Does anyone use Stages power on their mountain or cross bike? I’m happy with the one I’ve installed on my TT bike, but am wondering how well they withstand the abuse of the trail. Are there other similarly priced PMs better suited for off road riding?
I used one racing CX (pathetically) last year. Mostly just showed me that while I know I am a mediocre to poor triathlon cyclist, I am a TERRIBLE cyclocrosser. I had a tough time making much sense of the data with spikes all over, a bunch of zeros, and trying to figure out how to quantify the power output of running uphill carrying my bike.
My best discipline is mounting/dismounting. That’s what my Stages PM taught me.
That said, I will be putting it back on my bike this year. Wouldn’t go buy a second PM to ride offroad, but that is a definite benefit of Stages. Stupid easy to swap between bikes.
Data I’ve seen from Stages in CX racing is a mess. Left/right balance is all over the damn place when you’re trying to pedal through variable terrain. Combine with the power demands of cross being pretty damn stochastic to begin with, and you’ve got a recipe for some pretty flaky numbers.
For cross, no doubt useful for your training power zones to hit whatever benchmarks are appropriate, but I would not recommend in any way trying to use one in a race as part of your race strategy. As you stated / observed, the efforts are spiky so your VI is off the charts from a power perspective. And, realistically, the races are short so you need to go by effort and feel not long range pacing strategy.
As to whether you have potential, cyclo-cross is a very different beast then steady state triathlon time trial training. That can serve as an excellence base fitness, but then you need a lot of anearobic or other short duration, high power efforts as part of your training routine as well as bike handling skills.
Best regards-
Josh
I think Stages is going to be pretty erratic in high VI situations. I think it works well for more static steady state efforts, but dynamic accelerations, climbing, etc, not so much. Meaning Crits, MTB (except ultra distance events), Cross, is probably not it’s strength. Road racing and TT/Tri it works pretty well.
Have one on my cx/gravel bike and find it useful for training more than cx racing. I hope it helps later this fall for pacing gravel road races.
I think Stages is going to be pretty erratic in high VI situations
Is that a function of it being a left-only system, the rate at which it transmits the data, or something else? Is there something out there better suited for a more stochastic output? I’m pretty familiar with the power meter options for road and tri, but don’t really know what’s considered optimal for cross country MTB and cyclocross.