tspek

I'm playing a significant role in getting my girlfriends 19 year old brother into cycling (which appears to be keeping his nose clean).

When I got a text message yesterday demanding that I get the F out of the office and go on a bike ride with him, I thought it was a pretty good idea--given the lovely weather.

My intention was to take him on his first 2 hour ride at a easy pace. I made the mistake of letting him set the pace and he gave me a surprisingly decent work over on the way out. At our turnaround point we both realized we may have misjudged the length of the day so we had to race back to town to make sure we beat the setting sun (we were fine)--so I set the pace on the way back.

Outside + a little motivation = 2 hours IF .895 but this included several stops and me having to let up a little a few times to let him get back on my wheel on our way home. Last CP30 was a month ago on a trainer but I've actually fudged it up a little since then.

Does it seem reasonable to ride that hard for 2 hours?

silversx80

I'm hoping you're fatter than my lard-ass... or at least that your course was flat. My last race (hilly):


Peak 5s (1070 watts)
Peak 10s (824 watts)
Peak 20s (641 watts)
Peak 30s (602 watts)
Peak 1min (507 watts)
Peak 2min (407 watts)
Peak 5min (331 watts)
Peak 10min (282 watts)
Peak 20min (242 watts)
Peak 30min (247 watts)
Peak 60min (225 watts)

You can tell it was hilly, peak 30 min is better than peak 20 min.


Next race is perfectly flat, should make for some interesting power numbers.

fordfasterr

I am 6 ft. and weighed in @ 156-ish for that race. I carried two full water bottles with me that day which made the first lap hurt a bit more than I expected but after I dumped a bit of the water out (and drank some) and was down to just 1 bottle it was much easier + I was warmed up really well after the first full lap.

ZeCanon

ford, what kind of powermeter do you have?

fordfasterr

iBike GT with a Garmin 500.


edit:

and at home I have been training with this:



Nashbar Fluid Watt Master. (the old one that is wired).

Nate552

I'm having some torque issues with my Powertap. I've tried searching this thread but if you search "torque" you get a lot of posts where people have posted their ride data. I rode my bike on the trainer yesterday and the power was nuts, like 400 watts when soft pedaling. So, I tried to reset my torque and now it only displays 0 watts. When I go into the Test mode, and go to the 5th screen (the one with --- across the top and bottom) the Torque value is 999 (2 large 9's and a smaller one). I know this is wrong, but how do I fix it? Or can I? (Pt 2.4 wired, coded)

waterrockets 

Hmm. New batteries?

Nate552

I replaced the hub battery about 1 month ago, and the head unit about 2 weeks ago. I'm stumped, and unfortunately stuck in a hotel in IN, far from home where my tools are.

This is the first ride after shipping my bike in a Trico Iron Case. Perhaps it was dropped or smashed? Could that have messed up the hub? There is no visual evidence that the case was abused. (Shipped ground, no air travel).

Nate552

Went for a ride today and in the beginning the PT was reading all crazy, like 400 watts for soft pedaling. Then it slowly dropped to 0 and stayed there. So I just used it as a timer and didn't pay attention to it. Then, an hour into the ride I look down and the watts seem reasonable, and they stayed that way. When I returned to the hotel I looked at the Torque in the Test mode and it said 512, which is ok right?. WTH?

aham23

wko question: i did an indoor TT today, but didnt lap the actual TT effort. so, i have an hour worth of data, warm up and cool down included. i can pinpoint the TT effort in wko with no problem, but is there a way to add a lap or distinguish the TT effort after the fac that is permanent? thanks. later.

aham23

^^^^ got it. TP can be a pain to search and find things on, but i found what i needed to know in the support forum. later.

kudude

this is where you post the answer to your question, not that you just solved it

later

mattm

I think the way in WKO is to create a "range" - select the portion of the ride and Ctrl+r and give it a name.

aham23

^^^^ correct. that is what i did. later.

teetopkram

Here's a stupid question...I have a PowerTap Pro+ paired with a Garmin Edge 500. The Garmin will allow for instant, 3s rolling average, or 30s rolling average displays. When I;m doing interval training, which display is preferred? Does it depend on the length of the interval. For example, would 30s rolling average be OK for 20 minute threshold intervals, yet 3s rolling average be preferred for 3 minute intervals?

Only reason for asking is to see if I can get the numbers from jumping around all the time...drives me nuts.

waterrockets 

30" avg would probably be better for a long interval. It will encourage more gradual changes.

I run 10" on my powertap, and that's good for me. Anything shorter just responded too quickly for my training interests.

silversx80

I have the same thing (Pro+ and Edge 500). Depending on the training goal (and I haven't been using this thing for too long), I usually have lap-power (average), lap-time, HR, power (raw, not average) and cadence displayed.

3" changes pretty rapidly too, so I'd either deal with 30" or lap average.

tspek

For the options available on the 500, I use 3'. I generally have my lap average power and the 3' average, this lets me keep an eye on longer durations (such as a 20 min interval) while allowing me a more current number that isn't as jumpy as 1'.

rydaddy

I just started using my Pro+ with Edge 500. When I do 2 min+ intervals I actually look at both the 3s and 30s just to watch where my power is trending towards. My interval window actually contains 3s, 30s, and lap average. It's useful in making subtle adjustments in effort to stay in the right zone for the entire interval. That's my own observation, at least.



My question is - why do I need WKO+ when I can get Golden Cheetah for free?

teetopkram

Thanks. That sounds like a pretty good set-up. I'll see about making my display read that as well. Hopefully whenever Garmin puts out a firmware update that allows us to program our workouts (I know this is coming sometime), they'll also include more options for rolling averages (e.g., WR's 10s average sounds perfect).

mattm

I must admit I'm a bit confused by the idea of not wanting to see the power data in 'real time' - isn't that the accuracy we're paying so much for in a PT?

I realize sec-by-sec output is jumpy, but the smoother you are, the smoother the output will be too, right?

I mean do what you want, it doesn't really matter... just wonderin'.

kudude

Wow. That sounds REALLY nice. The ptap headunit can only display one number at a time, so I have it set on 3(5?) seconds right now. If I set up the interval right, and I'm doing one longer than 3 minutes I can click around and see the interval average, but it's certainly not ideal. Seeing all those numbers might very well make it easier to hit a wattage target over a longer period of time.



is 3 seconds really different from 1 second when we're talking real time? The problem is at a 90rpm cadence your power isn't consistent through the stoke, much less from stroke to stroke.

It's a common problem in experimental science -- look at any plot of the average global temperature as a function of month. From month to month you can't tell what is going on, since the temp varies with the season. If you do a yearly average and look over the course of several hundred years you can make some sense of it (or not, depends on who you talk to). Kind of the same thing with power measurement

mattm

I can see that, e.g. for smoothing - but can't you just use Lap Power for averaging?

I put Lap Power next to Power, to get the best of both worlds.

rydaddy

^Hmm, you somehow quoted me for something I didn't write (well, part of it at least). I'm still tooling around with the powertap. The 3s is slightly less jumpy than the 1s. I look more at 30s but if I'm falling behind I know my 3s needs to be higher than the 30. Kinda like averaging the numbers in my head.

What I'm pissed about is my Edge 500 erased my ride file from the Snelling Road Race. I'm very bitter, as that was my first RR with the powertap and I had some tough efforts that I was looking forward to analyzing...

tspek

Depends.

Try it out. Your desired lap average power is much easier to obtain when using 3s avg rather than 1s. That's been my experience.