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On Power Meters this page last updated: 02/01/2015 11:17:50 PM
I just qualified for the Nationals Long Course in Nevada in October which could qualify me once again for TEAM USA, but I am holding off on that until after Lake Placid, because I am greatly hoping to qualify for the World Championship in Ironman in Hawaii in October. Either way, the power meter sure would be a huge help to me right now, especially with the incredible winds on the Hawaii course! You have both really done it this time! All I can think about is the power meter!
I have a great quote from Joe Friel in this month's Triathlete magazine:
Further reading in the article: Q from Triathlete magazine to Joel Friel: Do you see power meters as a complement to, or as a substitute for, heart-rate monitors? Answer from Joe Friel: "A lot of athletes are too reliant on their heart rate monitors. I have athletes who get a power meter and then continue to train based on heart rate. They don't quite grasp the concept of what power is telling them. Power is so much more valuable than heart rate. I'm not saying heart rate isn't good information —it is—but I'm afraid we've gotten to a point where athletes believe heart rate is the end-all and be-all of training. They think they're trying to train their hearts, which is really not the case. After two years in the sport what they should be trying to do is train their muscles." Makes total sense! Coming from an Exercise Phys. Background I completely agree. Now I just need to figure out what kind of power meter to get. Any suggestions? Is Mary's power meter easy to use? You know I have a Computrainer that I have had for 4 years and never used, wires everywhere and not easily set up etc. I will be selling it soon. Hey!! On a GREAT note, my specialist found out that I have been severely deficient in B12 for a long time and started me on high dose supplementation and… no Porphyric attacks for over 4 weeks now!!!! It feels like an outright miracle to my body!! He felt that my body was having to try to boost hemoglobin more frequently because of the B12 issue and lower Oxygen levels in my body, now with my B12 levels getting more normal I may not have to deal with attacks that often!!! Woohooo!! What a great life!! Well, gotta' go hit the Oxygen debt meters in a run right now J. Hope you are having a great week, and an even better 4th of July day ahead. ~Me ************* Hi Lauren : ) Thanks for helping me out with the wonderful article. That asshole in the ChatterBox might have made me look stupid if not for your kind words of aid and support. I'm sure your credentials alone have shut him up. I fully understand your desire for a power meter. When we get rich I'm getting one for myself. As for the power meter choice, Mary uses a Powertap, which is extremely easy to set up and use. Think about it, Floyd Landis uses one, and he's even too stupid to know his trainers were giving him drugs. The software that comes with it is also very simple, easy and flexible. The cadence sensor was not reliable until we got the sensor. The way cadence is calculated from wheel data if there is no sensor attached left something to be desired. We have not been successful getting the heart rate monitor to work reliably with it, but that may be due to Mary being too small to get the strap on tight enough. Gary The Bull reports that he had no trouble with the heart rate monitor of his Powertap before he moved to an SRM, and Chester Pete had trouble until he got a coded strap... now he says if it goes out he just hits the FIND function, and it's right back. The only other issue for us was the fact the CPU doesn't display average and current watts at the same time. That might be a problem only for Mary, and we compensated by getting an extra CPU so she can watch both at the same time. It is easy to switch from one reading to the other, but I didn't want Mary having any extra distractions when she is supposed to be learning what various watt levels feel like in her legs. The problem was that she was overworking her watts while worrying about her average. Now she can take a look at both figures and overwork both at the same time, but that might be a Mary specific problem. A big plus is how easy the Powertap is to swap from one bike to another. I can grab it for myself when she is taking the day off, and we didn't need a technical team to install it and set it up. Though all these devices have big holes in them at present, the only other system that makes much sense is the SRM, but it will tie you into using it on a single bike and then make you find a support crew to put it together. I wouldn't give you a nickel for any of the other systems I've read about, and the money you would save on a Powertap over an SRM would get you pretty close to buying another Powertap for Michelle to use. Like I said, all these devices have a long way to go. I could tell you a dozen improvements that need to be made, and they probably will be made sometime in the future. For example (I'll use the Computrainer because you have one), I showed Mary how to trick the spin smoothness readout to make it show she was holding a smooth spin (flat across) when she really was not. In fact, I showed her how to clip out with one leg and still keep a flat reading for both legs. Then I went so far as to show her how to get her left leg to show higher power than her right leg... even with the left leg clicked out and her foot sitting on a box beside the Computrainer. I won't bother anybody with a long explanation of all the other changes I expect for these metering devices, because nobody is going to believe me anyway. Probably the manufacturers don't even know about it yet, because I'm talking about stuff that can only come about after people get the basics down. Basically I am talking about how to achieve a piano masters concert level performance, but it is before pianos have been invented. Nobody has a clue what I mean. Most people don't even yet understand that watts is watts is watts, and we were doing better hill work on the flats in Floriduh than we have been able to get done back here on actual hills... though that work in Floriduh has made Mary a killer on the local hills and mountains. The bigger, the longer, the better. But that's a whole 'nother story. Bob BTW: Make sure to check if those B12 shots are legal in competition. Oh, that's right. They won't tell you what is illegal, how they are testing for it, or what the results of the tests are anyway. Have some more liver, shellfish, milk and eggs for me.
this page last updated:
02/01/2015 11:17:50 PM |
