much energy you generate?
This could be the case, or there could be a common cause between the total work I do and my mood for the day. What makes me think this is less likely is that, when I’m following a training plan, the total work for the ride is largely determined days or weeks ahead of time. Then again, I will modify the day’s workout on a training plan if I’m feeling shitty. Or it could just be that I noticed the pattern once when it happened by chance, then I expected it to continue, so it did (that is, it’s more of a placebo than anything else). Then again, it wouldn’t be hard for small effects like this to add up to the observed effect.
I actually did think about blinding it. I could modify some existing software to give me an intensity or duration that I don’t know ahead of time, and that I don’t have in front of me while I’m riding, and I could even not look at what it was until days or weeks later when I’m analyzing the results (or I could get even more hardcore and have someone else analyze it). The problem is that most of the motivation mechanisms I have for actually doing a worthwhile ride indoors require me to have access to a lot of this data. It would sort of be like trying to stay motivated in a game where you have no access to your score or whether you’ve eliminated another player.
This could be the case, or there could be a common cause between the total work I do and my mood for the day. What makes me think this is less likely is that, when I’m following a training plan, the total work for the ride is largely determined days or weeks ahead of time. Then again, I will modify the day’s workout on a training plan if I’m feeling shitty. Or it could just be that I noticed the pattern once when it happened by chance, then I expected it to continue, so it did (that is, it’s more of a placebo than anything else). Then again, it wouldn’t be hard for small effects like this to add up to the observed effect.
I actually did think about blinding it. I could modify some existing software to give me an intensity or duration that I don’t know ahead of time, and that I don’t have in front of me while I’m riding, and I could even not look at what it was until days or weeks later when I’m analyzing the results (or I could get even more hardcore and have someone else analyze it). The problem is that most of the motivation mechanisms I have for actually doing a worthwhile ride indoors require me to have access to a lot of this data. It would sort of be like trying to stay motivated in a game where you have no access to your score or whether you’ve eliminated another player.