This is just an informative post and not meant to blast stages or single power meters and users.
First off, I had a stages gen 1 power meter on a sram rival crank and it was paired to a garmin 800 head.. I rode this set up for a few years. I've never had issues with the battery door or drops as some users have reported. I would power test every so often, ride % to that on the road, user trainer road in the winter, and do the 0 offset here an there. I would still be riding this but there was a failure on the SRAM crankset and I elected to make a move based on that failure.
Enter a power 2 max built on a fsa crankset.
Here are observations from my limited time. One power to max on short fast rides show I use 55 left and 45 right on average. For longer and less intense rides, 52 left, 48 right. On the shorter fast rides my over all average power is down about 15% for the same ride at the same speed. I do notice that I am working harder to keep the same target from my FTP test on the stages. Again, speed remains the same on the same bike. I will obviously retest on the power to max. I am guessing based on the rides and numbers that I have seen that my FTP will be a number about 25 watts lower than the stages.
On the longer rides however I notice that my over all average power is only down about 5% for the same ride at about the same speed/watts.
I also noticed in my power files that the stages would show much larger spikes when taking off from a start, vs the power 2 max. I imagine from a stop I favor my left leg for the initial push. The same seems to apply to short/fast efforts and hard accelerations.
The power to max seems to be more reactive at the same smoothing to changes in my effort. I'm not sure if thats a sampling rate delta or just something in my head.
So what does this all mean? I paced and made progress on the stages just fine. But I think it does highlight that at least for me the L/R balance is not always a consistent variable. How this changes my over all training progress, I don't know.
First off, I had a stages gen 1 power meter on a sram rival crank and it was paired to a garmin 800 head.. I rode this set up for a few years. I've never had issues with the battery door or drops as some users have reported. I would power test every so often, ride % to that on the road, user trainer road in the winter, and do the 0 offset here an there. I would still be riding this but there was a failure on the SRAM crankset and I elected to make a move based on that failure.
Enter a power 2 max built on a fsa crankset.
Here are observations from my limited time. One power to max on short fast rides show I use 55 left and 45 right on average. For longer and less intense rides, 52 left, 48 right. On the shorter fast rides my over all average power is down about 15% for the same ride at the same speed. I do notice that I am working harder to keep the same target from my FTP test on the stages. Again, speed remains the same on the same bike. I will obviously retest on the power to max. I am guessing based on the rides and numbers that I have seen that my FTP will be a number about 25 watts lower than the stages.
On the longer rides however I notice that my over all average power is only down about 5% for the same ride at about the same speed/watts.
I also noticed in my power files that the stages would show much larger spikes when taking off from a start, vs the power 2 max. I imagine from a stop I favor my left leg for the initial push. The same seems to apply to short/fast efforts and hard accelerations.
The power to max seems to be more reactive at the same smoothing to changes in my effort. I'm not sure if thats a sampling rate delta or just something in my head.
So what does this all mean? I paced and made progress on the stages just fine. But I think it does highlight that at least for me the L/R balance is not always a consistent variable. How this changes my over all training progress, I don't know.