I am chilling out today between workouts, so I thought I would post a picture of what a ride looks like in a powerfile.
I know there are a few folks who are considering and making decisions on a power meter, and different head units. Hopefully this will show you what information you will spending your money on. I am a normal weekend warror so this is not about bragging about crazee numbers (because yep I could use some work to get my FTP up to a slowtwitch worthy 300 hahah! This just what a power meter can tell you about a workout. So here it is. This was a popular ride route here in So Cal. PCH which is Flat to Rolling / a 10 mile climb up Latigo / decend /and back to the start. The goal of the workout was to try max effort short hill repeats in the middle of climb and then 1x 20 min effort on a flat section back to the start of the ride.
This is from powertap G3 with a Joule Gen 3 with GPS. This was done on my roadbike.
I labeled a few parts so you can see different sections of the workout.
Edit to add: This is a look at Power Agent. I did not upload my Training Peaks file. But it would look similar. I actually look at my bikefile more in PowerAgent than training peaks.I do not have WKO.
Honestly, I don’t think this is a very compelling analysis. The graph is nice looking. The level of smoothing on the graph is much too high IMO.
Keying in on the intervals. The four reps. Break those out on a separate graph and use time as the x-axis. How does avg power compare between intervals? How does each interval compare to the other (Start-middle-finish)? What does your performance tell you? Looks like you went too hard on the first one.
The 20min interval should be examined on it’s own. It looks like it wasn’t paced it very evenly? What did you learn from that?
Everyone is a critic but the examination of intervals is a key benefit of the powermeter.
Also, I hate the term race pace. So ambiguous and unspecific.
the point I think he is making is that if you are looking for a power meter then this is the sort of in depth info you can pull from the ride. It is not based on how you felt and totally objective. For anyone looking to get into a power meter this is the key point you have the ability to plan, execute and the analyze the ride and see if you hit your plan. As well it might help during the ride to see what it says vs how you feel to help calibrate that aspect of your skill set.
If you do want to know something about the why and wherefore of power, Hunter Alan has posted a first in a series of webinars on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZVDgTajRg
Some great things we have been able to determine, objectively
lack of early success this year compared to previous years performances - due to lack of aerobic power? due to lack of sprint power? due to better competition, bad tactics? Was the training worse?
These were all initial concerns that would be really hard to pin down without a power meter. You might lose faith in your current training plan. But, we can see in the data that new power records are being set at both short and long durations. So the fitness is fine. There are just stronger people racing this year, with more clever tactics, and we need to man up.
s5100e. Your comment is exactly why I posted this. So people who do not know what /why / how can see what a workout looks like from a power meter, and why it would be a good purchase if you are serious about your training.
Pantelones:
This was just a screenshot to share info and maybe gain some insight from others . When I look at my data I look at each interval by screen, and not so much the graph and get ave /max info etc. Long Intervals I would look at the graph to see where I start to fade by the graph.
The 4 intervals were all within 5 watts of each other average. The first interval I went out the hardest as this was the first time I tried this workout. In addition this workout was somewhat of a test run to see if the would be something to use regularly.
The final long interval. This will be compared week over week to see fitness improvement as I will ride this same route back to the start almost every weekend. This will be a gauge of fitness once I move to exclusive TT bike riding. The numbers do go up and down because: A) there are several false flats, and small rollers B) Swirling breeze C) Traffic conditions other rider cars etc. But it is consistant enough to use as a measuring stick. However the distance is the same and usually the conditions are the same week and week out. So Ave Wattage, backed by heart rate and speed, then persived effort will tell me if I am getting fitter and faster.
RacePace is very specific for me .80% FTP (I am racing half’s), and this is a fast and hard as I can ride to run 1:3X off of the bike.
I criticize because he didn’t provide any power analysis. No drilling down of the data. I applaud him for trying to be helpful, but it is a fail. In fact, I would argue that his overview graph could have the yellow trace (power) removed and he would have a hard time arguing why heart rate isn’t good enough.
