milesthedog wrote:
Thank you, will pass on to the friend.
So say the pedal is attached to a wet noodle and the rider's PE is high as they are trying to put out high power, but the noodle for a crank arm is just preventing the rider from producing as high torque as they were able to produce with a stiff crank arm. Power would read low while PE is high.... ?? If the garmin is measuring flex in the spindle, that's a minuscule amount of flex to measure, so at what point is a minuscule amount of crank flex equivalent to the visually obvious flex of the wet noodle for the purpose of the PE vs power production question?
Flex in a drivetrain part (whether it's pedals, cranks, frame, or wheel components) doesn't matter as long as it's elastic, which means the energy that was put into bending the part gets returned once the part straightens out. Metal parts have intrinsically high elasticity, so any flex you achieve by applying a load will disappear when you remove the load, and very little energy will have been lost due to plastic deformation, hysteresis, or friction. Where you can lose is in friction between moving parts, such as the chainrings and the chain and the cassette, or in parts where deformation results in internal heating, such as your tires. In those cases, the energy you put in does not get returned once you remove the load.
Less is more.