Jughed

My phone talks to my Garmin, and alerts people when/if I wreck - so it stays on.

Wrecked real bad last year - wife was alerted and called me... my phone ringing helped me come out of my knocked out state. I limped out of the trail I was on, she was waiting at the truck with bandages, food... cut my bike clothes off and drove me to the ER. It's a nice feature.

Eric F 

I keep mine in my left jersey pocket and turned on because I often stop to take pics during my rides, and occasionally I get calls or messages that need to be addressed at a higher priority than my bike ride. A call/message alert pops up on my Wahoo, and I can filter the urgency of it immediately.

Eric F 

My concern about my phone on my handlebar is getting damaged in a crash. Also, I much prefer the smaller format of my Wahoo Bolt. That said, navigation is not a feature I use very often. The Bolt is not excellent for navigation.

seypat

I wear progressive bifocals. I have one pair of sunglasses I do all outside/sun activities in. Denali somethings. I wonder if this brand of sunglasses are available in bifocals? According to the spokesperson they are the ones to wear.

seypat

As for the phone/bike computer, my watch does all that. I don't have a need to be constantly checking my data. I can look at my watch if I need to. It displays all the data fields that a bike computer does. If you do multi sport, you need one anyway. The phone and similar items go in a small dry bag in one of my jersey pockets. I'm a heavy sweater. I've also had zip lock bags fail. The dry bag does it's job.

Jughed

For training/intervals - the bike computer displaying heart rate and power is awesome.

Long rides or efforts - having power data right there is a great way to meter your efforts. If I'm riding 3 hours with a tail wind and just feeling great flying along - I may be gassing out, and have to suffer back into the head wind. The power data is a great piece of information...

seypat

That displays on my watch, same as a bike computer. They do make mounts so I could put the watch on the handlebars if I wanted to.

Eric F 

Yep. HR and Power data is valuable for me on most of my rides, especially in my preparation for a big event coming up this Sunday. During the event - which will probably take about 6 hours - constraining my efforts when I'm feeling fresh will give me the best chance to have something left to get to the finish. Always riding with HR/Power data has taught me what my target numbers need to be on event day.

Jughed

el double post

genejockey 

I find having a head unit with speed, cadence, HR, and distance works for me. I wear a watch, so I can check the time, and I sometimes (rarely) use it as a stopwatch for a few climbs. I look at the head unit more often than I'd want to take my left hand off the bars and angle it so I can read the display.

Uncle_Moose

As a newer road biker, I think it's not adhering to the "buy once cry once" philosophy.

The Chemist

I just started using a power meter with my new bike and could use some pointers. What power do you aim for to make sure you don't overexert yourself early on a long ride? <200W? Even less than that?

Thanks!

50PlusCycling

Carbon fiber, disc brakes, power meters, gimmicky saddles, electronic shifting, threadless headsets, tubeless tires,

Perhaps I am showing my age here,

tomato coupe

Aim for 183.7 W.

rsbob 

Unfortunately there is no easy answer unless you use ZWIFT or something similar to track your watts. How old are you? How fit are you? Can you ride 100 miles in 5 hours. 6 hours, 7 hours? How hot is your environment? Do you live in a hilly or flat or mixed area? Can you ride 50 or 30 miles at what average speed? So many variables.

Some people can put out massive watts for hours and a 68 YO like me who is fit, but not super fit or retired racer and do 150 Watts for a few hours.

I would recommend starting with a low average wattage like 130 for a long ride. Too easy? Do 150? Too easy do 175? I can do 175 for an hour with no issue but not for 3n hours. So just keep increasing your watts slowly. Better to not overdue right out of the gate.

The Chemist

Thanks. I'm 42 and I can do a metric century in about 3h 15min of riding and a full century in around 5 and a half. So I'd say I'm in pretty decent shape, although I'm riding in very flat environment and at sea level, so I'd definitely not be as fast with hills or at higher elevation. I guess I'll just ride a long ride the way I usually do and see what power is comfortable over the whole ride to use as my baseline.

Jughed

(I'm no expert in any of this)...

I found my max heart rate.
I found my +/- Garmin predicted FTP & VO2 max power.

Plenty of online "zone" calculators online.

I set my riding and training zones from those numbers.

Too much time at or above FTP (Zone 4 or threshold) levels, things start to go sideways on long, 2+hour, rides. Zone 3 (tempo) is OK for fast sub 2 hour rides. High Z2 is century power. Group rides - all bets are off.

Lombard

You think?

Bob Ross

Add this to the list:

This Square-Wheeled Bicycle Works Like a Pedal-Powered Tank

https://gizmodo.com/square-wheeled-bicycle-bike-pedal-tank-wheels-the-q-1850332349

Lombard

Someone was really bored.

tomato coupe

At least he didn't list derailleurs ...

livedarklions

I don't know what you'd properly call them, but those square things are definitely not wheels--they don't actually roll. They're just frames that the caterpilar treads are wrapped around. There are wheels driving that tread, but they're round.

Cute stunt, I guess.

badger1

Time to bring in some science to clear up all this confusion about circles wheels.

ofajen

I find them helpful for harder training but single speed works for me, too. YMMV.

Otto

greatscott

I was going to respond, but after reading stuff like, "it's their money, they can spend it anyway they want", such a statement had nothing to do with the question, I decided not to waste my time just to get some smart ass response. Time is money, so I wasted my time with this biking question, not that the question was bad, it was some of the responses that were.