Powermeter wanted for training, needed for training?

There are a number of threads in this forum on the benefits of training with power. But, I think the most complete and recent discussion of this question and many other important power-based training questions are contained in Hunter Allen's and Andy Coggan's recent book, Training and Racing with a Power Meter. This is only a $20 (max) investment and, even if after reading it you decide that it is not worth it to you to invest in a power meter, all of the suggested training levels are also defined for both HRM and RPE training. Eventually, most serious cyclists will be training with a power meter and this is a great book on your bookshelf if you ever do train with power. BTW, my incentive for promoting Andy's book = zero.

rudycyclist said:

I have been training and am wondering how many people use a powermeter for training? I thought it would be nice to see how many watts I'm pushing as compared to different heart rates. Is this something I should look into further or not really. Even though I'm definitely no pro, is it worth it?

I second that, buy the book and read it.

Some people can be experts without ever having used one apparently.
http://www.cyclingforums.com/t351677.html

You can read all of these online FAQs as well and make your own decision.
http://www.cyclingforums.com/showpost.php?p=2880300&postcount=23

RapDaddyo said:

BTW, my incentive for promoting Andy's book = zero.

Or IOW, nearly as much as mine! 😉 😄 :p 🙂

acoggan said:

Or IOW, nearly as much as mine! 😉 😄 :p 🙂

I'll hold out for the 2nd edition and your new chapter on power management.😄

I got a NIB old style Ergomo. PM me if you are interested.

rudycyclist said:

I have been training and am wondering how many people use a powermeter for training? I thought it would be nice to see how many watts I'm pushing as compared to different heart rates. Is this something I should look into further or not really. Even though I'm definitely no pro, is it worth it?

HRT training just doesn't compare to training with a PM. i was riding way to easy going by hrt, i was wasting my time. get a PM if your serious about training, you wont regret it!

What are some of the good brands that offer powermeters? I think the only one I might know of is Cycleops.

I personally find power trainning really comes into play for pacing on hills, and winter trainning on the rollers, where it's usualy really hard to gudge how hard you're actually working.

For hills, you can actually keep track of weather or not you're actually getting better at hills, and along with a HR monitor evaluate you're most efficient climbing method, ie standing, sitting, or mixing between the two. It also gives you a good guage to pace yourself with, it makes sure you don't start to hard and end to week, and ensures you can actively track the consistency of your hill intervals in real time.

And for indoors during the winter it gives you a dead accurate way to simulate any ride, i'm sure we've all been on a trainner or rollers in the big ring doing 70km/h... Speed is completely useless indoors, even if you're used to setting up your mag unit to a certain setting, there's no substitute for an onboard power meter.

For racing, and general group rides you SHOULD be to busy paying attention to the road to really monitor your power. Of course if you notice that being at the front of a peleton is making you burn 350w, and your threshold sustainable power is 250, then you know to move into the back of the pack for a little while but such a power difference would be felt pretty quick once you're used to trainning with power. Kinda like cadence, at first it's something alot of people had to focus on, then doing 95(or what ever you target) become's second nature.

And for longer solo endurance rides you can drive yourself mad trying to maintain a perfect 220w for 4 hours, especially on rolling hills and such so it's sometimes better to pay a little more attention to HR and RPE. Also once you've ridden a popular route with a power meter you can go by memory and use RPE to guide you along, of course taking into account drafting, and different conditions from day to day. But most group rides here it's balls to the walls or easy weasy.

Finaly, i find racing with a powermeter very informative for post race analysis. Let's you see how strong your sprint was, how long you put out your top sprinting power, lets you see how much energy you used for the whole race, see where you might have hit the wall or really started to die.

Anyways, it's an invaluable tool, and if you watch any of the cycling documentary movies you can see alot of the pro teams using them for the past couple of years now.

I use powertap BTW, i just like the flexability of moving my rear wheel from one bike to another to be able to train with power on several bikes with only paying for one system. Of course SRM is really nice if you want to put all your eggs in one basket and get one really good, all out bike. Ergomo looks like it would limit your choice of cranks where as SRM has several different models, among them DA, and cannondale SI cranks. Powertap offereing several trainning, and high end wheel options, aswell as the compatability to be custom built by any accomplished wheel builder with 90% of rims and spokes on the market.