I'll start off by saying that if I ever get out of the PowerTap club into the spider club, right now I favor SRM by a pretty big margin. The upgrade is not in my plans though, as the PowerTaps are working great for me, and I don't swap wheels based on activity (racing, TT, training, etc.).
Originally Posted by
tetonrider
Just curious, but why do you find that this is so important? Average power is one button press away on the SRm head units. I was the guy with 10 data fields on each screen of my garmin (does anyone find that surprising?
) so was understandably nervous when making the switch away from garmin.
i soon realized why real-time AP doesn't matter: if my goal is an interval at 300 watts, all that matters is what I am doing right now. If I have made it halfway through and my AP is 280w, that doesn't mean that I Gould do the remainder at 320. Took me a long time to figure that out, as I had some years where I was aiming for AP goals.
The found of SRM has a strong belief on this matter, so the unit reflects his sensibility. After training this way for a number of years I am inclined to agree.
Interval power is important to the way I train. I run 10s averaging, and hold target power throughout, unless I realize the target power is incorrect due to changes in fitness or fatigue. When I change my target mid-interval, it's an explicit change, and the number I get is important to me.
Originally Posted by
echappist
Now of course, maybe you and Uli don't need it, but i find it tremendously helpful. Hell, i have three fields displayed for my workout: lap avg, 10 sec rolling, and 3 sec rolling. Why? Because i can, and because i get better pacing from my intervals, especially the shorter ones(1-2 minute variety).
I'm still running Cervos on my bikes, so I only get to choose one duration, but I agree with your reasoning.
Originally Posted by
tetonrider
Im going to assume you are doing paced intervals vs all out at every pedal stroke. Consider this: let's say you are doing 5' efforts at 400w, pretty realistic for your size. If you look down 1' in and see that've been doing 420 for that minute, how will you respond? Should you then aim for 395 for the next 4 minutes? If you realized you were riding at 380 (inadvertently or it was all you could do in that minute), would you then try to ride 405 for 4'?
If I'm riding with interval avg on the display, I glance at it ever 15 seconds or so and would never accidentally end up 20W over unless I changed my target, or have some variability in my plan. On my hill repeat course, I come out of the first minute about 30W over because it starts off at 15% grade and I find it suits me better to ride that course a bit more intense on the steeps, as it would be in a race.
That said, if I did suddenly discover that I was accidentally 20W over my target, and then decided I wanted to correct it, I would do so by following the average on my display. You let up just a touch, and you'll start dropping a Watt every 15 seconds or so. I'll use this technique and end up meeting my target at the end of the interval.
I can consistently run ZCI™s and hill repeats with power averages met to the exact Watt on my display.
Originally Posted by
tetonrider
Again, just a point of view, but I offer it because I thought all the data on the screen at the same time was ESSENTIAL until coming to the above conclusion. I believe it has made my riding and the quality of my intervals better. It may not work with you, but it is something to consider, and the worst thing is that taking a fw moments to really think about it has no downside. In fact, it may just reinforce that you are making the right call for you. Never hurts for me to reexamine my long-held beliefs.
Yep, I offer the above not as a recommendation, but as an example of how I like to pace.
Originally Posted by
dnuzzomueller
Now I know I am going to receive some type of bashing for this but isn't there a point where the average power over a period is "Good enough" for the length/ type of the interval that you are doing?
For example if you are doing a sprint workout you would want every single stroke of your 15 seconds to be in Z7. But lets say you are going out and doing a 4 X 15 Z4 workout. At that point would it matter less the exact power you were putting out at any given point?
It just seems like the further and further you push the time of the interval the more it "smoothes out" your power. I mean according to Coggan your 1 hour NP is theoretically your FTP and for all anyone knows that NP could have been produced when doing a crit with an insane number of surges.
I guess I should boil this down into a question relating to my own Quarq in any case: I get heckled by teammates/ friends who all swear by 3 second power and 3 second power only for their intervals. I personally prefer 10 second for my longer stuff but if each of those pedal strokes really matter then shouldn't we all be using no averaging whatsoever?
It will indeed smooth out over time, but if there is a greater inaccuracy in a given system, how do you know that the inaccuracy trends to stay centered, rather than favoring high or low readings?
Changing to no averaging on power is going to be more stochastic, but not because your legs are putting out inaccurate amounts of force or something. We average our power because our brains can't process instantaneous numbers in a 20W range to determine what the average of those numbers is. You would tend to favor the 100s and 10s place digits, and could be missing the big picture. All power meters have error, and that will be stochastic as well, but it's an error, and averaging will not correct it (you can't pull the correct numbers out of thin air).