This. Include the zeros.

Gotcha - so the reason the avg is higher in this case is that I'm pulling the zeroes out of the AP but leaving them in the NP? I would have thought the "eliminate zeroes" setting would eliminate from both but maybe not part of the algorithym.

Thanks. Makes sense if that's the case.

You paid money for a powermeter, get the best data from it, make sure your record zero and also turn off auto-pause. I do not know why they even give you that option.

Thanks. I'll try that out on the flat routes. I live in a very hilly area where we often literally climb for 90 minutes and then barely touch the pedals coming back down. So keeping the zeroes in there made the data pretty meaningless. But for the flat courses, might make sense. Why would you say that gives more value? Maybe I just eliminate AP from my screen and focus on NP?

If your goal is to have the best data available to train with and get the most out of your training time, include zeros and turn off auto pause.

If your goal is to produce the highest number you can regardless that it is not based on any reality, do the opposite

Why auto-pause?

well it is also how you apply your power; normalized calculation squares the power ... so if you for example pedalled for a long time at 200, ie onyl 10 up from your avg 190 and then effectively coasted at zero for 10 mins home ... then NP will be lower

auto pause screws up the numbers. while siting at that stop light your legs are getting rest, but your computer isn't taking data(lowering average/normalized power). At the end of the ride you are happy with that 250w AVG then go do race using that number. In the race you never stop and with no stops and can only manage to sustain 220w, that is after you blew up trying to maintain too much power at the start. Then after the race you buy a new bike, because it must be the bike.

Lets say i ride hard for 20 minutes, then lay on the side of the road for 10 minutes, then ride hard for 20 minutes, then lay down for 10 minutes, then rider hard for 20 more minutes. That could result in a 60 minute power that is much higher than I could do without the rest. It is an extreme example, but it can show you how having some rest can result in higher numbers.

A better question is why have auto pause on? All it does it make your numbers higher than they actually are.

No, keeping zeros is not meaningless! It is showing what you ACTUALLY did. Stop letting vanity get in the way of good data.

You need to change your frame of mind from thinking about a ride as a indivisible block. Include zeros. The climb section gets it own analysis, the downhill is its own effort and together they form the entire ride. If you need to break it up then use laps, which will allow you to separate out NP and AP while you are riding if that helps.

It is a basic error to attempt the climb NP for the climb+descent time. Zeros do disrupt the NP calculation, and that is because your body is getting rest and this the physiological stress on the body is lowered.

Remember the definition of NP (from training peaks):

• By taking these factors into account, normalized power provides a better measure of the true physiological demands of a given training session - in essence, it is an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant (e.g., as on a stationary cycle ergometer), rather than variable.

Taking the zeros out is what makes the data meaningless.

Remove zeros and you are no longer calculating average power, but something else. And that something else makes no physiological sense.

I mean, why not remove all readings below say 50W, or 100W? That would be just as meaningless as removing zeros.

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With a handle of R2, I can see why you might think that. :) However, the algorithm actually applies a 4th-order weighting...but only after first taking a 30 s rolling average.

While we're on the topic: so-called "Smart Recording" also screws up the calculation of normalized power (and hence TSS), although IIRC a few years ago Garmin changed their devices to always record at 1 s intervals when paired w/ a powermeter.

Excessive down-sampling of the data stream (e.g., older PowerTap and Polar head units) also screws things up...

I'm surprised that Garmin would include zeros for NP but not for AP. Doesn't really make sense. Nonetheless, you should definitely include zeros. For that matter, you should also turn off auto-pause, although I generally hit stop if I have to put my foot down for more than ~10 sec. More ego than anything else....makes my average speed look bad.

Mathematically speaking NP should be strictly >= AP, since NP = (sum(P^4))^1/4, it cannot be less than AP.

If you do a 20min max effort and lay down for 10min in the middle of it with auto pause off, do you think the number you get will give a better or worse reflection of what you could do for 20min than if you'd do the same with auto pause on?

Not that it matters that much when analyzing the files but during the ride I think auto pause can be useful in some situations.

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i still ride with auto pause on set to go on "pause" at speeds of less then 2mph, i get the point that it might skew the number domes but if you don't have it on i would just be hitting stop at stop lights or when i go to the store to get a snickers. Without it on auto pause my rides would end up looking longer then they actually are. I am also basing all my racing numbers off a FTP test not on long rides. My 2 cents.

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The other side of it though is did you ride for 5 hours or 4 hours and 20 minutes if you were stuck at lights for 20 minutes? Either way you end up with data that is off because total ride time is important too and the time spent stuck was not training time.

I don't think that is what he was saying. He said do 20 min hard, THEN lay down for 10, rinse, repeat 2 more times. With auto-pause your data would show you rode for 60 minutes, which is technically true, but your AVG power for those 60 minutes would be a number that most people could not actually maintain for an hour.

Also there is always the LAP button. turn off auto-lap and manually lap segments of the ride and know exactly how much power over that 20 minutes without screwing up the rest of the data.

Use the lap function so you will get good power numbers for the way up long climbs and can isolate that in the overall ride file if followed by long decent.

I was just giving an extreme example of where auto pause off will give a less accurate reflection of what you can actually do than auto pause on. Even in his example auto pause on will give a more accurate value than auto pause off even if not 100%. In the end it doesn't really matter that much when you sit down and analyze it as you evaluate the different segments and take all factors into account. Fooling yourself that you can do a certain number has nothing to do with auto pause.

In those examples given above using the lap button really makes no practical difference except it's slightly easier to analyze afterwards.

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I don't turn auto pause off either, but there is a good argument that rest, is rest, so any time stopped should be included.

I guess I'm to lazy to turn it on and off and I rely on it for races, as I'll forget to hit start/stop in T1 and T2 otherwise. The downside is my run in transition gets included.

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Meh..i disagree.

I think get a more accurate reflection of your ride with the auto pause turned on. One or two minute stoplight/pee breaks in the ride aren't game changers in terms of trying to get a picture of your effort.

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Include zeros (I agree with everyone else).

Auto-pause is a matter of preference.

For me I generally turn it on because I normally can ride in a fairly uninterrupted fashion, so therefore when I'm stopping it is likely I'm stopping for a prolonged period of time (coffee, etc). I used to disable autopause but so many rides got screwed up by not stopping the timer while grabbing a coffee, or worse, forgetting to restart it when I get back on the bike.

If you're riding somewhere with lots of forced stops (e.g. traffic lights) then I'd not have auto-pause as they're more like mini-recovery between intervals.