Power Zone Training and Display

rjjasick said:

What's the best way to use the PowerTap when trying to keep your power between two certain levels? I mean I'm going out to ride for 2 hours at Zone 2, should I be using the average power display, or setting the instaneous power display and cranking up the display reading over longer than 5 seconds or so?

Thanks

I always have my wattage display set to 5 second rolling average.

For anything longer than a couple minute interval, I watch real time wattage.

Jim

rjjasick said:

What's the best way to use the PowerTap when trying to keep your power between two certain levels? I mean I'm going out to ride for 2 hours at Zone 2, should I be using the average power display, or setting the instaneous power display and cranking up the display reading over longer than 5 seconds or so?

Thanks

Hi - I had a discussion about this with some of the more savvy folks in this forum and got a lot of insight. Power, especially on an outdoor ride, is going to fluctuate a great deal. Part of it is inherent in the changing terrain, wind, RR, etc - and part of it is the powertap itself which averages in 1.26 second intervals.

What you can do is this....use the current watts display (not average watts), but set the time interval for that display, to say 3-5 seconds - it has the same effect as 'smoothing' on your files. The caveat of course, is that you go too high or too low, it will take a bit longer to respond, because you would be taking a 3-5 second 'current' watts, vs a 1 second average.

rjjasick said:

What's the best way to use the PowerTap when trying to keep your power between two certain levels? I mean I'm going out to ride for 2 hours at Zone 2, should I be using the average power display, or setting the instaneous power display and cranking up the display reading over longer than 5 seconds or so?

If you're using Coggan's schema, then they are referred to as levels, and not zones, so that one doesn't feel obligated to stay within the boundaries. IOW, if power were to go above or below L2 for portions of your ride (going up or down hills, for instance), that in no way changes the overall characterization of your ride from an Endurance (L2) Ride.

By feel, L2 is considered roughly "all-day pace," appropriate for centuries and the like. If you didn't think you could hit the target pacing by feel, then I'd just switch the power display to "Avg Pwr" after about the first 10 minutes or so, and use it as an occasional check.