shovelhd

What's wrong with the .fit files? It works fine for me.

shovelhd

I could never get mine to work.

shermo

Yeah that's the obvious solution. The main problem is that I have a habit of leaving my Garmin on which then merges multiple rides together. I split it up in GC so it's correct, but the original fit files will produce odd results.

My coach can certainly fix that, but I'm giving him a year's worth of data, so that's not a small job.

Perhaps I can get the wko trial and fix all my previous .fit files, then be more mindful in the future about doing splits correctly on the Garmin.

Or are you saying you can export from GC as .fit files?

shovelhd

You mean you didn't do a lap reset? You have rides that are linked together with long pauses?

I did not export from Golden Cheetah. I back up my .fit files regularly to a folder on my computer. I just zipped them up and sent them off to my coach. No problems.

slynkie

The downside of .fit files is that they have no comments/markup from you. Emailed comments can be vague. Your coach can probably figure most of it out just by looking at the data, but it may not always be so clearcut, and/or it their interpretation may not match yours.

shermo

Yeah.

I think this should work. I'll just use the WKO trial to clean up my older stuff.

Thanks.

shovelhd

That's true. We work around that with email and the phone. I am generally not a vague person.

tetonrider

do a batch export from GC to the ".pwx" format. then zip and send your coach the files. he can then easily pull them into WKO+.

very easy!

tetonrider

for doing a year at once, just do the bulk export. then going forward, send the .FIT (original) or export the individual file(s) from GC as you go along. assuming you add comments, you'll generally want to do the latter.

.FIT file + emailed comments works great on an ongoing basis...except if he is playing catch-up with his coach and already has the comments in GC. saving all the comments in GC (or WKO+) is nice because it makes for easier review for one's own purposes, but also makes it easy when trying to get someone new caught up with one's training.

just a thought to consider if you are not already annotating your own files in WKO, GC or whatever chosen analytic software.

RayfromTX

Hi y'all. I just got my SRM yesterday. Love it. Went out with lights and rode in the hills for two hours. The first hour I averaged 250 including the warmup. For the whole ride I averaged 265 so I guess the second hour averaged 280. My average heart rate was 134. Max was 152. I started riding last spring and I'm 51. I've put on 8,900 miles so far this year. Two questions I have are, how much more improvement might I expect and what should I expect as a 20 minute TT average power based on yesterdays numbers?

shovelhd

The only way to know what to expect is to go out and do it. Rides tell you little. Do a 20 minute test.

RayfromTX

I did one in may at Pedal Hard training center and it just about killed me and came in at 295. I guess I've improved a bit since then.

shovelhd

Do it again on the bike with the power meter. Get used to doing them.

waterrockets 

PH has a nice setup, but my power is always a bit lower there, for the general trainer reasons: heat, lowered O2 in the room, lack of inertia (unless you were on the SRM).

Shovel is right. Embrace the 20 minute efforts out on the road. Even a short burst guy like myself can get pumped for a strong 20 all out. In Austin, a great place to go is the south mopac/45 loop. I also do 20 at the Veloway and in Travis Country (main loop), and have gotten good at not losing much consistency in the corners.

RayfromTX

I live out past Dripping Springs so I'm blessed with great places to ride in my own back yard. Maybe I'll see you on the road.

waterrockets 

Cool. Practice holding power on those hills out there. When you need a steady output for a workout, it's a good skill to have to be able to nail your power up or down hills. If I'm just going too fast down a steep hill, I hold a brake to maintain power.

FWIW, I think most of southwest Austin has great places to ride in our own back yard (I freaking love training in this town)

RayfromTX

That's just what I've been doing.

aaacidrap

I should have my first Powertap next week, and have a question about usng it on the trainer: Will I be able to measure power on the indoor trainer if I don't have a speed/cadence sensor with my Garmin Edge 500? Like could I just track my power only while stationary? On the roads I just use the GPS to measure speed. I don't think it will pick up the GPS satellite when indoors on the trainer, besides I won't be moving to get the timer started......

plantrob

Shouldn't be a problem. Just get beyond the display where it's searching for satellites, hit the start button, and you're good to go.

kindablue

Yep, power is measured the the torque produced in the hub (sorry engineers, I'm not in the know for these kinds of things), so pressure on the pedals that causes the wheel to move will produce a power reading. You actually don't even need the sensor as well. I think the PT uses some sort of equation to determine cadence as well as speed indoors.
I use one on rollers/trainer.

aaacidrap

Great! Thank you!

waterrockets 

Yeah, the powertap measures torque on the hub at regular intervals. It also measures its rotation rate. Work (energy, in Joules) = Torque * Angular Distance. Produce that as a rate (divide by time) and you have power in Watts.

Since it has a fairly fast sample rate, the powertap can detect the power spikes from each pedal stroke, and measures the time between pulse peaks (or pulse troughs) to determine pedal stroke rate, and then cadence.

The powertap (and any other strain-gauge power meter) doesn't care about tire pressure, tire type, wheel size (would work for 20" recumbent), headwinds, tailwinds, aero bars, hills, descents, trainers, or rollers. It just records torque and rotation rate.

valygrl

I turn off the GPS on my Garmin 705 indoors, since the intermittent satellite capture seems to clash with the speed signal from the GPS, so if I leave the GPS on, it sometimes autostop/autostarts.

merlinextraligh

^ you can also turn off the auto pause feature, so it runs regardless of speed.

valygrl

Yes, but if you turn the GPS off, then it records/displays the speed from the ptap hub, instead of the 0-speed from the low-signal GPS.

My garmin seems to figure out to turn the gps back on next time i use it, which is good, b/c i would never remember to turn it back on myself.