So Polar eliminates the 0’s in the “Avg Watts” but Training Peaks includes the 0’s so the Avg Watts is much lower in Training Peaks. When people/you tell someone else what your Avg Watts were for a training ride or race which do you use?
well unless youre stoped at a stop light or something for 5 mins then yes you should include the zeros. Why wouldn’t you include them, they are part of the ride.
“Paging Doctor Coggan.”
I have my PT set to include the zeroes while riding. If you want to give someone a better idea of the nature of your ride you could let them know the variability index, intensity factor, normalized power and TSS.
Mine is set not to show zero’s but only so that I can get a better approximation of NP during the ride.
AP and NP are really only good measures when comparing against yourself.
Exclude 0s for long consistent rides (i.e. not intervals). If you get stopped by a traffic light, being stopped will pull down your average quickly, even if you’re only stopped for 30 seconds. You could probably cycle for 30 seconds longer after you’re done at the same average wattage, so it’s not like you’re cheating.
It’s the same thing with average pace during running… although the polar foot pod / software do not exclude the 0s :(.
I just tell people my 5 sec max.
exclude the 0s. better numbers that way. much better for the ego.
I do the same thing for the same reason.
Ultimately I’m looking for time and effort anyway.
jaretj
Is there a way to exclude them in Training Peaks as a “setting?” It just defaults to include them now. Thanks
So Polar eliminates the 0’s in the “Avg Watts” but Training Peaks includes the 0’s so the Avg Watts is much lower in Training Peaks. When people/you tell someone else what your Avg Watts were for a training ride or race which do you use?
IMHO, if someone is asking you what your avg wattage is…most likely they really want to know what your normalized wattage is anyway…and they might not even “know it”.
Traffic lights, long downhills, etc, can dilute the amount of work that you were capable of doing simply because you were prevented from doing it, but NOT because you were physically unable to do it.
in WKO+, Normalized wattage more closely reflects the work-completed.
HOWEVER…if you really feel the need to smack talk with your average wattage, then do a ride on your trainer and don’t stop pedaling/working; until the training session is over…and that’ll solve your dilema.
Don’t include zeros. If you do, a hard day in the mountains looks wimpier than an easy ride on the flats, due to the descending. What counts is Ave. Watts while you are working.
“Paging Doctor Coggan.”
The time you spend not pedaling obviously influences the power that you can produce while pedaling. For example, I can “average” 500 W for an hour by doing 15 s on/off intervals at that power and excluding the zero values. Ergo, the only logical thing to do is include zero values when calculating the true average.
(Note: most powermeters stop, or can be set to stop, collecting data when the wheels stop turning for any significant length of time. Examples of lengthy traffic lights, etc., therefore don’t really pertain to this question. Or to put it another way: “if the wheels are a turnin’, then you’re a ridin’”.)
I’m not a training peaks user so I don’t know.
I do know that you can set a PT computer to not include them in the average and the same for WKO+
jaretj
That’s exactly what I do with my PT. I include zeros, but my PT is set to “stop” transmitting when the wheel isn’t spinning. So traffic lights, stop signs, etc. are not factored into the ride.
If you aren’t turning the crank when you are going down hill, not including those “0’s” really doesn’t accurately reflect the real world ride you completed. Not that it should matter to anyone but you (and this may be a bit of an extreme example), but it would be intellectually disingenuous to tell yourself you “averaged” 300 watts on a ride where you didn’t include zeros and cruised down every hill.
To the power gurus, isn’t NP a computation other than simply excluding 0’s?
I’m not a training peaks user so I don’t know.
I do know that you can set a PT computer to not include them in the average and the same for WKO+
jaretj
I would be very surprised if WKO+ enabled you to show non-zero average power.
To the power gurus, isn’t NP a computation other than simply excluding 0’s?
Non-Zero AP and NP are completely unrelated.
The fact that they may occasionally show similar values from a ride would be by coincidence, than by design.
I include zeros. As A Coggan mentioned, my powertap shuts down after about 10 - 15 seconds within stopping. I’m not sure how significant a few stops are to the overall average. I figure that average power (including zeros) is the true power based on physics.
I train on a course where you have to turn around every 2.5 miles. I did 60 miles on this a couple of weeks ago. I would like to remove the 0 watts on the turn around. With a powertap how do you do this? How do you normalize the wattage?
Thanks
“Paging Doctor Coggan.”
The time you spend not pedaling obviously influences the power that you can produce while pedaling. For example, I can “average” 500 W for an hour by doing 15 s on/off intervals at that power and excluding the zero values. Ergo, the only logical thing to do is include zero values when calculating the true average.
(Note: most powermeters stop, or can be set to stop, collecting data when the wheels stop turning for any significant length of time. Examples of lengthy traffic lights, etc., therefore don’t really pertain to this question. Or to put it another way: “if the wheels are a turnin’, then you’re a ridin’”.)
Proof that your a little too “high” on yourself Andrew. You need to quit trying to sell yourself so much.
IF the wheels are a turnin’…you might be coasting down Palomar MTN for 20 min…
Get a grip man, you’d think that after developing bird-bones, etc; you might have figured out that you havent learned EVERYTHING about human physiology …yet.
( I could be wrong, and the whole bone thinning experiment might have been intentional. I apologize if this is true, and look forward to reading the report).
“IF the wheels are a turnin’…you might be coasting down Palomar MTN for 20 min…”
And you might have just ridden UP the other side.
If the wheels are turning, you’re riding.
mm