Originally Posted by
donrhummy
So am I correct that this means it will be useless on quick sprint intervals (e.g. 10 seconds on, 20 seconds off)? I thought I read (in DCRainmaker's piece) that some of the power meters recorded 2-3 times a second even with the Garmin head unit. Is this incorrect?
It depends on whether you're trying to do Tabatas at a particular targeted power (and you probably shouldn't be). Tabatas are done "full on" for a particular interval of time. I suppose if you were doing a more exotic version of Tabatas it could have an effect.
Is this a limitation of Ant+ or of Garmin's head units?
The ANT+ standard broadcasts at 4Hz but most ANT+ head units choose to record one signal per second from the four they receive. They typically don't keep all four and then average them, they typically just ignore three of the signals and keep one. Which one they keep seems to vary. We've noticed differences between different Garmin units (like, the 500, the 510, the 800, and the 810). The ANT+ standard does have some limitations but I think this is more about Garmin's implementation.
Am I making you sorry yet for asking these questions? This is why I generally give one sentence answers.