First of all, let me say that it's a very well developed app. The user interface is good and the features are well thought out and useful. Some people use it just to predict their bike times for a race, which IMO is cool but is not primarily what I use it for. Some things that I use a lot:
- advanced weather feature helps me to fine tune my race pacing. For example if a big headwind is going to pick up in the latter part of the race, I make sure that I leave enough juice in the tank to ride hard through it.
- the same feature helps me with equipment selection. For example, the general weather forecast at the race start may predict 20 mph winds, but 50 miles down the road that could be 60 mph winds. I'm not going to ride my 808 up front in 60 mph winds.
- race modeling allows you to adjust the rider weight and see the result on your overall time. I find that especially useful when I'm planning my season, and let's say I have an important bike race that is 9 months away. I can see that being 10lbs lighter could gain me 8 minutes, so it would be worth the effort to lose 10lbs, even if I lost a few watts of power in the process. But on another race, being 10lbs might only gain me 2 minutes. For that race, I would rather not invest the effort in weight loss, since being heavier may in fact help me sustain a higher power output.
- equipment choice for particular terrain: for Ultraman Hawaii, I modeled 808, 404 and 303 front wheels to see the impact on time savings. The 808 would have bought me a few minutes "on paper" but with the high winds I would have been slower than predicted (my brain told me that, not the software). But there was very little difference between the 404 and 303, just a few seconds. And modeling the weight difference on that hilly course, I felt it would be a wash between those 2 wheels. So I chose a 303 because the handling would be so much better, without much (or any) time penalty. I also modeled the weight savings of ditching certain equipment for the climbs and incorporated that into my planning.
- pacing for a specific time goal: Using ultraman 2016 again, BBS helped me calculate that with the 2015 day 1 conditions, I'd need to ride about 245 watts to equal the fastest 2015 day 1 time. But using 2016 weather, I'd have to ride 340+ watts which is impossible for me. So before I started the race, my expectation was that I would be more than 40 minutes slower than if conditions were the same as 2015. That helps both develop a pacing strategy for the day, but also a nutrition plan that accounts for being out on the course much longer than expected.
- finally, a cool thing that you can do with a bit of hacking/workaround is to save the power plan file to your garmin, giving you an "ETA" on race day, based on your power plan. This can be both good and bad. At Ironman Boulder I planned out a 4:26 bike split, which I could see I was on track for, until I got a flat and was sidelined for 15 minutes. Since that was my only real goal for the race, I was then without purpose and didn't really enjoy the remainder of the race. My preference is to just "go through the process" on race day and the outcome is what it is, instead of having time goals for each leg. But it was cool to do that and it kept me very engaged in my pacing, until it didn't!
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