Originally Posted by
Hermes
A better read is Training and Racing with a Power Meter by Allen and Coggan. Training with power is much more than "knowing" your power or being able to say I produce X watts. It is about hitting power numbers that are meaningful to you over discreet periods of time to improve VO2 Max and Threshold Power as well as others. Downloading individual power numbers into Training Peaks Software and tracking progress becomes very meaningful and motivating. Post ride analysis leads to incite on how to increase performance. This benefit even makes the SRM cost justifiable. The question becomes how many power meters can one have and which bikes to equip to have it make sense when you are paying the cost. For us, we do not ride the tandem enough to justify yet another power meter solution.
If a pedal based power solution becomes available that will work for the track, I would get two setups. Then I could easily swap pedals to the tandem and effectively set up the equivalent of four bikes with power. And BTW, the current SRM solution for a track bike is 3700 Euros if you are looking for a gee whiz factor.
Hermes, You are perfectly correct. Most people believes that a power meter is just used to do your workouts or just see your power during the ride, but as most of us that really train with power know that one of the most important aspects of power is the ability to analyze you ride after and keep a real track of your efforts and the amount of stress your body is enduring day by day, week by week and over a whole season, allowing you to train and recover correctly, also the ability to measure your fitness and build a power profile over time. Having a power meter on our tandem stills allow us to get TSS and IF for the rides that we do on tandem, this keeps our data power data without gaps on TSS and IF and really allows us to maximize our training. One of the things we've learned on a tandem is that you are only as good as you are as a team (the two of you). So having the ability to see individual power on the tandem is good, but you are still connected and it is really is one machine with two engines that need to ride as one and at the end of the ride combined power still is going to be super important.