Originally Posted by
The Weak Link
To play devil's advocate:
HRM make sense to me for recreational riders if they use it to slow their rides down. It's a strong tendency even for duffers to speed up during a nice ride and push too hard when you shouldn't.
But wattage calculations seem pointless to me.
My nemesis is hills, of which there are a bountiful supply in my area. When I'm going up one, feeling the searing pain in my legs, seeing blood trickle out of my ears, and developing tunnel vision with a figure dressed in Gleaming White calling out my name and entreating me to come Home, I can't imagine knowing that that happened at 250W instead of 245W like the last ride being useful information.
Power meters are a racers training tool, so that during training a racer can increase his power output, to drive taller gears and therefore go faster. During a race the power meter itself probably adds too much weight and takes too much parasitic power itself to be used. HRM are useful for physical training, especially for those who might going up heart attack ridge, exceed their Max HR and keel over. Useful for overweight and out of shape riders, wanting to fix either.