davidalone wrote:
motoguy128 wrote:
I think your missing the point. In cycling, power is more important, because HR responds too slow and speed also responds too slow and it too variable based on outside factors like aerodynamics, wind and rolling resistance.
In running , there is an element of run economy, that pace won't capture and HR is too variable to fully capture, this is true. But I'd be amazed if there was a repeatable way to examine your stride metrics,adjusted for your weight, and come up somehow with a numberical value with any accuracy better than a HRM or pace. In cycling, the measurement of power is very easy, and the instrumentation has existed for decades, and is just only no compact and affordable enough to be widely used.
You would still have some challenge of accurately measuring elevation change and wind when examining stride metrics.
It would be easier to take pace and normalize it for grade, HR drift or variability as well as using stride metrics and work backwards. You'd need to use the equivalent of WKO to analyse a large pool of your runing data and do some tests at different paces when rested for benchmarks. In that way, you could develop some sort of number relative to threshold that take economy, grade, etc. into account. I guess you could factor in weight and roughly estimate power output.
sort of agreed here, gait variability and differing biomechanical effeciency essentially makes normalizing run biomechanics very very very difficult. in cycling, everyone is doing more or less the same repeated motion- so this is measurable. lots of people have slight leg length discrepancy, some run heelstriking, some run with a midfoot strike, etc- so all this of course affects how much 'power' you output.
I would argue too that it's not needed. I came from a cross country background and all you need, really, is a stopwatch. most run training is done in a controlled loop- a track or a known race course.a 400m track is a 400m track. far less variability to deal with- especially traffic/wind, and what have you. not so in cycling. Good runners know what pacing they can churn out per km and will adjust for terrain and go from there- and most of the time its pretty close. Good runners also know from experience how far out they can 'kick'- no need for a running powermeter to tell you that.
GPS watches are probably the most expensive training tool a top level runner needs, and even then many get by without them. most of my high level running friends don't even use heart rate- they use it, sure, but it's not a main metric. time is what counts.
so based on these two things- the difficulties in making something that actually works and can tell the differences between different humans- as well as the lack of need or demand for one- probably means it wont take off.
While nothing you say is wrong, I still think with a real, working running powermeter, coaches will still find a way to eke out small performance gains from it, not dissimilar to cycling powermeter gains.
Yes, you can run world-class level with a stopwatch only. Kenyan runners beat the whole world with zero tech, zero coaches, and zero shoes. Doesn't mean that all the new tracking devices can't be helpful and even push performance at the world class level IF used correctly.
A running powermeter would likely change the nature of high-level coaching in ways very similar to that of cycling. Like it or not, run courses ARE different, and all runners currently do a lot of estimating to correlate efforts between different courses and elevations. It's not as extreme as cycling, but a true working run powermeter would be a game-changer in getting true, objective numbers for training load without being tied to a track or treadmill.
As is, I'm actually surprised no treadmill manufacturer does a Powercal-like pseudo-powermeter for treadmill running, as it seems that would be the easiest place to start, likely only a software solution (runner weight and speed and incline being the main factors). That alone could be a great niche product that could grow a lot - sounds like a good and realistic project for a budding science/engineering student!
