Torque readings Power Tap

msummers said:

As a new comer to power training, I'm beginning to play with the data. What is the relevance of the torque readings. On a 2x20 at a normalized power of 220w and 216w respectively, the second interval with the lower watts had a slightly higher torque. What is the significance of this?

Mike S

With a Powertap, there is almost no signficance to torque unless you can consider the cadence at the same time as torque. This is one shortcoming of data coming out of a PowerTap.

Also consider that the difference between those two efforts is well within the precision of the instrument.

Were you using a slightly higher gear for the second effort?

Woofer said:

With a Powertap, there is almost no signficance to torque unless you can consider the cadence at the same time as torque. This is one shortcoming of data coming out of a PowerTap.

Also consider that the difference between those two efforts is well within the precision of the instrument.

Were you using a slightly higher gear for the second effort?

it was an out and back and the back was into a slight headwind. Cadence was about the same.

msummers said:

it was an out and back and the back was into a slight headwind. Cadence was about the same.

For a small delta, I would not worry about it.

This is a fairly dense article, but should explain when torque could be analyzed post ride and the limitations of the analysis.

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/quadrantanalysis/index.html

Woofer said:

For a small delta, I would not worry about it.

This is a fairly dense article, but should explain when torque could be analyzed post ride and the limitations of the analysis.

home.earthlink.netindex.htmlOpen ↗

Wow! What a great link. Not that I understand it yet. Thanks, Woofer

msummers said:

it was an out and back and the back was into a slight headwind. Cadence was about the same.

I just want to remind the original poster, keep on recording and downloading data. The more you have the more you can characterize your past and current performance and work on improving it and focusing on your workouts. Andy himself wrote something like you never know what kind of analysis tools are going to pop up in the future so it's good to record everything as soon as you can. It's a lot of data as well but remember to have fun riding the bike and not worrying too much about small variations in numbers, especially numbers that are not watts for now. 🙂