Originally Posted by
23109VC
I’ve been reading about power meters and it sounds like a great way to train and improve - but I’ve never used one so I’m somewhat ignorant as to how they actually function. I currently don’t have a Garman I have a forward mount and I use my iPhone display in my Strava data when I ride.
is there someway that you display real time power numbers on a bike computer like a Garmin as your ride? I’m envisioning that as you ride there is like a instantaneous reading displaying about what you’re generating at the moment almost like looking at my heart rate sensor or my miles per hour it’s just another metric to measure how much energy I’m producing at the moment??
I understand at the end of a ride you can pull all the data and get averages and see how your power changed based on how far into the ride you are how tired you are are you going up a hill versus flat etc.... but I wasn’t sure if there’s someway to visualize the data as you ride real time or if it’s only something you analyze after the fact? I assumed it was something you can observe and monitor while you’re riding.
Out of curiosity if you were deciding between spending the money on a power meter or upgrading aluminum wheels to Chinese carbon fiber wheels like yoeleo - which would you spend the money on first?
I know the best upgrade is to get fit ride more etc. which believe me I’m working on it! But like a lot of us it’s fun to buy new trinkets and see how they affect my riding my bike came with the original Syncros aluminum wheels I’m wondering if upgrading to a decent quality carbon fiber wheel set will allow me to maintain higher speeds with less energy and scale faster or with a power meter helping my training to make me an overall more effective faster rider?
Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
As mentioned, yes.
I have 3 second power, average power, normalized power, speed, heart rate, and power zone all showing at the same time (you can get up to ten pieces of data shown at once on Garmins). For specific efforts, I have another screen that shows me the all of the above for just that specific effort.
I also have a screen that shows me how much time I've spent in each particular zone (most useful for ensuring I'm not soft-pedaling or coasting too much).
After the fact doesn't matter very much for training. For training, what your'e doing and how long you're doing it is most important. After the fact is useful for when you're racing or doing a group ride or simply going flat out without concern for power. Then you can see the numbers and see what was good or what can be improved. Then you use workouts based on those numbers during your ride to improve said numbers.
It's a real game changer, but only if you actually utilize it. Using power like you would use speed, just glancing down periodically to see what you're doing, is pretty pointless. I look at my power meter every 3-5 seconds when doing a workout, and probably every 15-20 seconds even when just riding around, even though I've been using one for nearly a decade and have my intensities fairly dialed in. It's extremely stochastic when you first try it, but you can improve your ability to hold tighter power ranges with practice, and in my experience, the higher the power, the easier it is to hold steady (except for <30 sec efforts which are just hold on and die slowly).
I abide by everything rubiksoval says, probably because I learned it from him, here on BF, prior to me getting my PowerTap G3 Hub PM 4-5 years ago, when it was first paired to a Garmin 800 and now a 520, which works flawlessly.
My general loose training plan that works for me is to simply monitor my power curve (typically just the last 3-6 months) as displayed in Strava or GoldenCheetah, and then pick a duration (or multiple durations) on the current curve that seem to have a lower power than I think it could be, usually denoted by a slight dip in that part of the curve (for example: see the dip at the 1 min. mark I have marked) relative to the rest of the curve around it, and simply go out and try to improve the avg. power of that duration by X number of watts. Sometimes it'll be the short 60 sec sprint stuff I work on, sometimes the 20-60 minute stuff, all based on how I'm feeling at the time, and what I've done in the week prior. But knowing/recognizing your body's current state of accumulated training stress is a whole other factor for determining when you SHOULD go out and hit 1,000 watts for 5 seconds, and your PM has little to do with that decision, other than allowing you to review what you've done in the past several days.
I would and did get a PM before any other major upgrade, but I'm a data analyst for fun, and by trade. And if an SPD power meter pedal existed, I would have gotten that instead of a hub, to allow me to move it easily between the 4 bikes (road, road/trainer, commuter, mtb). But if money weren't an issue, I'd get a hub/sprocket PM on each, for the reliability over pedals, which can get banged up a lot easier than a hub/sprocket, especially on mtb.
(and pay no attention to my curve for anything above 1,000 watts, since those are spikes that can sometimes occur in the data, and I haven't figured an easy way to smooth them out of the Strava power data, but the 24hr power data is REAL!)
