Powertap for the first time
April 15th, 2007 by Nikola Tosic
Recently I bought Powertap and it took me some time to get organized, buy new wheels and all that, and install it. Today was my first ride with it. I was not lucky as it was horribly windy and for some reason the Powertap heart rate monitor did not work. Although I only had one 4h ride with it I still wanted to document some of my first impressions.
Easy riding?
Powertap was making me ride easier uphill and in the wind, while it really made me work hard on flat and down the wind. I was trying to ride like this before I got a power meter but now it made me focus so much more on this as it gave me instant reading on what I am doing. Heart rate is not so immediate when it comes to this.
Immediate information
Heart rate is the best worst thing before power measurement. Heart rate is about how your body reacts and therefore it is quite slow and not very precise. Power is immediate. I mean, really, you cheat on one single pedal stroke and numbers fall down. There is no easy workout when you ride with this thing. It really made me work work and work all the time. I hate it and love it for this. With years of using heart rate as a guide I learned how to cheat it, I do not think I will be able to cheat power measurement.
Power and heart rate is all you need
I was dumb enough to delete my file by mistake but it was still obvious how it really does not matter if I am climbing hills, riding in the wind or if I am on an indoor trainer - I get the power and heart rate readings and that is all I need. Speed is not important anymore. Course profile is unimportant. I just need two graphs. And cadence is a nice plus.
Pedalling perfection
Powertap takes 60 readings in one second and than gives you the biggest reading for each second every second. It means that the power number goes up and down a lot if you have a shitty pedalling stroke like I do. If you can get that number to fluctuate very little than you have a very economic stroke. This means that you will be riding faster with the same power, or you will use less power (energy) for the same speed. I was totally amazed how bad my pedalling is. I was literarily embarrassed.
Anyway… these are my first impressions. I am happy I got it and I guess it will take some time for me to figure it out. I will surely find a lot of bad stuff about it which I will make sure I publish here. Whether it’s a good buy or not: now I would say YES, but I think I should wait for a month before I make this judgement.
PS I am still waiting for Xterra Grabouw results to write an article about that…
April 16th, 2007 at 12:14 am
No doubt power is the most reliable source of information but while it allows you to maintain a constant effort, exactly what that effort should be is extremely important.
There is no point in training consistently at the wrong level and this is where I have issue with power training. In order to ensure that you are constantly making improvements you need to be frequently checking against your benchmark tests. This is fine when you are a pro and have all the time in the world but most of us struggle to merely find enough time to train.
Perhaps I am still a little naive, after all it took me a long time to adopt heart rates as a measure of training and even today I still rely on feel a lot of the time. After having spent 20yrs in the saddle I have become pretty good at gauging my effort reliably but I do see the benefit of a HR monitor for someone starting out or coming from a different sport discipline. I imagine it would be the same for power.
I actually do have a power meter on my trainer and while I have no idea of what my limits are, when I ride at 70% the power reading fluctuates by no more than 10watts despite the fact that I ignore it most the time, so I am still inclined to trust my feel factor.
Hey, I was the last person to change to STi shifters, I had toe straps until the 90’s and still ride a steel frame. Technology is great but at the end of the day the legs will win you the race and everything else has to be seen in the correct context.