Power Meters

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Zofo

Veteran
Location
Leicester
Any of you lot using Power Meters yet? Even tho my main goals are just to improve fitness, fight off middle age and blast 3 or 4 sportives a year. I'm a gadget head anyway and the price of these is dropping to a very tempting level. I currently train using standard HR Zones as per Joe Friel et al. and I note that he strongly recommends power meters for serious training, he explains that in practise HR only measures the work that the heart is doing, and not the muscles being trained.

Comments ?
 

Rob3rt

Man or Moose!
Location
Manchester
That is a rather limited interpretation of what Joe Friel is getting at really, however, to the point, I train with a power meter (as does Vamp, Gam001, GrasB, Mr Haematocrit). What do you want to know about them? Which PM's are you looking at when you say the price is dropping to a tempting level?
 

Rob3rt

Man or Moose!
Location
Manchester
A power meter is only of real use when accompanied by structured training with someone who understands what the data means imho

Absolutelly agree, it is not a fit and forget bit of kit like a speed sensor either. You need to understand how to ensure the data it is collecting is robust, then how to interpret said data.
 

Ningishzidda

Senior Member
Another Power Meter user here.

Well, if truth be told, they are 'Torque meters' and with RPM and a constant, Power is calculated.
 

Ningishzidda

Senior Member
If the difference in your performance is less than the repeatability and accuracy specification of the machine, you may as well not bother.
If you are not competing for monetary prizes, you may as well go to a gymnasium that has a bike machine.
When your improvement is greater than the repeatability and accuracy specification of the bike machine at the gym, you can start sliming.
 

Rob3rt

Man or Moose!
Location
Manchester
Power tap is not something I know about, GrasB uses them, as does Vamp, however, as a general comment you could save money by using an existing Garmin head unit instead of the Cyclops one, same re. HR strap. I have heard the lifespan on the torque tube on Powertap wheels is fairly limited and costs a lot to have replaced, also heard about issues with them going out of true a lot. But this is just hearsay.

I use a Quarq. For me, a wheel based PM is no good, because I want to train and race with power and can not afford 2-3 different wheel setups (training wheel, disc wheel and lightweight wheel), I can swap my Quarq from one bike to another in less than 5 minutes. If you wanted to consider crank based power measurement, at powertap prices, you may want to consider power2max. There is also the Quarq Riken at £1250-1300 depending on bottom bracket type.

Whatever you decide, I would recommend speaking to Cyclepowermeters and could recommend them as a retailer. They are brilliant! The kind of guys you can ring up and hash out a problem over the phone and get advice on the spot. If something fails, they offer a very fast turnaround. Their staff team really know their stuff, some of them being active coaches (good ones!) and also very good racers and furthermore, they are active on various forums, i.e. they are actively involved in the use of the equipment in various capacities, rather than just sales people.

Re. training with power I benefited massively, there is no way I would be riding 21 minute 10's at this point (based on my starting point) without having trained with a power meter this season! Not because I didn't train hard and consistently, but because I clearly didn't train hard enough on hard days and easy enough on easy days. I found it hard to quantify my training load and correlate it to how well I was going etc. Power changed all that. In races, power is a mixed bag for me, I have found on occasion, it helped my pace well, letting me ride to a pre-determined schedule, on others it messed with my head. My PB's have come when I relied on power for the 1st mile or so (to avoid over cooking it) then racing on feel (90% anyway, I still sneaked a peak at the numbers now and then, mostly to avoid blowing up). My data analysis, especially when reviewing road and race data is relativelly poor (for my indoor training, it is good as it needs to be), a club mate reviewed some race data for me and pointed out a few things I had completely missed. This shows that to get the most from it, you need to know what you are looking at/for.

The main issue I see in recommending power as a training metric is that how much one person benefits compared with another will vary quite wildly, you need to at least have a rudimentary understanding of the concepts and what it is you are looking at else it will just be a load of numbers that mean nothing. As Mr Haematocrit said, you do need to be structured with your training if using power, this just doesn't suit some people personality wise. Same goes for analysing data, some people can't be bothered or don't like doing it (could always hire a coach to do it for you though). It is also quite easy to get obsessed with the numbers and forget the bigger picture.

In short, the short term improvement vs say, some bling wheels or whatever is not favourable. But the long term gains from training with power usurp the benefit of a new bike or wheels, IME.
 

zizou

Veteran
Power meters can be useful training aids for those that race (for some essential, for others not) but if your goal is improving fitness a bit to ride some sportives a bit faster then it is a bit overkill - there are much cheaper ways of going about this.

However i think it is important to enjoy training as much as you can and if you like the idea of having quantifiable numbers to work off and think it will incentivise you to train better then go for it. For me the cost would not give the same benefit and improvements that i get from other methods that i enjoy* doing (and thus more likely to do).

*of course that is not to say i always enjoy the 'enjoyable' bits while doing them!
 

VamP

Banned
Location
Cambs
I'm looking at this Cycle Ops Power tap SL + Wheel combo:-
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=39915
Seems quite a deal now at just over a grand

How's your performance improved since you started training with power?

You can get the G3 wheel (A23 rim build) for that kind of money, and I don't think you need the strap or the Joule. Unless you don't have a head unit already, in which case I think a GPS head unit such as the Edge500 is still more versatile.

Or the P2M.

Or the Quarq.

They will all do the job.

I went with the Powertap because there is no one solution that covers all my diverse interests, and I wanted a simple and reliable training solution first and foremost. Having said that, the A23 is just as competent in road racing as my Ksyrium rear wheel, so I get race data more often than not as well. Obviously MTB and CX races are dataless, but then power data from those is arguably less useful anyway.

Once you have a sufficient database of power files, and learned to recognize how different power zones 'feel' - using the power meter during races becomes less important.

I can't speak for the other methods, but the G3 has been fit and forget (just zero for temperature) and reliable to date.

I agree with others that if you are committed to training and willing to learn the 'power way', it will take you to another level in terms of economy and efficiency of training. Particularly so if you are training time poor.
 
Top Bottom