"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Powertap... Remove zeros from averaging or not?

Right now I dont but wondering what everybody else does.

I am an SRM and other power meters user, but Average everything...good and bad.

I discard zeros for the Power Distribution for last 28 days charts in WKO. Otherwise coasting down hills (0 watts) is counted as Zone 1 pedalling, which doesn't make sense to me in this context. But other than that, they're counted. Is discarding zeros a PT setting? I don't see it in WKO.

Yeah its a PT setting but my thought is that if you dont count zeros you are cherry picking data.... Figure my rides are what they are.

I discard zeros for the Power Distribution for last 28 days charts in WKO. Otherwise coasting down hills (0 watts) is counted as Zone 1 pedalling, which doesn't make sense to me in this context. But other than that, they're counted. Is discarding zeros a PT setting? I don't see it in WKO.

It's not an option in WKO, but it is on the power tap. For example, I did a crit last year where I didn't average zeros on the PT and came up with 385w avg for 35 minutes. When I pulled it into WKO I saw 302AP and 345NP.

if you have 0 for power it is because you are not producing power. If you want to skew the data up, pedal on the hills. Why do people coast so much anyhow?

if you have 0 for power it is because you are not producing power. If you want to skew the data up, pedal on the hills. Why do people coast so much anyhow?

In training? Dunno, they're lazy? In racing? I coast as much as possible.

In training? Dunno, they're lazy? In racing? I coast as much as possible.

I meant specific to training. Thanks for clarifying!:p

In racing? I coast as much as possible.

I think it was High Performance Cycling that had a plot showing that time spent at zero cadence was predictive of victory, with top guys coasting up to 5% of the time iirc.

I just eliminate zeros for cadence. I don't care how fast I'm pedaling when I'm not pedaling.

Why do people coast so much anyhow?

My wife won't drive me back down the mountain for the next hill repeat.

I just eliminate zeros for cadence. I don't care how fast I'm pedaling when I'm not pedaling.

+1.

I just eliminate zeros for cadence. I don't care how fast I'm pedaling when I'm not pedaling.

The amount of time not pedaling is interesting, however, feel free to ignore it or any other data you obtain.

I ignore lots of stuff, but then again I don't equate "what I do" with "the best thing to do" as much as some.

It's not like the data isn't there; I just eliminate it for the calculated average cadence.

In training? Dunno, they're lazy? In racing? I coast as much as possible.

I tend to coast as little as possible. Instead I soft pedal. This keeps the pumps going and it flushes out lactic acid better than just coasting. It also takes less energy to accelerate the legs if they are already turning over. This can add up over time.

I personally leave them in. I like to account for that time.

As for a technical answer, I defer to Mr. AC,




Forgive me if this seems insulting, but I think the answer to your
question is, or should be, self-evident: you need to account for all the
periods when your power is zero, because they influence how much power
you can generate when you actually are pedaling.


To resurrect a previously-discussed topic as an example: it was shown
back in the 1970's that as long as the exercise (and rest) period was
kept very short, say 10 seconds or less, then the physiological and
metabolic responses to intermittent exercise is nearly identical to
continuous exercise at the same average power. That is, an hour of
exercise performed at 400 W for 10 seconds, rest 10 seconds, ad nauseum
will elicit essentially the same responses as continuous exercise at 200
W. This makes sense when you consider both the pedaling and non-pedaling
periods (as well as the half-lives of various physiological responses),
but doesn't make sense at all if you use only the power that was
generated during the non-zero periods (i.e., 400 W vs. 200 W).
While power output during "free range" cycling is rarely so structured,
the same principle applies...hence, you need to include the zero values
into the calculation of the overall average power output. As was
discussed at the Philly seminar, and previously in detail on this list,
this still doesn't fully account for the "stochastic" nature of cycling
power output, but nonetheless the average including all zero values
still says much more about the actual demands than using the average of
just the non-zero values.

I just eliminate zeros for cadence. I don't care how fast I'm pedaling when I'm not pedaling.

When youre not pedaling youre not putting out watts so why not zero that too :)

When youre not pedaling youre not putting out watts so why not zero that too :)

Well, I am interested in average watts with zeroes in there. For cadence I don't want a traffic light bringing my average down, making me think I'm pedaling particularly slow that day.

In WKO+, I really look at everything both ways for different reasons. On the bike though, no zeroes for cadence, zeroes for everything else.