I got a Garmin for following mapped routes. Then I found I liked looking at the ride recordings -- seeing my efforts on climbs, how long the ride took, etc, and totals over time.
Last year, I got a power meter, a 4iiii left crank one. It's tiny and stealth -- I don't think most riders know I have a power meter (not a "poser meter", heh). It's
great for pacing and very interesting to see the ride data and seasonal trends. This early spring, I hadn't been riding enough, and felt very slow. But my recent rides are fairly close to last summer and fall's efforts, so I think I'm okay.
It's inspired me to work a little harder when riding, too.
Cost
The power meters are getting cheaper. And there's a lot more companies making them now. One-leg meters can be a bit inaccurate if you have more power in one leg than the other. Dual sided crank meters are finally getting cheaper. So I wouldn't be surprised if the single sided ones get even less expensive to compete. Maybe down toward $200 from the $350 to $450 current prices? If costs are a factor, you might wait until late summer to see what's new.
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Stats!
So, you also like stats.
Golden Cheetah is free software, with tons of charts and trend graphs. You can use it for formal training, or just to look at your riding. It's easy to get started, with lots of auto defaults, then you can modify the charts later as you want.
GC will automatically calculate your FTP after a few rides. And track it over the season, too. (FTP is essentially the best power you could put out on a hard one hour ride.)
The most useful to me is the CP (Critical Power) chart. This tracks your best power for all time periods from a few seconds to the longest ride you've done. It fits a curve to a few best effort points to show a theoretical max effort curve. Your current ride is shown as a line on the chart, too.
This chart is helpful to give me an idea of my power numbers for about 30 seconds, about 60 seconds, and about 5 minutes, to pace my all-out efforts on short steep climbs.
Example:
More charts:
Power vs ride time. Each dot is a one-second power recording, but with 3-second averaging to smooth the chart slightly. It's interesting how much power changes from second to second, even when trying to be smooth and consistent. My Garmin shows 3 second averaging and 30 second averaging.
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From a different ride, stacked charts. Intervals can be manually added, by dragging on the chart, or by selecting on the map page, or by a lookup of the highest power for a selected time interval. You can double click the interval from a left side list, and this chart zooms in to that time period.
Power in watts
W' balance. This estimates how much of my immediate reserves have been used up on strong efforts.
Heartrate
Speed
Cadence
Altitude
off the bottom of the photo:
Grade %
Normalized Power
