Originally Posted by MDcatV

Many respected coaches highly recommend them for use in racing, not to stare at and pace efforts, but rather to collect data for post race analysis in order to define strengths and weaknesses to tweak whatever training program they're crafting for their athlete.

Makes sense to me, I use one for both training and racing, and I'm a looooong way from being a wattage junky. However, pulling the post race graph helps re-create a diary of the race, which I use to remember what happened when, whether I made an error/or good decision, and assists in evaluating why I didnt make the break, win from it, etc.