Comments on: First thoughts on a power meter

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 22:08:41 +0000

Seeing how fast you fly up most hill climbs on Strava (how I found your blog- I googled your name from my local Streatley Hill ;0) ) I think you’re certainly not going to go slower with one fitted!

I’d be really interested to see a meaningful comparisons with what I term ‘Strava Watts’ (the ones they calculate).

It will be really interesting seeing how you chose to incorporate the data into your training.

I must say, I’m only just starting to use a HRM for my training (very amateur) and so far, I can pre-empt my HR Alarms by about a second just going on feel alone so will be interesting to see if you can do the same with power.

Good luck and keep us posted!

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:22:31 +0000

I definitely concur with the above,

For a short hill climbs a PM is more useful when looking back at the data to see improvement over time, especially if you plan to make significant changes to your training regimen such as adding weight training or technique specific work.

I’d recommend Golden Cheetah for analysis of the data http://www.goldencheetah.org/, it also has a nice utility for recording PM data and displaying it as a graph in real time, which is great to use with a turbo trainer rather the trying to look down at your head unit.

By: tejvan

tejvan — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 08:23:26 +0000

£1400 for Quark power meter (I got the 100g lower weight option)

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 17:25:07 +0000

How much did you pay for it mate?

By: tejvan

tejvan — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:11:41 +0000

Thanks Jon, sounds good advice.

By: Jon MacKinnon

Jon MacKinnon — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 14:08:53 +0000

As a user of a power meter for the last 2.5 years I can tell you now that it’s completely useless for looking at during short sharp efforts, but on long steady climbs (or in your case, TT’s) it’ll be incredibly useful, once you know what YOUR numbers are, which is the most important thing. XYZ rider might have an FTP of 350 watts, ABC rider 375 watts, but neither of them are you, and the only thing that’s comparable in that respect is w/kg.

I would say use the power meter for 3-6 months before you actually make any judgement on it. Don’t pay attention to it during your rides, just check your data afterwards and you’ll soon start noticing trends. It’s a shame the TT season is coming to a close now because it would have been incredibly useful for you to have had it on this season so you could do winter training using your power numbers and see if you’ve improved, after all, cycling is so full of variables, wind, weather, equipment, etc. but the one thing that is a constant is power.

I’m by no means an expert but if you’d like to talk power data then feel free to drop me an email.