Originally Posted by
70Degrees
I've just started using a power meter in the last couple of weeks. Although it should have been obvious, I discovered this fact -- instantaneous power is constantly and quickly fluctuating. One of my Garmin Edge screens shows instant power and average power. How many of you find instant power a useful metric during the ride as opposed to, say, 3 second average? I want to learn how to better control and smooth out my power output. I think my choices for the data field are instantaneous, 3 second average, 10 second average, and 30 second average (which is obviously too long).Separately, does anyone make use of Garmin's proprietary "Normalized Power" or "Intensity Factor" metrics?
Most people choose 3 second power. Some like to have a page with multiple time frames. Useful for intervals. But if you have a newer Garmin, the power gauge is 3 second power.
NP and IF can be useful, NP is generally considered a better indicator of a ride for training purposes than avg power. IF is more like a backup singer. Probably NP and TSS are the more important ones. For what it's worth, these calcs are from Training Peaks, Garmin licenses them. Because they're generally considered to be a pretty good representation of different things. But all of those are for the entirety of a ride, a lot of people also find it useful to use the lap button to make data from a specific part of the ride easy to isolate. Example: when I do hill repeats, I ride to an appropriate hill, hit lap, ride up, hit lap, ride down, hit lap, rinse and repeat. Then when I'm looking at the ride data, I want to know things like whether I was able to keep hitting my power targets, or when I start seriously fading.
In Connect (web, not app) look at Reports > Cycling > Power Curve. Change it from 4 weeks to all. The graph is real useful, but scroll down below.