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?
sure!zones are also just that--zones (ranges). People want to pin their threshold, for example, to a number, but on any day what we can do at "100%" is still a range. AP is even less important in that circumstance.
That aside, if someone wants to have an AP target for some sort of steady state effort, the way to get there is to have every pedal stroke as close to the desired average as possible and generally not to make up for dips in power or to ease off a bit to counteract spikes. Mathematically AP is best hit by constantly making up for the prior pedal strokes, but a point of view is that it is not best for the training. Again, just a point of view and something to consider.
Originally Posted by
dnuzzomueller
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.
people use many ways to estimate threshold, and their is an inclination to pick the highest one. Some crits (or efforts) have a tendency to produce high power files....eg something like the mt hood crit where one must surge up a hill then basically coast due to the nature of the course/turns. This will suit someone with more anaerobic capacity and will likely overestimate what could be done for a steady-state hour. Just something to think about when using NP for these things.
Originally Posted by
dnuzzomueller
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?
3s is basically instant power with just a hint of smoothing to calm down the display so our eyes/brains can process it. 10s obviously has more smoothing applied. Use whatever works for you and gives you the most success!