Didn't know about Powermatch, that's great. Thanks.

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Paulo Matos

Either you, or I, have completely misread his original post. I think it's you, but then I guess I would. I'm pretty confident that fans will make absolutely no difference to the power reported by a power meter.

Variation in measurement of power is certainly critically important if you intend to use power to determine your race effort. However, of similar or greater importance are differences in ambient conditions and bike position between your FTP testing or other indoor rides versus race bike and weather. Your road bike indoors may produce very different results to a tri-bike outdoors even if the psychology and power meter accuracy were not an issue. Then look at what your actual endurance is like. Were your FTP tests done using a 20 minute test? Was the power steady or did you surge significantly towards the end? 20 minute tests are not equally representative of FTP for everyone. I'm pretty sure my 20 minute based FTP is about 10-15W higher than I could manage in a full duration FTP test (which I've never done). Also, plenty TT specialists who do 10 mile or 40km TTs might perform great in an FTP test but lack the endurance to perform equivalently well over 180km. Had you tested yourself over long rides at similar power levels to what you attempted in the race?
Add all these uncertainties together and indoor FTP test data becomes highly suspect as a means of determining your feasible race pace.

Power match is an awesome feature, but when I used it with Stages, it didn't work very well and very spikey (definitely compared to my current Quarq). Plus, it was a lot lower power than Neo. The main issue was that there wasn't a consistent number that Stages was lower, so it was hard to understand the calibration. For example, at 100-130w, Stages was almost the same as Neo, 130-160w, it might be 10-15w lower, at 200-230, it might be 25-30w lower. Thus, I got crushed on any harder intervals.

If you are using Stages, I would just use Neo for your power source then figure out what Stages says outdoors and see if it matched. Or just go with your P1's if they are more consistent and sell the Stages.

Need to try that to see if I have the same issue with Powermatch. P1s unfortunately are not mine.

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Paulo Matos