Fastfwd01

I'm weighing options for upgrades and curious what opinions are on a power meter for my level of interest in cycling vs the cost and other options. I'm frankly more into cycling for fitness and at the most possibly participating in a few metric centuries/centuries, gran fondos, etc. I do enjoy improving my Strava segment placements. I only started cycling last year. I'm not really 'training' though with any specific training regiment. I thought I might start doing intervals when I got a trainer over the winter, but I never did much more than follow a few Youtube trainer sessions to keep myself from totally losing all gains I made last year. I would like to see my speed and times improve so that I might complete a century in under six hours or better. I completed my third over the weekend and I goofed off watching some rowing races and wound up at about 6:17 after piddling around the event getting water which was more or less unavoidable. I'm at about 960 miles total for the year so far. I really need to burn off the weight I gained over the winter more than anything to see improvement.

My bike is a '15 Aluminum Synapse 105. Not a super light bike. I considered lighter wheels, but went with a set of Mavic Aksiums instead as my second set. I was a little leery of spending a fortune on lighter wheels with disc brakes and not knowing if I could even transfer them to another bike or be limited by what they would transfer over to. I've got a Garmin 510 Performance Bundle and I've really appreciated what more it has brought to my cycling. I looked at the 810/1000, but I'm not sure that right now they really offer anything more for what I'm doing - mostly sticking to the multiuse trails. It might breathe new life into my enjoyment though if I braved getting out of my routine with a computer that has mapping IDK.

I see so much talk about power meters and how essential they are as a training tool, but they are so crazy expensive! I might consider the Garmin Vector S, but I'm not sure it is money well spent for me that might be better spent on something else.

Thanks for whatever input you might offer.

WhyFi

If you're not going to train, I don't see much point in a PM other than to scratch the 'cool toy' itch (and there's certainly nothing wrong with that).

caloso

I've had a power meter for several seasons now. I think they're great for training. But only if you're willing to use the data properly. That means testing, collecting data, setting up a power based training plan, doing the plan, collecting more data, analyzing it, retesting, adjusting your plan, etc. And/or hiring a coach to help you do all that analysis and planning.

Otherwise, it's just a gadget.

Doge

In the -33 forum there is a thread on training with power.
IMO they are for training, and using to post cool data about how powerful you are. If you have a coach, it might tell them something.
Look for a wheel with a Power Tap on eBay and just use that as your primary wheel.

Seattle Forrest

I'm going to rent a power meter for a week. I have a specific need for one but it's not ongoing. Anyway, you might consider doing the same if possible, it will give you an idea what you're getting into and you can see if it might actually benefit you. (I agree with the other replies, though, that unless you plan to use the data to train, or calculate VO2max or something, it probably won't be very useful.)

bbbean 

Reasons to get a power meter:
1) You like data.
2) You want to improve your performance.
3) You want to track your calories.
4) You can afford it.

Reasons not to get a power meter:
1) None of the above apply.

tekhna

You might consider an old powertap. I picked up a wired powertap for 200 bucks.

merlinextraligh

When to buy a Power Meter? After you've read Training and Racing with Power by Allen and Coggan, https://www.amazon.com/Training-Racin.../dp/1934030554 and you still want one.

FLvector

I agree with the others regarding use for training and your ultimate goals. If you don't have the discipline to set a schedule and do specific intervals, this will likely be just a novel toy after the new wears off. If you want to step things up and hire a coach to prepare your weekly training schedule it will be a great tool. If you rely on your own enthusiasm to do the same, sounds like it isn't going to happen unless you find some motivation. It takes some time (several months) to collect enough useful data and then you'll need to learn how to use the software to analyze it. There's a bit of a steep learning curve at first, but if you're sincerely interested you'll learn fast if you stick with it.

The power meter is helpful to calculate your FTP and set your training zones, but you could do almost as well using a heart rate monitor. You can read up on the differences between using a HRM and a PM, and decide if the differences are worth the investment. Your call.

technobuyer

I've had a powertap for about a month so far. My gateway drug into power was Trainer Road/Sufferfest. The virtual power function allowed me a way to objectively evaluate my performance, even on the fly.

The improvements made using virtual power were significant, and won me over to the concept. Since you already have a trainer, I think you can get trials of Trainer Road. You might give it a shot, just to see if training with power is something that interests you.

I laced a new G3 laced into some Zipp 101's I got off ebay. So far, I am very happy with this. I now use the real power numbers on TrainerRoad/Sufferfest 2-3x a week, and then do a couple of longer outdoor rides also. Using the powermeter, I have a target to hit, regardless of terrain, slope, or wind. I use it as a pacing tool as well, knowing that I can do x amount of time, at x wattage, is useful to me.

I don't think I would want to go back to not having it.

Drew Eckhardt 

When you're willing to adopt a structured training plan which you can taste test at no cost with the Garmin you already own. merlinextraligh's recommendation of reading Training and Racing With a Power Meter and still wanting one is also reasonable.

Otherwise a power meter won't buy you much, although you can say the same for even more expensive equipment tweaks which won't make you appreciably faster.

If you're going to ride about six hours a week you want a structured training plan if it doesn't conflict with your personality (riding so slow on easy days children pass you on tricycles is too difficult for some people, and others just don't want to ride very hard).

This holds _regardless_ of what your goals are - be faster, go farther without training 20 hours a week, keep up with larger friends, loose more weight, etc.

Fitness is an exponentially decaying weighted daily average; and you don't have enough to work with when you're averaging less than about 1.5 hours a day 4 hours a week or 1 hour a day 6 days a week.

If you're going to have a structured training plan power is the way to do it since it's not affected by fatigue (efforts feel tougher than they are because you're tired, but you can dig deeper), doesn't lag behind like heart rate, doesn't drift upwards over intervals like heart rate, and its measurement is unaffected by things like heat and hydration.

At this point the incremental cost to do that isn't interesting versus the things most avid cyclists are already spending money on.

I increased my power 25% in the first three months I switched from just riding along doing tempo rides with rest days as needed to having a plan with intervals, rest days to be fresh enough for those, rest weeks to keep that maintainable and allow super compensation, etc.

After I fell off the wagon and grew from 185 to 205 pounds measuring 36" around I had a base year with just enough tempo days to avoid boredom and got back to the size I was riding in the 1990s - 140 pounds with a 27" waist without being hungry.

They can be had for $0 or negligible incremental cost. I spent less on my Powertap wheel set than friends did their alloy wheels.

The 4iiii crank arm unit is $400 brand new, and used Powertaps have been under $300 for years.

Fastfwd01

Thanks everyone for your input. I starting looking around for more info and found this: How To Interpret Power Data And What To Do With It - USA Cycling

So, now, after I have heard all of the talk (elsewhere) that a power meter is some kind of indisputable measure of performance - this introduces the watt per kilo/pound into the equation and sort of dispels that. LOL

bbbean 

If that's what you got from that article, you may still be unclear on the concept.

Doge

It does not tell you a whole bunch. The whole W/kg thing has a length power can be held, does not take into account bike, and does not measure how often or long it can be repeated. Some riders can hit high W/kg, rest 2 min and hit it again and again, while others may hit a higher number - just once. You have to be able to have those W/Kg at the end of the race/ride. Then you have wind. Some riders are slipperier than others.
Its all nice to know, but my son does not race with one, nor does he want one, although he trains with one.

Carbonfiberboy 

So true. Stoker and I did a hard 46 mi. group ride on Sunday. We went as hard as we could for most of the ride, lots of time in our upper HR zones. And we still had fire in our legs at the finish. What a feeling!

No PM on the tandem: crazy expensive. But we'd like to have a PM. It's really hard to go by HR when training on successive days. All we can do is go out and hit it and then check our estimated power on Strava for segments we ride all the time. Neither RPE nor HR always tell you what you want to know. If you have the need to know it, that is.

caloso

I think the OP could get a lot of value out of a HRM and a copy of Carmichael's Time Crunched Training Plan. There's a century plan and it can be used with HR. HR is hard to use for short intervals, but it works reasonably well for longer intervals up to threshold.

Doge

There is a philosophy difference some (me) have. That is when you feel too tired to put out your normal watts - don't. Same is true for HR. When it hurts to reach a HR you reach all the time - don't.
As such - I think experience listening to your body is the best judge of what zone you are / and should be riding in.

Carbonfiberboy 

This is true. However IME one can get quite a training bump by digging deep while holding onto a group. The bunch is your freebie PM. But solo, one doesn't know if one is hitting one's numbers or not, one just knows it's tough. But just because it's tough isn't reason not to do it, perhaps quite the opposite. Real time data would be helpful.

Drew Eckhardt 

4iiii crank arm pods are $350-$400 each for alloy cranks that are flat on the inside, and can be run in single or dual sided configurations.

PowerBeat is a similar unit for $499 still in beta.

carpediemracing 

Some thoughts.

First, if you want to get substantially lighter, it's hard to do it just cycling. There's a diet aspect to it as well. I've been racing a long, long time, I typically go up/down 10 lbs a year, but when I dieted (for the first time) in 2009 I dropped about 30 lbs from my "light" weight, putting me at almost 40 lbs lighter than the same time the year prior. I slowly gained about 20 lbs back and last Nov (2014) I started dieting again. I was about the same weigh as 2009, within a few pounds, but recently derailed and now am about 3-4 lbs higher. It's a calorie thing and no matter how much I rode my weight stabilized at a higher than optimal range. For example I was 195-ish down to 183 in 2009 (I'm 5'7"), and I was racing 3-4 days a week, doing one or two 2-2.5 hour group rides, plus sometimes an hour on my own. I went on a diet at 183 (my "light" weight for the year) in Oct 2009. I started 2010 at 155, saw as low as 149 in Jan, stabilizing at 158 for most of the season. I was 181 when I started dieting in Nov 2014, now about 161 (hovering at 158 for a while). I barely trained while I dieted in 2009, and this time I trained only to counter excess calories, but I couldn't ride very hard because I was at a lower calorie count consistently.

Second, if you want to have more structure training then a powermeter will help immensely. It gives you immediate feedback on how hard you're going. If you use HR there's a lag time of minutes. Say you want to do a 5 minute effort and you want to hold a certain output level. I just started doing some intervals (for someone else's experiment) and my HR will start at 120-130 and slowly, over 3-4 minutes, go to 155 or so. The whole time I'm pretty consistent with power output. If I was using a HR monitor I'd be going much harder at the beginning because my HR would tell me I'm going too easy, but that's not optimal (from what I understand). Someone pointed out that the Vector PM has about a 2 second lag time for displaying immediate power - that would drive me nuts doing these intervals, adjusting effort and then waiting 2 seconds to see what the number says. I can adjust every second or so right now. With a HRM it'd be impossible to make such adjustments. HRM is like driving a blimp - turn right, wait a minute or three, see if you turned enough. PM is like driving a car - you stop paying attention and you immediately start drifting a bit. Feedback is immediate.

Third, until a couple weeks ago I never used my PM for training (and realistically I don't plan on using the PM once I'm done with this thing I'm doing - it goes on for 6 more weeks). I mean, okay, I looked at the screen sometimes, I'd get reference points (300w is hard, 150w is okay, 110w is easy), I used the clock ("I have to be back home by 2:00 on the SRM"), and I'd use the speed/cadence/HR as sanity checks (to make sure everything was working, if I was going a bit better on familiar stretches of road, etc). But the real reason I got the PM was because I liked doing post-ride analysis. I also got a similar device for my car, when I had a sporty car. It registered G-forces and could reasonably calculate acceleration (0-60, quarter mile, etc). I didn't race my car, I used it to commute 90 minutes each way each day, but I enjoyed seeing what kind of numbers I could generate and compare them to what the car allegedly did. So, for example, I didn't realize just how much lateral force you feel when your car is cornering at .87Gs (my sporty car's factory rating). I also didn't realize just how much difference tires can make, and how turning radius affects Gs. On a smaller radius corner I hit 1.02 Gs on stock size - 225/245 - but (stickier) aftermarket tires; later I went to much wider - 275/315 - aftermarket tires, so much so that the G-force meter went flying a few times and it broke.

I race my bike and all that but I don't pay attention to my powermeter except after I get off the bike. Then it's interesting. It's a nice history, a more solid training log, and it records things much more honestly and precisely than anything else I know of. Within a few months you'll have enough ride history to have an idea of where you are, what you can do, and have a sense of what is "good" for you. You'll learn that the rides that you felt horrible on were actually rides where you pushed much harder than normal, you'll see that on the rides just before you got sick that you were, in fact, riding much easier than normal. Etc.

Since I enjoy crunching data I enjoy having the powermeter, even if, as a really good friend of mine said, "dude, you're the last guy on the planet that should have a powermeter". Meaning for training. But for number crunching it's fun for me. If you want a PM and you can afford it then get one. It's a fun tool if you're into whatever it can give you. Doesn't have to be for training or anything concrete like that.

Drew Eckhardt 

I dropped from 205 to 148 pounds over 2014 then on to 140 (like when I was riding in the 1990s) riding, only eating enough I was sated 30 minutes after the last bite, always eating when hungry (I did switch from snacking on carbs to protein and fat like mixed nuts or left over meat), and not eating when not hungry.

I treated 2014 as a 5266 mile base year (started slow ramping up, finished with a 622 mile December, lost some time due to other issues) with just enough harder efforts mixed in to prevent boredom since I noticed my appetite historically increased with exertion leading to stable weight as one hard day became two and easy days became tempo rides.

That was fairly easy.

Studies showing comparable power output between riders with traditional threshold training plans and periodized approaches with 20% of sessions in Friel's zone 5 and beyond and the rest at zone 2 or below suggest I may have done the same weight loss and not done a year at reduced power.

Lots of high intensity doesn't lend itself to weight loss because you burn more glycogen and less fat than at lower intensities, and must eat to replenish your glycogen supply if you want to keep riding at high output.

With more balance you can power your slower rides with more fat, and it looks like you can increase the fat share as intensity increases with a lower carb diet

High-fat, low-carb diets: how to try one for yourself | CyclingTips

For some one with more latitude in the sort of riding they do than racing most days that may be an option.

carpediemracing 

I've posted this elsewhere but I'm anxious to try the 4iiii pod/s. Luckily I can compare it with my SRM and then decide what to do for other bikes (mountain bike, tandem, track bike).

Disclaimer: I do know someone at the company, I am NOT getting a price break on the power meter, I am getting one to give away at the races I promote, and I've received free product from them in the past for my races and one item for myself.

carpediemracing 

Good points. For what it's worth my race days in 2009 typically consisted of 1-3 hours of not very hard riding with 1-2 hours of hard riding (inverse so the 3 hour easy meant 1 hour racing, 1 hour warm up might have been paired with 1.5 hours racing). The group rides were 2-2.5 hours. I didn't consume calories for group rides. I had a sugar heavy diet at the time. Nowadays not so much, I actually avoid sugar.

Doge

I guess I don't really know what the OP is doing or the goal. I subscribe to the belief that more Zone 3 riding is not better than Zone 2 riding for getting faster. There is a mix that is right and I do not believe a power meter is needed for that. Certainly one is needed to post how well you are doing, If a rider is truly isolated from any group that can challenge them, then yup - they need a PM to tax them 1-2 days a week. But if they have a group option of riders that are better than them, no PM is needed - to get better.

Carbonfiberboy 

True, true. So for us, at our age, and needing 2 PMs for one bike, not going to happen. But we'd still like it.